Monday Night Football Best Bets: Giants vs Chiefs

Week 8 comes to a close with a Monday Night Football matchup between the New York Giants and the Kansas City Chiefs. At the beginning of the season, I’m not sure that anyone would’ve predicted that both teams in this game would come in with a below .500 record. Either way, good teams, bad teams, it doesn’t matter. Let’s look for an edge.

The Chiefs have looked like anything but a Super Bowl contender this season. After starting the season with a come-from-behind win against the Browns, they’ve lost to just about every contender they’ve faced all season – the Bills, the Titans, the Ravens, and the Chargers. Patrick Mahomes leads the league with nine interceptions. Offensively they look lost, something that hasn’t been the case in about three years. Defensively, they need to get it together because they are allowing 29 points per game.

The Giants have been competitive, which I think is the most you can ask for with this team. Daniel Jones isn’t a great quarterback, but he’s been good with his legs and he’s been effective enough that they’ve had some nice games. They’ve also been blown out in a few games, which also is to be expected. They have dealt with injuries to a lot of key offensive pieces, but as they come back, I think they can remain in games even if they lose.

I’ll start with the spread. I don’t think the Chiefs should be favored against anyone by double digits right now. Their team is in shambles. Mahomes looks terrible, making very poor decisions. The defense, as I mentioned, has been terrible. Maybe tonight will be a get-right spot for them, but I’ll take the Giants and the 10.5 points at -112. It is 100% possible that the Chiefs march down against an overmatched Giants defense and they score at will. Even still, I’ll take the points for a small play and hope the Giants can score consistently or get a back door cover.

I also predict that the Giants will need to throw a lot in this game to keep pace with the Chiefs. I’ll take Daniel Jones to have over 21.5 completions tonight. He’s exceeded that in all but one game this season and that was a game he left early due to injury. He’s been dealing with hurt receivers all year so I’m not concerned about who plays and who doesn’t. One word of warning, there have only been a couple of quarterbacks to go over 21 completions against the Chiefs this year.