NFL Week 2 Lookahead: Kingdom Crumbling?

InGame will consult with Fanatics Betting & Gaming trader Ethan Useloff each week to look quickly back and then ahead on what trends are shaping the NFL betting season. Useloff specializes in live trading. He’s appeared in outlets including ESPN, Fortune, ABC News, Fox Sports, USA Today, CBS Sports, Yahoo Sports, and Pro Football Network.

Reigning champion Philadelphia visiting Kansas City on Sunday was always going to overflow with storylines. There’s that whole Super Bowl rematch thing, after all. Then the Chiefs lost their opener on Friday to the Los Angeles Chargers, 27-21, in Brazil.

The new storyline for the betting industry is whether the public will be out to fade the Chiefs or go hunting for value and hoping the Kingdom lasts one more season.

“I think the Chiefs are always one of those teams, kind of like Detroit, like Baltimore, Buffalo, Philadelphia, the teams that we’re always going to see a lot of action on,” Useloff said. “So whether they’re winning 10 or 11 games or 13 or 14 games, we’re still going to end up seeing a lot of public play on them for their Super Bowl outright.

“I think you’re going to see an increased liability should they get to, let’s say, 20/1 rather than 8/1 or whatever it is that they end up going on to. I also think that the Broncos, with a sloppy game, but still ended up eking that one out, and the Chargers, that division becomes a lot more polarizing if the Chiefs aren’t the runaway favorite to win their 10th straight division.”

Again this season, the Chiefs entered as one of the heaviest-bet to win the Super Bowl at many sportsbooks.

Cheese (looka) heads

Very early in the betting week, Green Bay is hovering around a 3-point favorite hosting Washington on Sunday. The Packers dominated NFC North rival Detroit, 27-13, in Week 1.

Betting interest in the Packers perked up after they traded for defensive lineman Micah Parsons at the end of the preseason and Useloff expects them “to be a very popular team moving forward,” especially with a favorable slate of games ahead.

“If you look at their schedule, they host Washington and then they play Cleveland, Dallas, Cincinnati, Arizona, Pittsburgh, Carolina, and then Philadelphia,” Useloff observed. “So there’s a chance they’re unblemished going into November 10 against Philadelphia, which obviously would create a lot of betting intrigue.”

Under-whelming Week 1 for bettors

Just three of 15 Week 1 games through Sunday have hit the Fanatics over, and reams of heavily bet players failed to reach expected totals in prop bets.

“The offensive-oriented props are going to be where a lot of those parlays catch, and same-game parlays,” Useloff said. “It was a weekend dominated by defenses, at least thus far, and big-time players like [Christian McCaffrey], Jahmyr Gibbs, Ja’Marr Chase all didn’t score, and those were pretty popular players. I’d say, overall, it was not as friendly to customers as they may have liked.”

That will certainly help solidify a September hold that, according to InGame Intel, is traditionally the best of the year for sportsbooks at 12.57% in the post-PASPA era. That phenomenon is partly due, Useloff said, to dormant bettors eagerly betting into markets that are favorable to sportsbooks.

But the recent trend of NFL stars skipping most of the preseason to mitigate injury concerns may have had a major effect on all those ruined parlays on Sunday. Come back in a couple of weeks … maybe?

“I do think that we have seen more of a transitionary period in the NFL where you used to see a full dress rehearsal in the fourth preseason game and now you’re seeing Week 1, Week 2 become more of those revving-up periods and ramps for these NFL teams,” Useloff said. “We saw so many spreads that were within a field goal this past week.

“I do think that has to do with these teams not necessarily getting a whole lot of prep time before the season. In training camp, they’re trying to load-manage a lot more.”

Bills’, Ravens’ familiar faces show up

The Bills’ 41-40 comeback win over the Ravens Sunday night helped some bettors salvage the day. Eighty-one points crushed the over and all the usual prop-cashers cashed props, with the Ravens’ Derrick Henry, Lamar Jackson, Zay Flowers, and DeAndre Hopkins scoring touchdowns, and Dalton Kincaid, James Cook, Josh Allen, and Keon Coleman reaching the end zone for Buffalo.

“That game last night is one of those games as a book that you understand is going to probably not be as favorable,” Useloff conceded, “just given 81 total points, most of those guys that you’re expecting to take handle on score touchdowns, with the back-and-forth nature. Especially with the passion that the Buffalo Bills fans have and how much they’re liked by the public, if they get down and they’re a big plus money, that ends up building up a pretty big liability.

“So a comeback like that usually ends up leaving a little dent in our weekend figures.”

Fair Play big refund

Xavier Worthy’s first-quarter exit with a dislocasted shoulder injury in the Chiefs loss cued the biggest refund in Fanatics’ “Fair Play” protection plan history: $1.5 million.

Under the system, if a player is injured and leaves the game in the first half, Fanatics will void their unfulfilled prop bets and legs in parlays and payout the remainder, if successful, with recalibrated odds.

Fanatics also voided any unmet props on San Francisco tight end George Kittle, who was injured in the second quarter of a win in Seattle.