San Diego Chargers
vs.
Kansas City Chiefs
Week 1
NFL Pick
9/11/16
The San Diego Chargers are heading to Kansas City to take on the Chiefs. The Chiefs were many people’s dark horse pick to win the Super Bowl last year, but they ran into a man named Tom Brady and their season fell short of a Super Bowl, being ousted in the Divisional round.
Early prognosis is that Jamaal Charles will be ready for week 1. That adds explosion to the consisteNCy of Kansas City’s offense. Combine the explosiveness of Jamaal Charles, a year of familiarity between Alex Smith and Jeremey MAClin and that ferocious defensive line that terrorizes quarterbacks and you’ve just created a top 3 AFC caliber football team.
The Chiefs’ defense allowed 17.4 points per Game last year, only ranking behind Seattle and Cincinnati. Their offense may not move the ball for a ton of yardage, but they are efficient in scoring. The Chiefs ranked 9th in scoring at 25.3 points per Game. I don’t claim to be the greatest statistician on the planet, but my mind tells me that if a team scores 25.3 points per Game which was not overly iNFLAted by ridiculous outlying results and they only give up 17.4 points per Game, well that team is going to win a lot of damn football Games.
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The Chargers won 4 Games last year and quite frankly didn’t do a ton in the offseason to get much better. They haven’t been able to sign their 1st round draft pick and I’m not seeing a massive improvement at receiver. Phillip Rivers is a really good quarterback, but he lacks the talent around him that’s necessary to win football Games. San Diego only put up 20 points a Game which ranks them at 26th in the league. Their defense GAve up 24.9 points per Game.
Using the same logic from above, I think we can determine that San Diego was not a good team last year. In fact, based on their record, they were a really bad team.
So what’s going on in the betting world? Early lines favor the Chiefs by 7. This equates to giving the Chiefs a 75.2% chance to win the Game. My Elo rating model which has not been adjusted for injuries or weather yet, indicates that the Chiefs should be closer to a 13 point favorite to win this Game which translates into giving the Chiefs an 89.3% chance to win this Game.
The bettorsworld Score Prediction model also has the Chiefs winning this by at least 2 TD’s. As mentioned above, if anything, the Chiefs will be even better this year while the Chargers may very well dip another notch. We’ll side with the Chiefs here in what should be the first of many big wins. Chiefs -7