TNF Lean 9.17
I like the Chiefs tonight -3 (-105). Early season Thursday night favorites killed last year, for a factor of reasons:
1) Most of these games are divisional. And divisional home teams usually do well, even if their records suck, because they know the other side so well. The first 5 games on TNF last year were huge blowouts for the favorites.
2) Short turnarounds: you give a team 4+ days to prepare for a divisional opponent? That’s awfully tough.
KC bullish reasons:
3) Travis Kelce is a beast, probably the second best tight end in the NFL behind Gronkowski (why not Jimmy Graham? Kelce can actually block). His numbers are more amazing considering the fact that KC hasn’t thrown a TD pass to a WR in over 17 straight games.
4) Peyton Manning’s noodle arm. He was 0-12 on passes that went long than 15 yards last game vs the Ravens. The majority of his completions were bubble screens. This is not good if you are a Broncos fan; I expect KC to play aggressive tonight and make Manning prove he can throw the ball deep. 70% chance of rain tonight in KC as well.
5) Denver’s offensive line looked really shaky, and are up against two excellent bookend DEs in Houston and Halu.
6) CJ Anderson, the Broncos starting RB, is probably not playing tonight.
Two bearish reasons: The Broncos defense looked fairly good last game and 65% of the money is on KC.
I’ll leave you with this goal of the year in UCL yesterday:
http://twitter.com/FootyLiveVines/status/644228870078623744
