NFL Week 9 Betting Picks Guide—Back Good Teams off Big Losses

NFL Betting Picks: Kansas City Chiefs -1.5 vs. Miami Dolphins

In the fourth of five international games scheduled for the 2023-24 NFL season, the Kansas Chiefs will "host" the Miami Dolphins at Frankfurt Stadium in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Chiefs are coming off a big upset loss at the (then 2-5) Denver Broncos last week, which snapped a six game win streak for Kansas City. Meanwhile, the Dolphins beat the Pats convincingly most recently, and at 6-2, are greatly improved from last year's 9-8 regular season record.

While ESPN's FPI framework makes the Chiefs and Dolphins pretty even on a neutral field coming into week 9, we are betting the Chiefs bounce back from the 15-point defeat they sustained in Denver to collect the win and cover Sunday morning. Supporting our thinking, we cite the following angle.

The system indicated in the graphic has delivered a 22% long-term return on investment and has produced a losing record in only one season over the examination period.

We highlighted this basis in week 7, to rationalize our play on the Falcons for the cover at the Bucs. We posed the following hypothesis to explain its success:

Explaining the consistent success of this simple system, we suspect that, generally speaking, good teams lose badly as a result of lapses in mental acuity, not due to a lack of physical ability. Further, we suppose bad losses motivate such teams to refocus, which is usually all that is required for the delivery of better outcomes in their next out...When that next action is versus teams from the same conference (which suggests greater familiarity and fewer surprises, as a result of the NFL scheduling mandate that requires teams to play their conference ten times per season), the likelihood of improved performance is higher.

Accordingly, we are siding with Kansas City for the ATS win, as ever so slight favorites over Miami. This action constitutes the first of our NFL betting picks for the week.

Worth mentioning, the Kansas City Chiefs enjoy the support of 67% of ATS bets and 87% of the handle tracked by the Action Network. Yet, the spread has tightened significantly from the opening level, even crossing through the the key three-point level. Given that three is in fact the most common margin in the NFL, the present line appears especially compelling for Chiefs backers.

Happy betting!!