NFL Preseason Betting Free Picks: Green Bay Packers at Kansas City Chiefs

Added on Sep 01, 2010 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

NFL preseason concludes on Thursday night and we’ll try to bank some more profits before the games start to count. We’ll take a look at tonight’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Green Bay Packers. Green Bay is 2-1 SU/ATS in the preseason and is feeling good about their offense after dropping 59 points on the Indianapolis Colts last week. Kansas City enters this game 0-3 SU/ATS and has been awful in the preseason for the second straight year:

Green Bay Packers at Kansas City Chiefs
September 2, 2010—5:00 PM Pacific

We get the reasoning behind making the Kansas City Chiefs a -6 point home favorite against the Green Bay Packers in this spot. The Chiefs are a 0-3 team, and historically that’s been a good ‘play on’ situation. Green Bay is pretty much set heading into the regular season, making the Chiefs an even more attractive side. Just because we ‘understand the reasoning’, however, it doesn’t mean we’re going to fall into the trap of actually betting on Kansas City.

Along with the Indianapolis Colts, the Chiefs may be the most pitiful preseason team in the NFL and certainly so in recent years. There’s one big difference between the Colts and the Chiefs in terms of their preseason play—the Colts legitimately don’t care. The Chiefs would like to win in preseason, but can’t. The Kansas City August stinkfest predates current coach Todd Haley—they were 0-4 SU/ATS in 2007 and 1-3 ATS (2-2 SU) in 2008. Haley has continued this dubious tradition and is now 0-7 SU/ATS in his two preseasons in Kansas City. The Chiefs have averaged a pathetic 12 PPG in these 7 preseason losses and have scored more than 14 points only twice.

Even if Kansas City does play starting QB Matt Cassel for more than a few series, that’s no guarantee they’ll put points on the board. After all, this is a team that averaged only 18 PPG during the regular season in 2009. Despite their preseason struggles, the team is showing some progress—they’ve got an improving defense and rushing game. For that reason it would be unwise to put Cassel at risk for too long just to win a game that doesn’t count.

Aaron Rodgers won’t see much playing time here, but he’s got a highly underrated backup in Matt Damon doppelganger Matt Flynn and an up and coming talent at #3 on the depth chart in former Texas Tech standout Graham Harrell. In other words, even assuming that the Chiefs went all out to try and get the win there’s no guarantee that they won’t get outplayed by a pair of talented quarterbacks who don’t get many opportunities to showcase their skills.

One of the fundamental concepts in successful sports handicapping is to not ask bad teams to ‘do something good for you’. For an offense averaging less than 2 TDs per game to win outright and cover a 6 point spread against a better team with a deep quarterbacking corps definitely qualifies. Look for the Packers backup quarterbacks to shine and send the Chiefs to the regular season with another 0-4 exhibition record.

Bet Green Bay +6 over Kansas City