Denver's goal-line stand on the final play cashes Broncos +1.5 outright

Taking a point and a half and winning outright means the hook never mattered, but let us be clear about how this got here. Denver trailed 24-13 in the fourth, Harrison Butker missed a 54-yard field goal, and Jonah Coleman's 51-yard catch-and-run set up his 5-yard score for a 28-24 lead with 1:56 left. Then Kansas City had first down at the 4 with 35 seconds and got stopped four times, the last a Malcolm Roach sack of Patrick Mahomes. Right side, borrowed reasons.

Denver's 5-2 is the thinnest record on the board: a plus-3 point differential, a 4-0 mark in one-score games and 18th in net EPA, which is a .500-quality team sitting two games over. We make it Chiefs -1; the market says -1.5, so this is half a point and we'll treat it as such. The reason to take the points is that Denver's best unit got better while Kansas City's worst didn't move. Pat Surtain practiced in full after missing three games, and with him on the field Denver has played man coverage at 32 to 36% against 22.9% without him and blitzed more often, which is the lever against Travis Kelce and Xavier Worthy with Rashee Rice questionable. Against that, Zach Allen didn't practice Wednesday with a hamstring, and he leads Denver with 4.5 sacks on a front that's third in pressure rate and second without blitzing, so the mechanism that makes this whole defense work is genuinely in doubt. Kansas City's run game is first in the league in rush EPA at 5.3 a carry with Kenneth Walker III at 5.8, and he ran for 173 yards against this same front in Week 1, into a Denver run defense that's 26th in rush EPA allowing 4.6 a carry. Denver's offense is the reason this isn't a play, 23rd in EPA with the league's worst average depth of target at 5.7 yards, a 31.1% third-down rate last week, and Jaylen Waddle, its leading target, sitting out Wednesday. We took Kansas City last week and we're taking points against them now because the number is a point and a half.