College Football Best Bets of the Week: Week 9
Walter Waddell
As we were laying out this article for publication, the Chiefs made a trade to send a fifth-round pick to Tennessee for wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins That takes care of trading for a star wide receiver, as discussed below.
Will the Kansas City Chiefs ever lose another game?
The Chiefs have been so good for so long, they’re beginning to explore all the different flavors of being good; finding new and unique feathers to put into their caps. With the Vikings losing to the Lions, they are the sole remaining undefeated team in the league. Patrick Mahomes has never gotten to say that before, unless you count being a backup to Alex Smith in 2017, when the Chiefs were the last team standing at 5-0. It should be a refreshing alternative to the usual September loss Kansas City suffers as they ramp up to full contender status.
They’re coming off of their best game of the season, with a DVOA of 61.5% in their Super Bowl rematch against the (admittedly shorthanded) 49ers. Their second-best game of the season, the Week 1 win over Baltimore, gives them the key tiebreaker in the race for the top seed in the conference. Our playoff odds currently give them a 61.9% chance of winning that postseason bye week, which is a big part of why they have the second-highest Super Bowl odds at the moment. They are rolling, the defending champs and a unanimous No. 1 in the subjective power rankings across the internet. Things should be cruising on easy street for the Chiefs.
And yet…
The headlines for the Chiefs as I’m writing this on Tuesday afternoon? “Chiefs Need to Trade for a Wide Receiver Now”. While the defense has been lights out, the offense has people in Kansas City worried. They are the 12th 6-0 team in NFL history, and the seventh since the merger, to have more interceptions than touchdown passes. Their point differential of 43 is tied for the fourth worst for a 6-0 team in history, behind the 1933 Bears, the 1956 Lions, and the 2015 Broncos – and that’s not a new thing either. They’re the first team to win 12 games in a row without ever topping 28 points. They haven’t had much in the way of wire-to-wire, no-doubt wins. Our Post Game Win Expectancy has four of their games below 85%, with the Chiefs even coming in under 30% in their win over Cincinnati – the game where the late, fourth-down pass interference call on Daijahn Anthony gave them a shot at the game-winning field goal. Surely, they’re fortunate to be 6-0, right?
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