Kansas City Chiefs (9-3) at Washington Redskins (3-9)

How can the Chiefs not beat the Redskins by 4 or more right? Well, that seems to be what the public thinks as they are all over the Chiefs favored by 3.5 here. As is often the case with huge public leans, I think the odds makers are set to make a lot of money here. I love fading the public and I think they are flat out wrong here because they aren’t seeing the whole picture.

This line suggests that the Redskins would be underdogs of about 9.5 points in Kansas City. This is the same team that didn’t cover as 7.5 point home favorites against the Texans and Browns and that was when they still had Justin Houston. They really miss him and their pass rush has suddenly become non-existent. They have 1 sack in the past 3 weeks, after 36 in their first 9 games. As a result, they have allowed 103 points over the past 3 games, after allowing just 111 in their first 9 games combined.

Sure, they’ve faced a very tough batch of offenses in the last 3 weeks, going against Denver twice and San Diego, but you can just as easily point out that they faced a very easy batch of offenses in their first 9 games. Over their last 5 games before the first Denver game, they faced a backup quarterback in 4 of 5 games, including three 3^rd string quarterbacks. They beat those three 3^rd string quarterbacks by a combined 17 points. They were way too dependent on easy competition, recovering fumbles, winning the turnover battle, and return touchdowns for close wins early in the season. They’ve just been exposed over the past 3 weeks, especially without Justin Houston.

Also, the Redskins don’t have a bad offense at all, moving the chains at a 75% rate. Their biggest issue is their defense, which allows opponents to move the chains at a 78% rate, but we’re still getting line value with them. The Chiefs’ offense moves the ball at just a 73% rate, as opposed to 69% for their opponents. That suggests this line should be around 2 points and that’s before you take schedule into account. In terms of DVOA, the Chiefs have faced the easiest schedule, while the Redskins have faced the 12^th hardest.

The Chiefs are also in a bad spot. They put everything they had into that Denver game last week and came up short. They’re essentially locked into the 5^th seed no matter what they do. They have a 3 game lead over the 6^th seeded Ravens and they are essentially two games back of the Broncos for the division (1 game and tiebreaker) who have an incredibly easy schedule the rest of the way. Teams are 38-51 ATS as road favorites off of a loss as home favorites since 1989.

The Redskins, meanwhile, are in a good spot as home underdogs off of a loss as home underdogs, a situation teams are 65-45 ATS in since 2002. They’re actually in their third straight game as home underdogs. It’s a small sample size obviously, but teams are 8-3 ATS as home underdogs off of back-to-back losses as home underdogs since 2002, 13-6 ATS if you go back to 1989 to get a larger sample size. It would be a bigger play on the Redskins if I trusted they hadn’t mailed in the season, unfamiliar with struggling after what happened last year, but they should get up for this one and as long as we’re getting field goal protection with them, they should be the right side.

Kansas City Chiefs 24 Washington Redskins 23

Pick against spread: Washington +3.5

Confidence: Low

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