The Kansas City Chiefs’ ongoing quest to shatter a bit of NFL history by becoming the first franchise to “three-peat” as Super Bowl champs has gone very smoothly for Kansas sports betting. The two-time defending champs sit at 15-1, the NFL’s best mark with one game left in the regular season.
The Chiefs went on the road on Christmas Day and defeated the Pittsburgh Steelers, 29-10, to clinch the No. 1 seed in the AFC for the playoffs.
Just eight teams in NFL history have won 15 games in a season. Only the 2007 New England Patriots went 16-0; from 1978 to 2020 the NFL had 16-game seasons and six teams finished 15-1. Kansas City faces the Denver Broncos at 3:25 p.m. Central time on Sunday and can become just the second team to win 16 games in a regular season.
But the Chiefs have no incentive to do so, Wednesday's victory in Pittsburgh not only clinched homefield advantage throughout the AFC playoffs, but also a crucial first-round bye. So coach Andy Reid is likely to sit some (or perhaps a lot) of his starters.
DraftKings Sportsbook Kansas has the Chiefs as favorites on its Super Bowl odds board, at +350, just ahead of the Detroit Lions (+400). Those odds could shift slightly depending on Detroit's result on Monday Night Football against the San Francisco 49ers.
At BetKansas.com, we used the Champs or Chumps website to see how teams ended up the rest of the NFL season after being 15-1. We had been tracking data since the 2019 NFL season, but there have not been any teams fitting that criteria in the past five years. The most recent team to go 15-1 was the 2015 Carolina Panthers; no team had done so since the league went to a 17-game schedule starting in 2021.
Situation | Number of Teams | Percentage* |
Making The Playoffs | 7 | 100% |
Advanced Past Wild Card Round | 7 | 100% |
Winning Divisional Round | 6 | 86% |
Winning Conference Championship | 4 | 57% |
Winning Super Bowl | 2 | 29% |
*Rounded to nearest whole number
This analysis of teams going at least 15-1 since 1978 is exclusive to BetKansas.com, your home for the best Kansas sports betting promos.
With so few teams ever having gone 15-1, we expanded our search deeper in history with ChampsorChumps.us data regarding the best seasons in NFL history.
The 2020 Chiefs finished 14-2 before falling to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl.
Digging into history, we see wider trends that could be of interest to Kansas sportsbook apps customers.
The 2007 Patriots were the only team ever to win 18 games including the playoffs, but lost Super Bowl XLII to the New York Giants. Those aforementioned 2015 Panthers met the same fate. That team, led by Cam Newton in his NFL Most Valuable Player season, reached Super Bowl 50 before losing to the Denver Broncos.
The two teams that finished 15-1 and won the Super Bowl are considered among the best of all time and they were both heavy favorites to win it all entering the playoffs. The 1985 Chicago Bears had +100 odds to capture the Vince Lombardi Trophy before the postseason started. The year before, the 49ers went 15-1 and also went on to win the Super Bowl; they had -180 odds entering the payoffs.
The current Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl odds look like a great value in comparison.
But three other teams that finished 15-1 in the regular season provide a cautionary tale that nothing is guaranteed, even before the 2015 Panthers.
In 1998, the Minnesota Vikings lost to the Atlanta Falcons in the NFC Championship Game after entering the game as an 11-point favorite (the Falcons were 14-2 so it wasn't as big of an upset as the odds would suggest). The 2004 Pittsburgh Steelers lost at the same stage, falling to the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game. Despite their record, the Steelers were a 3-point underdog against the Pats. And in 2011, the Green Bay Packers didn't even make the NFC title game because the Giants (8-point underdogs) shocked the Pack in the Division Round.
As for Sunday's Chiefs-Broncos game, Denver is still trying to clinch a playoff spot while the Chiefs, again, have no reason to risk having any of their stars get injured. So it's no surprise that Kansas City is a 9.5-point underdog at Caesars Kansas Sportsbook, with +360 moneyline odds.
USA Today Network photo by Corey Perrine/Florida Times-Union
Author
Jim Tomlin edits and writes about sports, gambling and the intersection of those two industries. He has 30 years of experience with companies such as the Tampa Bay Times, FanRag, Saturday Down South and Saturday Tradition. He now lends his expertise to BetKansas.com, among other sites.
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