The Chiefs and Eagles will meet in the Super Bowl for the second time in three years, as Kansas City looks for a three-peat, while Philly looks for revenge from two years ago in Arizona. I’ll have several bets on the game, and will put them all out in article form leading up to Super Bowl Sunday. The one future I do have in pocket is Chiefs (+550) to win the Super Bowl, so a lot of my bets will be working off that. I think this should be a terrific game and a close game, so I might try to find ways to both cash that future, while backing the Eagles in other ways, as I feel they’ll have some success in this game.
One of the ways I see that success is by putting points on the board, which is why I like Philly to go over its team total as a Super Bowl Pick.
Kansas City Chiefs vs. Philadelphia Eagles
Sunday, February 9th (New Orleans, LA) 6:30pm ET
I understand that these are two good defenses, but much like the 38-35 games we saw between these teams two years ago in the Super Bowl, I think we should see some points. The Eagles are fresh off dropping 55 points in the NFC Championship Game, and average 28.4 points per game this season. The win over Washington to advance to the Super Bowl was the 13th time this season that Philly scored at least 24 points.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs showed some holes on defense in the AFC Championship Game against Buffalo, and seemed fortunate just to give up 29 points to the Bills. Kansas City has fantastic talent and coaching on defense, but we’ve seen it surrender points when playing the top offenses. Including the playoffs, the Chiefs have faced a top-10 offense seven times this season. In six of those games, the opposition scored at least 24 points, with the one outlier being a 16-14 win over the Broncos (who rank 10th). In the five games against top-seven offenses, the opposing team scored 24 points in each game. The Eagles rank sixth in points this season.
With plenty of time to game plan, success against the Chiefs in the previous Super Bowl, and a motivational edge off that loss two years ago, I like the Eagles to put up points on Super Bowl Sunday, regardless of who comes out on top.
Super Bowl Pick: PHI Team Total OVER 23.5 (-120) – 1.5-units
