NFL Game of the Week: Buffalo Bills at Kansas City Chiefs

Buffalo Bills (4-1) at Kansas City Chiefs(4-1): Odds at a glance

It doesn’t get a primetime TV slot in Week 6, but the undoubted premier matchup of the week, if not the season, sees the AFC’s finest lock horns for another installment of their burgeoning rivalry.

Buffalo will be aching to go to the Arrowhead Stadium and return with the win. Not only are they facing their main rivals for the number-one AFC seeding and the reward of a postseason bye, they’ll want payback for the AFC divisional game in 2021, where they led with 13 seconds remaining, but never saw the ball again as the Chiefs won in overtime.

The Bills are 4-1 after an opening schedule that included two likely postseason sides for 2022 and three actual playoff teams from 2021. After a Week 7 bye and a visit from a misfiring Green Bay Packers, they face a relatively benign-looking final 10 games and a win against KC will put Buffalo in the best position for top seeding.

The Chiefs, under Patrick Mahomes, won the Super Bowl ring in 2020 in their first finals appearance in 50 years. With no titles from four Super Bowl appearances, that ring has become the “win now” objective of a loaded and expensively resourced Bills side.

They are stacked on both sides of the ball and have an MVP rival to Mahomes in the multifaceted Josh Allen, along with the NFL’s deepest set of receiving talent. For the first time in the Mahomes era, a rival team will roll into the Arrowhead Stadium as the narrow favourites.

Allen is ahead of Mahomes in the betting for the Regular Season MVP market. While it’s around a 40% chance that the honour will fall to either one of these two quarterbacks, Allen owns 26% of that likelihood and Buffalo are also ahead of KC in the 2023 Super Bowl Champion betting market.

KC have around a 16% chance of winning another Super Bowl in 2022 but Buffalo lead the market with a 22% chance to finally conquer the randomness of the postseason, while also erasing the memory of four consecutive losing Super Bowls in the early 1990s.

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NFL Game of the Week: Offense drives these two sides

KC have taken to the air on 60% of their snaps, gaining 0.4 yards per attempt further than par for the opposition defenses faced. They have an above-average ground game and outscore the usual concession rate of their rivals by a league-leading nine points per game.

Following the departure of Tyreek Hill to Miami, tight end Travis Kelce has been Mahomes’ go-to receiver with 42 targets, 32 receptions, and at least one touchdown in four of the five 2022 games. But through improvisation or design, Mahomes has also thrown passes to 10 other receivers and touchdowns to five other recipients. They haven’t missed a beat in Hill’s absence.

Buffalo are no less impressive. They throw more often than KC (on 64% of their snaps), are just as efficient through the air, excel on the ground, and outscore their opponents by nearly a touchdown per game.

We have two top-five ranked offenses, who have consistently proved their worth in recent seasons, but the gaps begin to appear once we look at the defense.

The Bills have allowed just 12 points per game (ppg) to be scored by opposing sides who have averaged a respectable 20.2 ppg in 2022. The Chiefs have played opposition who also score an average of 20 points per game, but that rises to 25 ppg against the Chiefs.

The Chiefs are performing around the league-average efficiency rate when defending both the pass and the run, but they have struggled to keep points off the scoreboard. By contrast, the Bills are ranked in the top three against both the pass and the run. They kept five regular season teams to 10 points or fewer in 2021 and have done the same to three sides already in 2022.

KC sneaked past bitter rivals the Raiders by a single point on Monday, recovering from a not-uncommon double-digit deficit. It’s been a short week for the Chiefs, but Buffalo were in cruise control as early as the second quarter when hosting the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday and could even afford to rest Allen late on.

The current Handicap line at Pinnacle is hovering around Buffalo -3.0, which seems a fair reflection of these elite contenders.

Bills at Chiefs: Final thoughts

Josh Allen is a generational talent who is just as adept at tossing deep completions as he is at running for yards or earning touchdowns. KC can occasionally stumble on either side of the ball and Buffalo are too good to allow them a way back if that happens.

Mahomes is being asked to keep up with one of the NFL’s top offenses, but he also faces one of the best defenses and that may be too much for him, even in the hostile environment of his home stadium.

Early season scoring rates favour the visiting Bills by a generous 31-21 and Buffalo can, if needed, control the tempo of the match with an effective ground game. Take the Bills to cover the small spread.

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*Odds subject to change

 

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