Vegas Odds Have Chiefs As Playoff Outsiders

Popular Las Vegas online sports book Bovada has the Chiefs in a group of mid-level teams who will just miss the playoffs.

Kansas City has 11/4 odds to make the playoffs, directly behind AFC teams Houston Texans (2/1) and San Diego Chargers (9/5). Should the odds play themselves out the six AFC teams to make the playoffs would be the Denver Broncos (1/5), New England Patriots (1/5), Indianapolis Colts (5/11), Cincinnati Bengals (11/10), Pittsburgh Steelers (11/10), and Baltimore Ravens (3/2).

The only real surprise to me is how high the Texans are on this list. A year after having the number one overall pick, a rookie head coach, and nothing at the quarterback position, the Texans leaped to a group of teams that Vegas has just missing the playoffs. Heck, one injury to the Chargers and the Texans are the last team out in Vegas’ odds. This would be quite an impressive turnaround for the Texans if they could pull it off.

It would seem everything about the Chiefs and Chargers playoff odd are centered around their schedule. Both are playoff teams from a year ago that have made moderate progress in building their roster but maybe not enough improvement to withstand the NFC West gauntlet. Throw in two matchups against the Broncos and a game against New England and that’s a brutal seven games to try to get through. Basically, the margin of error is minimal and that’s why teams that have a little more slack have better odds even if their team is not as good as either San Diego or Kansas City.

Good news here is the Chiefs should be able to play with the always wonderful ‘chip on their shoulder’ tag for the first few weeks of the season. “Nobody believed in us,” said a player. “But we believed in ourselves and we shocked the world.” I’m looking forward to this quote becoming reality.