Welcome to Monday Night Football
The 2-2 New Orleans Saints will have more primetime appearances than the Carolina Panthers this season just by facing the Kansas City Chiefs tonight on ESPN’s Monday Night Football at 8:15 ET.
As always in our brave new world of expansive sports gambling, it is now easier to bet on games than to watch them. You can catch current odds on all NFL games for Week 4 here on FanDuel.
The Chiefs are 4-0 and talking abounds about them trading for a wide receiver—such as our own Diontae Johnson—because they are dissatisfied with their offensive output. They have won four one-possession games while scoring fewer than 30 points in every game this season. While we might kill for that kind of season, fans of a team that has appeared in three of the last four Super Bowls with a 2-1 record in those games might reasonably expect more.
The Saints, meanwhile, have been perfect citizens of the NFC South, also known as the chaos division. They absolutely trounced the Panthers and the Dallas Cowboys, while managing close losses to the Philadelphia Eagles and the Atlanta Falcons.
The Saints have a stronger group of receivers than the Chiefs and the teams are approximately on par defensively. To me, Patrick Mahomes as the obviously superior quarterback is the edge here. This is not a novel observation, that the better quarterback is likelier to win, but it does hold true here. And FanDuel agrees, holding the spread this afternoon at -5.5 in favor of the home team. That’s why I’m picking the Kansas City Chiefs.
As always, use this space to talk about the action as it unfolds.
You know the drill.
This is now an open thread!