Chiefs (-3.5) at Ravens Betting Preview

Kansas City Chiefs (-3.5) at Baltimore Ravens
Sunday 9/19, 8:20 p.m. ET

Three things you need to know before betting on Chiefs-Ravens:

1. This marks the third straight season that the Chiefs and Ravens will meet during the month of September. Kansas City prevailed 33-28 as a 4-point home favorite in Week 3 in 2019, then won 34-20 as a 3-point road underdog in Week 3 last September. (It would turn out to be the first of three home games that Baltimore would lose to AFC visitors over a span of four games.) The Ravens enter this one off a 33-27 overtime loss to the Raiders as a 3.5-point favorite. Baltimore is 1-7-1 against the spread under head coach John Harbaugh when coming off an upset loss as a road favorite, and the team is 5-14-2 against the spread under Harbaugh when coming off a loss by fewer than seven points.

2. No NFL head coach has a better track record than Kansas City’s Andy Reid when it comes to having his team ready for the initial portion of a regular season. The Chiefs enter Week 2 having won all 14 of their September games since the start of the 2017 season, going 11-3 against the spread in the process. They’ve outscored opponents by an average of more than 9.9 points over those 14 games. Kansas City is 9-0 straight-up and 7-2 against the spread in September road games since the start of 2017.

3. The Chiefs started last November with a 35-9 victory as a 19.5-point home favorite against the Jets to improve their record to 7-1 straight-up and 6-2 against the spread over the first half of the 2020 regular season. Kansas City has gone 10-2 since then—the lone losses having been in the regular-season finale when the team rested most of its starters against the Chargers and in Super Bowl LV when Kansas City was hammered by the Buccaneers—but the Chiefs are just 2-10 against the spread over that span. A 38-24 win over the Bills in the AFC Championship Game is the only one of the 11 games that Kansas City won by more than six points.