The Indianapolis Colts may be the most feared team in the playoffs after their dominant performance in a wild card victory over the Texans last week. And that’s not good news for the Kansas City Chiefs, who have the AFC’s No. 1 seed but have stumbled in the postseason recently. Of course they didn’t have Patrick Mahomes during those previous outings and the likely MVP will be ready to face a defense that has been one of the best over the second half of the season, leading the Colts to wins in 10 of their last 11 games.
Watch this Divisional Round game live on Saturday, January 12, 2019, at 4:35 p.m. ET at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri,
Opening NFL Odds at BookMaker.eu
Indianapolis Colts +6
Kansas City Chiefs -6
Over/Under 56.5
Live Betting Odds Analysis
The Chiefs are the top seed in the AFC, but the Colts are the hotter team, winning for the 10th time in their last 11 games with their win over division rival Houston in the Wild Card round, getting the upset as a 2-point dog on the closing NFL betting line. Not many expected the Colts to be here, or even in the postseason after their dreadful start that produced one win in their first six games. During those last 11 games the Colts are 7-3-1 ATS and they are 2-0 SU and ATS when playing as the underdog with both those wins coming over the Texans.
After getting off to a hot start, the Chiefs had to survive the last few weeks of the season and it wasn’t until the final regular season weekend that they secured the AFC West title and the top seed. KC was just 3-3 SU and 1-4-1 ATS over its final six games, needing a win over Oakland on the final Sunday to secure home field advantage. Their four losses on the season were against teams that all reached the playoffs with at least 10 wins and a combined record of 46-18.
Kansas City hasn’t had a lot of postseason success recently going just 1-10 since reaching the AFC Championship following the 1993 season, with four of those losses coming at the hands of the Colts. KC is 0-6 at home during that span with the under going 5-1 in those games.
Matchup to Watch
Only one quarterback in the league got more attention than Andrew Luck and that’s Mahomes, who did things no second-year player has ever done. Already voted All-Pro, Mahomes is the likely MVP, and deservedly so. He led the NFL with 50 touchdown passes, which was 11 more than Luck, and threw for 5,097 yards. His 580 attempts were only the seventh-most in the league and his 8.8 yards per attempt was the highest of any full-time starter.
With Mahomes leading the way the Chiefs had the NFL’s top offense in terms of yards and scoring, racking up an average of 425.6 yards and 35.3 points per game. The Chiefs scored at least 30 points 12 times while reaching the 40-point mark in a game five times. They never scored fewer than 26 points in a single outing. There were some issues immediately after the release of Kareem Hunt when the team failed to score 30 in back-to-back games and lost two in a row to delay their top-seed celebration, but the emergence of Damien Williams helped erase any concerns.
While Mahomes will likely win the MVP award, Luck is a given for comeback player of the year. It took a few games to get going after missing all of 2017, but once he did the Colts were a force. And it will be up to Luck to keep pace with the Chiefs high-flying offense. The Colts averaged about eight points fewer per game during the regular season, but Luck had the benefit of an improved run game and an offensive line that allowed just 18 sacks, the fewest during the regular season. Luck wasn’t sacked in Houston last week and Marlon Mack ran for a team playoff record 148 yards.
Colts at Chiefs Live Betting
We saw strong defensive play during the Wild Card Round, which tells us that things heat up in a winner-take-all playoff setting. What we didn’t see over the first playoff weekend was the four highest scoring teams in the league. They all earned a pass to the Divisional Round. That changes on Saturday, and the big question is whether or not the Chiefs benefitted from the week off.
Don’t expect the Chiefs to change what’s been so successful, and we’ll see plenty of Mahomes launching passes to Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. And you can bet he’ll hit paydirt on a few of his throws on the live betting lines at BookMaker.eu.
NFL Betting Odds: Chiefs 31, Colts 24
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