I'm going to take the Chiefs at +11 over Carolina

The NFL season is far from over for a lot of teams but it is definitely over for the Carolina Panthers who at 3 and 7 (with 7 being losses) were out of the playoff picture quite some time ago. They pulled off a surprise win vs the Giants the other week and that was a bet that I took in the wrong direction.

My system as far as betting is concerned is not at all complicated. I simply bet against Carolina no matter who they are playing and thus far, it has paid off for me 7 times this year and only failed me once. They are a terrible team, and even though they have managed a couple of wins here and there, I still believe that they are the worst team in the NFL. Their 3 wins have come because they had moments of brilliance between the 2 or 3 players on their offense that are actually worth having.

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_{This seems a fairly accurate representation as to what I am expecting this weekend}

Now there are a lot of people out there, including me, that think that Chiefs are over-rated this season and last week's loss vs the Bills kind of solidifies this notion. There have been a lot of "lucky" calls that the Chiefs have gotten in the 2024 season that have been controversial and significant reasons why they won several of their close games this year. I don't necessarily buy into the conspiracy theory that the refs favor the Chiefs, but there is no denying that this has been a critical element of at least 2 of their wins this season.

The Chiefs, regardless of how you feel about them, are tremendously better than the Carolina Panthers.

the bookmakers are aware of this and particularly at home, the Chiefs were always going to be heavy favorites in this upcoming game.

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BetMGM is a reasonably good resource for NFL stats by the way and it is the driving force behind the lines of what my particular bookmaker uses to determine lines for games. You can see that the Chiefs are favored by 11 points meaning that if you bet on them, they have to win by MORE than 11 points in order for your bet to pay out.

There is a reason why this very specific number has been selected and that is because when better teams get up by 10 points, which is a TD and a field goal, they tend to slow down play because that is a sufficient buffer zone for victory. It is also extremely unlikely that a team like Carolina is going to get 10 or more unanswered points in any game, let alone against a team that has between the 3rd or 5th best defense in the nation, depending on which stats you look at.

So it is reasonable to think that KC will just go for a win and not try to run up the score. However, I think there is more at play here specifically because the Chiefs lost to the Bills last week: They have something to prove and the Panthers are the perfect "whipping boy" for an occasion just like this one. I think that Chiefs are going to run up the score to try to silence any naysayers out there about them being one of the best teams in the NFL. There are a lot of KC haters and this is normal when one team has 2 back-to-back Super Bowl victories. In the past 5 years, the Chiefs have been in all but one of the Super Bowl championship games, and they won 3 of them. So it is quite normal for every move they make to be criticized just like any franchise with a recent history of excellence.

I believe that the Chiefs want to make a statement after their one and only loss this season and that message is "we are coming for this year's championship as well." The Panthers actually have an opportunity to make a mark in this otherwise forgettable season by putting a few points on the board.

You can tell that by the 98% of all money-line (which is a straight "who will win" bet) bets that are all on KC, that there are almost no people out there that think that Carolina can pull off a "W" in this game, even at +500 odds. When you see a team that is -700 on a straight victory, it is basically assured that this will be a sure thing bet. Betting on the spread is a bit more risky and I like it better because barring any sort of miracle, the Panthers are NOT going to win this game. It's merely a question of how badly they are going to get beaten.

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_{Carolina is last or near last in almost every offensive metric}

I think it is not beyond the realm of possibility that this game could be one of the biggest blowouts of the year since right now Mahomes and crew want to make a statement to the NFL world. Plus, Patrick and at Taylor Swift's boyfriend recently had both of their houses broken into and robbed so there might be some animosity at play here as well.

I'm no longer advising anyone else to take the bets that I do because I don't want to be responsible for anyone else's losses. However, if you look at my pessimistic track record this year, I have been correct 70% of the time. I believe that unless they have some sort of other objective in this game, there is no reason why Kansas City shouldn't emerge the victors by at least 20 points.

What do you think?