LAS VEGAS (AP) — Seattle running back Kenneth Walker III is at the center of proposition bets drawing strong action as the Seahawks prepare to meet the New England Patriots in Sunday's Super Bowl.
BetMGM Sportsbook has taken a large amount of money on Walker to go over 20 1/2 receiving yards and under 72 1/2 rushing yards.
Walker surpassed that receiving yardage total in both playoff games and in four of his past five games including the regular season. He reached the rushing total in three of those.
The rushing yards prop bet opened at 78 1/2 yards.
“That is the most-bet under for any prop across the board,” said John Ewing, BetMGM's PR media insights manager. “Usually, players tend to want to wager on positive outcomes, but this is one situation where the rushing yard prop has come down quite a bit.”
Walker is a popular bet at DraftKings Sportsbook as well. He is +350 to score the game's first touchdown and -195 to hit the end zone at any time.
Wagers on touchdowns by several players are proving popular for DraftKings bettors.
“That's one prop that's taking a lot of action,” said Johnny Avello, DraftKings director of race and sportsbook operations. “And it usually does take a lot of action during the year. It doesn't surprise me that's probably going to be the biggest prop of anything for the Super Bowl.”
Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba is the +550 favorite to score the first TD and -110 to score a touchdown any time. Teammate Cooper Kupp holds 14-1 odds to score the first touchdown.
Super Bowl bettors have plenty of options. They can wager on everything from whether there will be a safety to if the game will go into overtime to who will be named MVP.
A sportsbook typically will offer more than 1,000 prop bets, though many are variations of the same base wager. Each quarterback, for example, will have different odds posted on whether he might pass for at least 200, 250 or 300 yards.
“Caesars helped ignite the Super Bowl prop betting craze back in the 1980s,” said Craig Mucklow, Caesars Sportsbook vice president of trading. “This is our most comprehensive and diverse prop menu ever.”
Avello said posting so many different props isn't as challenging as it sounds.
“It's because we do it every Sunday on every single game,” Avello said. “We have our model and we just plug in the teams that are new to the players and everything to do with that particular game. We've had a lot of these props up since Sunday night two Sundays ago.”
Some states will take a sportsbook's full slate of prop bets, but others have laws restricting what can be wagered on.
Not all states allow bets on whether the coin toss will come up heads or tails. Only a handful permit betting on what color Gatorade will be splashed on the winning coach.
“What BetMGM is focused on are props that happen on the field, so that takes away any of the ambiguity,” Ewing said. “That's why most props are ones most bettors are used to.”
Offshore sportsbooks and predictions markets don't play by the same rules and can offer many subjective props, such as the length of the national anthem. That is not allowed in the U.S. for numerous reasons. The time that the song begins and ends can be interpreted differently, and there is also the possibility that bettors could have inside information about the performance.
For those making traditional bets on the outcome of the game, the Seahawks are consensus 4 1/2-point favorites.
“Right now, we have a majority of the action on the Seahawks' spread, which is the most-bet market,” Ewing said. “The Seahawks on the future market is our only liability remaining, so we are going to be cheering for the Patriots to maybe pull the upset or at least keep it close.”
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A view of Levi's Stadium ahead of Super Bowl LX between the Seattle Seahawks and the New England Patriots, in Santa Clara. Calif., Wednesday, Feb. 4, 2026. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Seattle Seahawks running back Kenneth Walker III (9) scores a touchdown past Los Angeles Rams linebacker Byron Young (0) during the first half of the NFC Championship NFL football game Sunday, Jan. 25, 2026, in Seattle. (AP Photo/Stephen Brashear)
ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia General Assembly ended its annual session early Friday without a plan for new equipment to overhaul the state's voting system by a July deadline, plunging into doubt the future of elections in the political battleground.
The lawmakers' failure to offer a solution after months of debate raises uncertainty about how Georgians will vote in November and leaves confusion that could end in the courts or a special legislative session.
“They’ve abdicated their responsibility,” Democratic state Rep. Saira Draper said of inaction by Republicans who control the legislature.
Currently, voters make their choices on Dominion Voting machines, which then print ballots with a QR code that scanners read to tally votes. Those machines have been repeatedly targeted by President Donald Trump following his 2020 election loss, and Trump’s Georgia supporters responded by enacting a law in 2024 that bans using barcodes to count votes.
But state law still requires counties to use the machines. No money has been allocated to reprogram them, and lawmakers failed to agree on a replacement.
“We’ll have an unresolvable statutory conflict come July 1,” said House Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Victor Anderson, a Cornelia Republican who backed a proposal to keep using the machines in 2026 that Senate Republicans declined to consider.
Republican House Speaker Jon Burns said he would meet with Gov. Brian Kemp and “take his temperature” on the possibility of a special session.
Kemp spokesperson Carter Chapman said he Republican governor will examine the situation.
“We’ll analyze all bills, as well as the consequence of those that did not pass,” Chapman said Friday.
House Republicans and Democrats backed Anderson's plan, which would have required that Georgia choose a voting process that didn't use QR codes by 2028. Election officials preferred that solution.
“The Senate has shown that they’re not responsible actors,” Draper said. She added that Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a Trump-endorsed Republican running for governor, seemed more interested in keeping Trump's backing than “doing right by Georgia voters.”
A spokesperson for Jones didn't immediately respond to a request for comment early Friday.
Joseph Kirk, Bartow County election supervisor and president of the Georgia Association of Voter Registration and Election Officials, said he’ll look to the secretary of state for guidance and assumes a judge will rule to instruct election officials how to proceed.
“This is uncharted territory,” he said.
Robert Sinners, a spokesperson for Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who is also running for governor, said officials are “ready to follow the law and follow the Constitution.”
Burns told reporters that his chamber was seeking to minimize changes this year.
“You can’t change horses in the middle of the stream,” Burns said.
Anderson said without action, the state could be required to use hand-marked and hand-counted paper ballots in November.
Election officials say switching to a new system within just a few months, as advocated by some Republicans, would be nearly impossible.
“They made no way for this to happen except putting a deadline on it," Cherokee County elections director Anne Dover said of the switch away from barcodes. Dover said one problem under some plans is that a very large number of ballots would have to be printed.
Lawmakers seemed more concerned about scoring political points than making practical plans, Paulding County Election Supervisor Deidre Holden said.
“If anyone is resilient and can get the job done, it’s all of us election officials, but the legislators need to work with us, and they need to understand what we do before they go making laws that are basically unachievable for us,” Holden said.
Supporters of hand-marked paper ballots say voters are more likely to trust in an accurate count if they can see what gets read by the scanner.
Right-wing election activists lobbied lawmakers for an immediate switch to hand-marked paper ballots, but the House turned away from a Senate proposal to do so.
Anderson said he wasn’t sure if a special session could escape those political crosswinds, but said Georgia lawmakers must fix the problem.
“This is a legislative problem,” Anderson said. “It’s a legislative solution that has to happen.”
FILE - Voting machines are seen at the Bartow County Election office, Jan. 25, 2024, in Cartersville, Ga. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart, File)
