San Diego Chargers (2-1) at Kansas City Chiefs (1-2)

Looks like the Chargers aren’t over their early season woes. They beat two crappy teams in week 1 and 2, but much like last year, they got destroyed once they played a real opponent. Last year they started 4-1, beating crappy teams, most of them by small margins, but lost 6 straight once the schedule got harder. Before last year, they were 14-12 from weeks 1-5 under Philip Rivers and 41-11 (41-11!!!) from weeks 6-17. Including last week, they’re actually just 4-8 ATS as favorites during the first 4 weeks of the season in the Philip Rivers era and they’re just 3-9 ATS on the road during that time period.

This week, they are road favorites in Kansas City. Road favorites are just 6-13 ATS this year and 7-12 straight up, but I think that might be a fluke and that it probably had something to do with the replacement refs. If the replacement refs were still being used, I think Kansas City would have a big trend on this side, but they aren’t.

The Chargers were road favorites in Oakland week 1 and won, proving to be an exception to what was the rule in the first 3 weeks of the season, but they barely did it despite Oakland losing their long snapper and messing up 3 separate punts, which the Chargers managed to turn into just 9 points. The Chiefs are a comparable team to the Raiders, maybe a little better. The Chiefs are also in a good situation coming off a close road win. Dogs coming off a close win as road dogs are 19-12 ATS since 2002.

This would be a strong lean if we still had replacement refs, but I like the Chiefs this week. The Chargers are not to be trusted in September, especially on the road and especially as favorites. It just wouldn’t an NFL season if people weren’t calling for Norv Turner’s job at the end of September and given what happened last week, they would almost definitely be doing so if the Chargers lost year in Kansas City. The Chiefs seem to have gotten their act together after a rough start to the season, much like they did last year, and this game should resemble the Chiefs’ close win over the Chargers in Kansas City last year.

On top of that, the public is betting San Diego pretty heavily and I like to fade the public when I can. One note, rather than putting 2 units on the spread and one on the money line, I’ll put all 3 on the money line. 1 point games happen about 2% of the time and it’s not worth the extra 10 cents for protection against something that has a 1% chance of hurting me.

Public lean: San Diego (new thing I’m adding, siding with the odds makers on bets is not a bad thing to do since they make so much money, so I’m listing this here to allow readers to “fade” the public, if they so choose, in this example, the odds makers win if Kansas City covers)

Sharps lean (sharps is defined as anyone with a 66.7% winning percentage or higher in Las Vegas Hilton): KC 12 SD 8

Kansas City Chiefs 24 San Diego Chargers 20 Upset Pick +100 3 units

Pick against spread: Kansas City +1 (-110) 0 units

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