Battle for the Bye; Chiefs @ Ravens.

Chiefs +3 @ Ravens: 54.5

Live on 5ive and SkySportsNFL

The +3 is 2.05 on 365/Hills, 3.5 is available on Skybet/PP at 1.91 either side.

The biggest game of the season, the battle for the bye week, the AFC championship preview? The two best teams in the NFL, both of them predictably unbeaten thus far, face off tonight and it should be an absolute cracker.

No real injury news on either side, Sammy Watkins is questionable with a neck/concussion injury after a cheap shot by a Chargers player last week, Derek Wolfe and Brandon Williams miss out for the Ravens. Other than that not a whole lot, which is great for us as viewers. You want to see the best teams with the best players all fit and ready to go and we've pretty much got that tonight.

These two met in week 3 last season with the Chiefs winning 33-28 without Tyreek Hill on the field, 3 TDs for Mahomes, while the Ravens ran in all 4 of their scores, Mark Ingram with 103 yards and 3 and Lamar getting one himself.

I've got a Showdown contest set up for it with an extra 50% for anyone of the winners – https://www.draftkings.co.uk/draft/contest/93123815 – at the moment, 18/25 entrants, so not much room. If it's full, no worries, join my league anyway and get notified when competitions are setup

Right, lets get into this. Thankfully it happens to be my day off tomorrow so I'll be getting up for this one.

Chiefs

The Chiefs easily took care of the Texans in the season opener but struggled past the Chargers last week, a team they historically don't seem to do well against, but they didn't seem to get going until the 4th quarter in that OT win against a surprise starter in rookie QB Justin Herbert.

I've a theory that they've just cruised through the first two games knowing they'd win and that they have saved some fun stuff for this one. I watched all of the first game and it was very vanilla. A lot of runs for Clyde to welcome him into the league, not much through the air for someone who caught 55 passes in his final year in college.

They did get him going last week catching 6 of his 8 targets for 32 yards so maybe that was the start of it. I thought he looked fine against the Texans, if he gets in space he's going to be tough to stop, his low centre of gravity makes him crazy-shifty. It won't be easy tonight against a Ravens team who've allowed just 31 yards to receivers in 2 games, but if anyone can scheme something it's Andy Reid. Elsewhere in the backfield Darwin Thompson mixed in last week, Darrel Williams in week 1, no lines on either of them, so probably a moot point.

Patrick Mahomes is the best QB in the league and could well be the best we've ever seen play the game, he does stuff on the field that few others can do (I saw your no-look pass yesterday Mr. Rodgers, well done) and he's just brilliant to watch. He may never hit 50 TDs in a season again, but he won't be far off most years. On paper he's actually not stood out this season, his average yards per completion this year down at 6.5 (ranking him 28/33 QBs) compared to 8.3 on his career. He's not thrown a pick yet and his QBR has him ranked 3rd, so not exactly a bad season to this point. Again, I think that could be a case of them not wanting to show much coming into this one, I definitely don't think it's a knock on him.

Tyreek Hill has scored in both games so far, and he's the perfect compliment to Mahomes, the TD last week was beautiful as he got free downfield rolled over before getting into the endzone. Travis Kelce is the man who generally receives the most targets though, he too has scored in both games so far with 15 receptions from 20 targets on the season, he somehow only scored 5 times in the regular season last year and a bounce-back in that department was due and seems to be happening.

The rest of the passing attack isn't quite as exciting, Sammy Watkins has big games every now and then followed by not a whole lot in fairness, as above he's questionable tonight after getting smashed on a helmet-to-helmet hit while on the way to the ground against the Chargers. Mecole Hardman is a hard man to get right (see what I did there) he's got speed to burn but only averages a couple of catches per game, if Watkins can't go he may get more, but it will likely be more Demarcus Robinson who fills in pretty well for any of these guys in general.

The Chiefs defense isn't terrible, it doesn't have to be great for them to win games, but it is susceptible to the run allowing 183 yards last week to the Chargers (admittedly at 4.2 per carry) and 100 yards to RBs through the air as well. They've allowed 70 yards per game to the tight end position so far as well.

The Ravens.

The Ravens have handled both assignments so far with ease, they smashed the Browns in the opener and dealt fairly easily with the Texans last week with a 33-16 win (as a comparison, the Chiefs beat them 34-20, so fairly similar) 9 different players caught passes last week, 4 different players had rush attempts, they're a loaded roster with few weaknesses.

Is Lamar Jackson more fun than Mahomes to watch? Probably, he does things differently to everyone else at the position (Kyler Murray the closest to his abilities) and does everything very well. Reports that teams wanted to convert him to an RB/WR after the draft are now well in the past as he led the league in pass TDs last year and has thrown a TD on 9.8% of his completions so far this year as well as leading the league in average yards per pass so far this year. He's really fucking good throwing it and has run for 50 yards per game this year too. Good luck stopping him.

The run game in Baltimore is practically unstoppable, they finished last year with record numbers of attempts and yards by quite some way, about 1,000 yards ahead of the second team on the list and they somehow improved in the backfield with the drafting of JK Dobbins to go along with Mark Ingram, Gus Edwards and Justice Hill. They're languishing in third in rush yards per game so far this season which I'm sure will annoy them. Week 1 was a Dobbins game, they granted him 2 TDs on debut, last week the Gus bus got going with 73 yards while Ingram took a direct snap to the house. This week? Fuck knows. Ingram is the only one with yardage props up this week, he's set between 49.5 and 51.5.

They added to the passing game over the summer too with Devin Duvernay and James Proche drafted in, but the main focus seems to be getting Marquise Brown going now he's fully healthy. He's had 5 receptions each game so far, 99 and 42 yards for him on those catches, and it seems that Myles Boykin is more involved last year after a poor rookie season and Willie Snead appears to be the WR3 on this offense. Mark Andrews was the main chain mover last season, surprisingly he's only had 6 receptions this season (2 of them resulting in TDs) and Nick Boyle is the TE2 there now, I'd expect Andrews to get closer to the 5 receptions he had in the opener than the 1 last week.

Defensively they improved as well with the signing of Calais Campbell in free agency as well as having one of the two best linebackers fall into their lap in the draft, a position they needed with Patrick Queen coming in. They're top 6 in both rush and pass yards allowed per game, top in points allowed per game after the two games.

Summary

This is going to be a cracker. I can't see how it doesn't go near the total, both teams can score at will and I think they will tonight.

Patrick Mahomes has never lost against the spread as an underdog, although it's only happened a handful of times, 5-0-1. So that bodes well for them tonight.

What doesn't bode too well is their problems with stopping the run so far this season and I think that could be the main variable tonight. The Ravens SHOULD run the ball down the Chiefs throat in this one.

I want the Chiefs to win, they may well do it, but logically I think the Ravens match up well and that could be the vital thing in this one.

I've got to lean to the Ravens on the spread, and over on the total.

Bets

• Clyde Edwards-Helaire over 24.5 receiving yards (Betfred)
• Both QBs to throw 2 TD passes – 2/1 (Skybet Boost)

I'll leave it at that and enjoy the game.

Should be a cracker, I can't wait!

Adam (@TouchdownTips)

🔗 Share on Social Media