There was a time when the Kansas City Chiefs had appeared in half of all of the Super Bowls. That year was 1970 as the Chiefs had appeared in the very first NFL-AFL Championship (getting routed by Green Bay in the process) and then again in Super Bowl IV, knocking off Minnesota and motivating the NFL to merge with the upstart AFL as it was clear that the new league was just as good. It would be 50 years before the Chiefs would make it back, but their win in Super Bowl LIV started a run of four appearances in the Super Bowl in five seasons – and a shot at three titles over that stretch of time. The books have the Chiefs listed as sports betting underdogs (of 2 or 2 ½ points, depending on the outlet), but should they be? Read on to get our perspective as we focus on the experience advantage the Chiefs bring to the game.
NFL Betting Analysis: Should You Pick Kansas City to Win the Super Bowl?
Where: Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada
When: Sunday, February 11, 2024, 6:30 PM
TV/Stream: CBS
Super Bowl LVIII will be tight end Travis Kelce’s 22nd playoff game. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes will appear in his 18th – he has never failed to make at least the AFC Championship in six seasons as the Chiefs’ starting signal-caller. Defensive tackle Chris Jones will appear in his 16th playoff game. These three lead the franchise in postseason appearances. Of course, these playoff games aren’t just appearances – the vast majority of their playoff games have resulted in wins. This group has been to the Super Bowl together, so they’re used to the klieg lights of pressure and the other distractions that come with playing in the league’s biggest game. Of the offensive starters, eight of them were with the team last year when they came back to beat Philadelphia to win Super Bowl LVII. Eight of their defensive starters are back as well – along with both their punter and kicker. If you look at the Chiefs’ 53-man roster after the AFC Championship, the players have 66 combined Super Bowl appearances. The 49ers’ 53-man roster had 16. The Chiefs’ roster owns a combined 48 Super Bowl rings. The 49ers’ roster owns four.
When Patrick Mahomes takes the field for his fourth Super Bowl, he will be in a tie with Terry Bradshaw, Jim Kelly, Peyton Manning, Roger Staubach for third all-time in Super Bowl appearances by a quarterback. The only two ahead of him? Tom Brady and John Elway. He’s the only one on this list (besides Brady) who is still not yet in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. His counterpart, Brock Purdy, was a sophomore at Iowa State four years ago, when Mahomes made his first Super Bowl appearance. Brandon Aiyuk was still running routes at Arizona State. Christian McCaffrey was still a tailback for the moribund Carolina Panthers. That gap makes a big difference as far as dealing with pressure.
Andy Reid will be coaching in his fifth Super Bowl and his fourth with Kansas City. That ties him with Tom Landry for third in league history, behind just Bill Belichick and Don Shula. If he can get the win, that would give him three, tying him with Joe Gibbs and Bill Walsh, leaving him behind just Belichick and Chuck Noll. His defensive coordinator, Steve Spagnuolo, has been in several championship games and has a Super Bowl ring from his time with the New York Giants as the DC in 2007. Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy led the Chicago Bears to the postseason as a head coach.
If you look at the two rosters, a lot of observers put the 49ers a notch ahead. However, if you look at the two teams’ performance in the playoffs, the 49ers have shown more nerves – and the Super Bowl could cause even more anxiety.
| Chiefs vs 49ers Super Bowl Picks Odds Subject to Change |
SPREAD | MONEYLINE | TOTAL |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kansas | +1.5 | +100 | U 47.5 |
| San Francisco | -1.5 | -120 | O 47.5 |
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Kansas City Chiefs Updated Analysis to Win Super Bowl LVIII
Kansas City Chiefs Updated Analysis to Win Super Bowl LVIII, January 30, 2024
In the last 20 NFL seasons, nine teams have pulled off upsets in both the divisional round and the conference championship rounds of the playoffs, including the Kansas City Chiefs, who upset both the Buffalo Bills and the Baltimore Ravens to advance to Super Bowl 58. Of the previous eight teams to accomplish this feat, six also won the Super Bowl. If we look at underdogs in the Super Bowl dating back to 2001, sports betting underdogs are 11-11 straight up and 15-7 against the spread. When the odds opened for Super Bowl LVIII, the San Francisco 49ers were 2 ½-point favorites, but the NFL line has narrowed since then. Can the Chiefs pull off three straight upsets in this postseason? Here are five reasons why they absolutely can.
NFL Betting Analysis: 5 Reasons Why Kansas City Will Win Super Bowl LVIII
Where: Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada
When: Sunday, February 11, 2024, 6:30 PM
TV/Stream: CBS
Travis Kelce is turning the clock back at tight end
According to ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics, Kelce posted a score of 75 in 2022, second only to the 49ers’ George Kittle. This season, Kelce’s score dropped to 58, seventh in the NFL. It made sense that his numbers would regress to some degree; he is 34 years old. The 984 receiving yards he picked up this season, in fact, are a record for any tight end at age 34 or older. The only other tight end ever to gain 850 or more yards after the age of 34 was the ageless Tony Gonzalez. However, in the playoffs, Kelce has found a new gear. He has caught 16 of 17 targets, picking up 191 yards and scoring three touchdowns.
Patrick Mahomes
Mahomes has been the Chiefs’ starting quarterback for six seasons now. Each year, he has guided them to the AFC Championship – or further. They are just two seasons away from the eight-season AFC Championship streak that the New England Patriots posted between 2011 and 2018. If he leads the Chiefs to victory on February 11, he will become the fifth quarterback in league history to have won at least three Super Bowls – and he will still have plenty of mileage left. He’s used to playing in games that bring the highest pressure, experience that is invaluable. In his last six playoff games, he has a 70% pass completion rate and an 11:0 TD:INT ratio.
Isiah Pacheco
It’s been a long time since we’ve seen a tailback run with as much fury as Pacheco does. Derrick Henry (before the foot injury) comes to mind, but the decision to tackle Pacheco guarantees punishment for opposing defenders. In six playoff games, Pacheco has averaged 90.5 yards from scrimmage and 18.7 touches per game. We’ve seen the San Francisco rushing defense get hammered by Green Bay’s Aaron Jones and Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs and David Montgomery. Pacheco has a rushing touchdown in four straight playoff games, and the Kansas City O-line is a strength heading into this Super Bowl.
The History
Kansas City erased a double-digit deficit to beat San Francisco in Super Bowl LIV. The teams met on October 23, 2022, and the Chiefs rolled by three touchdowns. With Mahomes at signal caller, the 49ers have not beaten the Chiefs. If you look at how Jordan Love and Jared Goff were able to move the ball against the 49ers, their defense doesn’t look quite as intimidating as we might think.
Don’t sleep on that defense
During the regular season, the Chiefs held their opponents to 17.3 points per game – the lowest average in the Andy Reid era. In three postseason games, they have allowed 13.7 points per game. That’s one reason why, out of three hours of game time, they have led for 2:05:36. The 49ers have two hours of game time – but have only led for 27:30. The Chiefs have the fourth-highest lead time of any team heading to the Super Bowl since 2000, while no team going to the Super Bowl since then has less lead time than the 49ers. The Chiefs’ defense locked down the Bills and the Ravens, and they can lock down the 49ers, too.
Chiefs Analysis to Win Super Bowl 58, April 27, 2023
NFL Betting News: Can the Kansas City Chiefs Reach, and Win Super Bowl LVIII?
The Kansas City Chiefs have stepped into the vacuum that the separation between Tom Brady and Bill Belichick has created in the AFC, advancing to three of the last four Super Bowls, and winning two of those (LIV and LVII). The rise of the Cincinnati Bengals and the Buffalo Bills in the AFC provides the Chiefs with significant challenges, but Patrick Mahomes and the rest of the Kansas City offense have shown that they can put up big numbers time and time again, as long as the offensive line remains healthy. At this writing, the Chiefs have sports betting odds around +600 to repeat as Super Bowl champions, which suggests a probability of about 14.3% to win Super Bowl again, despite the fact that no one has repeated as title winners since the New England Patriots won Super Bowls XXXVIII and XXXIX. Let’s break down their challenges and advantages in terms of repeating to consider in your NFL betting.
How does the AFC West look this time around?
Going into 2022, it looked like the AFC West would be the most exciting division in the league. Each team had a quarterback who looked, at least on paper, like an exciting gunslinger. The fact that defense was kind of an afterthought for all of these teams didn’t seem to be that big an obstacle.
Well, the Las Vegas Raiders got the best and worst out of Derek Carr. The best includes accurate balls down the field, fitting passes into tight windows and gritty scrambling. The worst includes poor decisions, forcing throws that turn into interceptions, and short-arming out routes. The end result is that Carr got benched in the last month of the season to let the organization see what they would find in Jarrett Stidham. Stidham played well, Carr was shown the door (and ended up in New Orleans), and the team decided to reunite head coach Josh McDaniels with quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo, who thrived under McDaniels as his offensive coordinator in New England.
The L.A. Chargers advanced to the wild-card round of the playoffs last year, but they lost in Jacksonville. This was a disappointing result, primarily because of the lack of defense that the Chargers played. Yes, this is a gunslinging division, but champions get stops, eventually. Will they improve their defense this year, or will this just be another season of watching Brandon Staley make mind-bending gambles at key points in ball games?
The Denver Broncos have a second season of Russell Wilson on tap, and now he has former Saints head coach Sean Payton running the room. It remains to be seen if this coaching change will help Wilson stop looking so elderly, but the Broncos have invested heavily enough in Wilson for him to get a second season.
So we see that the AFC West has a lot of change coming. There’s no evidence, at least so far, that Payton going to Denver will turn out any better than Jon Gruden’s monster contract in Las Vegas did, and while Jimmy G did get the 49ers to an NFC Championship, the Raiders don’t have the big-time defense that San Francisco did. So, the Chiefs’ path to another division title seems more than reasonable.
What about the other AFC contenders? Cincinnati signed offensive lineman Chad Ford to give the five guys protecting Joe Burrow some depth. We saw this need for depth when the Bengals didn’t have three of their starters up front in the AFC Championship loss to the Chiefs. Ford could end up playing right tackle or be a swing tackle option, but quality depth up front is a key priority.
Buffalo is largely standing pat, but adding Dalton Kincaid in the draft fills a need that the Bills have had since Cole Beasley left – a gritty slot receiver who will catch balls, take punishment, and pick up yards after the catch. Their defense, though, needs to execute in the clutch, and Josh Allen needs to stop vanishing in big games.
What about the Super Bowl? The top NFC contenders, according to the odds list, include the 49ers, who will still be starting an unproven quantity at quarterback, the Philadelphia Eagles, who led the Chiefs in Super Bowl LVII before giving up a late Kansas City comeback, and the Dallas Cowboys, who haven’t been to a conference championship game since before the invention of the smartphone. The AFC team that gets to the Super Bowl should definitely be the favorite.
So for now, the Chiefs are the legitimate favorite and will remain so until someone knocks them off.
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