The San Francisco 49ers have officially replaced the Kansas City Chiefs as the betting favorite after spending the whole offseason as the favorites to win Super Bowl 58. The odds have changed as a result of the Detroit Lions’ dismal victory in Week 1, which was further made worse by the absences of TE Travis Kelce and DT Chris Jones. After Week 1’s loss, the Chiefs’ chances of making the playoffs, which were 81.8% before the game began, are now only 76.7%.
After reaching a new one-year pact with the Chiefs to give him a ton of incentives for the 2022 season, Chris Jones will be back in the mix for Week 2. The biggest uncertainty will be Kelce’s availability, who has been diagnosed with a bone bruise after hyperextending his knee during a preseason session.
This year, I’ll monitor the Chiefs’ prospects of making the playoffs on a daily basis and examine their playoff outlook and probable postseason scenarios. Can the Chiefs reach the postseason for a seventh consecutive year? As the only team with an active streak of more than four postseasons, Kansas City presently has the longest active playoff streak in the NFL. The Chiefs will be relieved to have a reasonably light schedule up until Week 7, with four of those six games coming against opponents who lost their Week 1 games, after a poor season debut against the Lions. The Chiefs’ upcoming opponent in Week 2 is the Jaguars, who defeated a Colts club that was playing with a rookie head coach and quarterback. The Jets, who recently lost quarterback Aaron Rodgers to a terrible season-ending Achilles injury, as well as a number of teams that lost in Week 1, including the Bears, Vikings, and Broncos, will be the Chiefs’ next two opponents.
The Chiefs are in the middle of the pack in terms of schedule difficulty for the whole 2023 season, ranking 16th overall in terms of opponent 2022 win percentage (.512). The Chiefs have a number of challenging games on their schedule, but the key to their season will probably still be getting victories over formidable opponents like the Eagles, Bills, and Bengals in the second half of the year. The Chiefs will benefit from the scheduling of those important games since they should be essential in determining the AFC playoff picture later on.
The Chargers will undoubtedly be the Chiefs’ toughest divisional rivals, but even then, the Chiefs are predicted to win each of their games by two or more points.
Sports Betting News websites say that the Chiefs, who were #1 favorites to win it all week 1, have since dropped to #3 overall. Their odds start at 6/1 and are now 7/1
Conclusions
The Chiefs have 76.7% probability making the playoffs, which is second-best among all teams and just after the San Francisco 49ers and Philadelphia Eagles.
Accordingly, Kansas City has the second-lowest likelihood of any NFL team—just 23.3%—of missing the playoffs.
With 12.5% of the NFL’s Super Bowl 58 winning spots still up for grabs going into Week 2, the Chiefs, who won Super Bowl 57, are tied with the Eagles, whom they defeated. The San Francisco 49ers are the current Super Bowl favorite according to the odds.
