Super Bowl Power Rankings: Chiefs Still on Top
The two best teams in the NFL face off in the Championship game
We finally made it to the final two teams. The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs are the top-two teams according to my updated power rankings, but it looks like the betting markets disagree on the ordering.
The final tiering of offensive and defensive strength shows the Chiefs at the top of the elite team tier, above the Eagles, Cincinnati Bengals, Buffalo Bills and San Francisco 49ers. This isn’t a new thing with my ratings. I had the Chiefs in their own tier since the last quarter of the regular season, and now the Eagles have narrowed the gap slightly.
The strength-of-schedule adjusted numbers have the Eagles the as the No. 2 offense behind the Chiefs (60% weighting in my numbers), but it’s a wide gap. The Eagles are the much better defense team, even accounting for one of the weaker schedules this season.
Focusing in on schedules, the Eagles have hit perfection in terms of riding into the Super Bowl with the least possible resistance. In fact, they had the easiest regular season and postseason strength of schedule according to my numbers. This is the first time that’s happened going back to when by data begins in 1999.
The Chiefs also had a relatively soft regular season schedule (20th), driven by the lack of quality offenses faced. Divisional opponents like the Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders were supposed to bring high flying offenses this season, but the Raiders ended up slightly below average and the Broncos in the bottom-10.
The Chiefs defense had easy slate of matchups, but they also improved as the season progressed. The Chiefs offense faced the third most difficult run of opposing defenses, making Patrick Mahomes’ MVP season that much more impressive.
It’s fare the say the Eagles haven’t really been tested this season. The 49ers were going to be their toughest opponent of the season, by far, but then Brock Purdy went down to injury at the end of the first drive. In the regular season, the Eagles toughest matchups were two divisional games against the Washington Commanders, as the two Dallas Cowboys games can be discounted with missing quarterbacks from each side.
I have the Chiefs around 1.5 points stronger than the Eagles on a neutral field, which could even underplay boosts to their offense with Mahomes likely getting healthier, and overplay the Eagles defensive performance last week. It’s difficult to properly adjust for the ease of facing an offense without a functional quarterback for most of the game.
I’m not the only one who sees the Chiefs as the likely better team. Circa Sports, one of the sportsbooks with bigger opening limits, posted an opening line of Chiefs -2.5 for the Super Bowl, even knowing they’d attract one-sided Eagles action.
Circa Sports Operations Manager Jeffrey Benson explained his thinking and what happened next:
"Chris Bennett, our director of risk, he and I both had Chiefs -2.5," Benson said. "I think the difference between pick and Chiefs -2.5, while it’s 2.5 points, that range is smaller than, say, -4 to -6. The numbers in the 2.5-to-pick range aren’t as likely to fall as that of other ranges of numbers."
"It was cool. I was in the risk room watching it. It was one-way Eagles money for the first five minutes, given that we were off market," Benson explained. "Sometimes the market comes to us, and sometimes it doesn’t. This time, it didn’t. When you put out a Super Bowl number and have big limits ($20,000 Sunday night), and you’re taking a stand by being off market, the bets come in hot and heavy."
Circa took the evidence they were getting from recognized sharp bettors and moved with the market, all the way to Eagles -2.5 in the course of 20 minutes on Sunday night.
We’ve seen a little movement back to the Chiefs, but only to either Eagles -2 or -1.5. I’ve been higher on the Chiefs than the markets the last half of the season, so it’s not a surprise that I’m a bit off of them still. My best guess for an additional factor in the disconnect is injury worries outside of Mahomes.
The Chiefs lost a handful of players during the Conference Championship game, and Travis Kelce had issues with back spasms pre-game that could always return.
Andy Reid listed out all the injuries post-game:
“As far as injuries go, L’Jarius Sneed, he had the concussion,” Reid said. “Kadarius Toney’s ankle, he tweaked that. JuJu Smith-Schuster that knee acted up on him from the week. Mecole Hardman gave it his best, as did all these guys. It’s a tribute to the work ethic, Pat (Mahomes) and Travis Kelce. . .”
I’d guess that the line will continue to move the Chiefs’ way as more injury news comes out and bettors get more confident about them being able to field a functioning receiver group. That said, it’s unlikely, in my opinion, to hit three points in either direction. The movement we saw before the Bengals matchup - Chiefs going from slight underdogs to slight favorites - could be mimicked here, but over a two-week timeframe.
Hey, completely unrelated to this but just an idea for an offseason topic idea. Where historically have you seen teams with a low QB cap hit benefit? I looked at the past 5 years QB cap hit v. Defense EPA and couldn't find any correlation there. Would be interested to see where most of the benefit is seen
Not a big deal but I'm appointing myself volunteer copy editor for this article. You have "fare" instead of "fair" at the start of paragraph 7