NFL Betting Preview: Kansas City Chiefs at Indianapolis Colts

Added on Oct 06, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

It’s not surprising that this matchup features the only remaining undefeated team in the NFL against a 2-2 team. It is surprising that the team without a loss is the Kansas City Chiefs and the Indianapolis Colts are 2-2 SU. Indy will try to get back on the winning track while the Chiefs will look to keep their winning streak going.

Kansas City Chiefs at Indianapolis Colts
October 10, 2010–10:00 AM Pacific

We generally like the job that Todd Haley has done with the Chiefs, so we’re not going to go so far as to call their 3-0 start ‘fraudulent’. The defense has been very solid which has allowed them to win games despite less than impressive play from quarterback Matt Cassel. The reality is that Kansas City has benefited from a weak schedule–two of their wins are against San Francisco and Cleveland who are a combined 1-7 SU on the season. More significantly, both teams aren’t particularly impressive on offense.

Now Kansas City takes their undefeated record into Indianapolis to face arguably the most ‘impressive’ offense in pro football. The Colts will not be in a charitable mood following a last second loss at Jacksonville on a 59 yard field goal. This is only the Colts’ second home game of the year and despite the fact they’re 2-2 both losses were on the road by a combined 4 points. Peyton Manning certainly isn’t at fault–he’s thrown 11 TD passes with only 1 interception. And while KC’s rushing defense is solid their passing defense isn’t anything special having allowed 200+ yards in every game this season–and two of those games were against Alex Smith and Seneca Wallace. If they can pass for 200+ against the KC defense Manning should be able to pass for 400 yards easily given the difference in ability between him and Smith/Wallace.

As noted above, this is only the Colts’ second home game of the season and they had no trouble at all in their first as they dismantled the Giants 38-14 easily covering the spread. True, this was the ‘battle of the Manning brothers’ and obviously a game that had the team’s focus but with the nature of last week’s loss and what is considered a ‘slow start’ by their standards this game will have the team’s focus as well. As one of the biggest ‘public’ teams in the NFL the Colts are a breakeven pointspread team in most situations. One exception–against the Chiefs where Indy is on a 3-0 SU/2-1 ATS run at home and a 8-1 SU/7-2 ATS run overall. Bad tactical matchup for KC against a proud, motivated team.

Bet Indianapolis -8 over Kansas City