It’s been an amazing season for the Denver Broncos, who rode a 14-3 record to the No. 1 seed in the AFC and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs. Denver held on for a 33-30 overtime win over the Buffalo Bills in an instant classic in Saturday’s divisional round game. Unfortunately, starting quarterback Bo Nix suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the extra frame and will be out for Denver’s next game against the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship.
That means that backup QB Jarrett Stidham will get his first playoff start.
Advertisement
Drake Maye led the Patriots — aided by four C.J. Stroud interceptions — to a 28-16 win over the Texans to earn a date in Denver.
Oddsmakers are making the Broncos historic home underdogs.
Denver opened as a 4.5-point home underdog at BetMGM on Sunday night, which had already been pushed up to -5.5. That would be the biggest home underdog for a No. 1 seed in a conference championship game since at least 1970, per Sports Odds History. The total was set at 40.5 points.
Prior to the season, I asked 12 oddsmakers to rank the point-spread difference between every NFL starting QB and his backup, and oddsmakers had Nix as an average of 3.85 points ATS better than Stidham.
Advertisement
The lookahead line at multiple sportsbooks for this game had Denver as a short favorite, meaning the market has potentially overcorrected.
“I personally don’t think it should be this much,” one oddsmaker texted Yahoo Sports concerning the point spread move from Nix to Stidham. “Seems like we’re close to 7 points. Four points is where I’d put [it], but the market seems to disagree right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if this line closes around New England -3.”
It’s Denver’s first appearance in an AFC title game since 2016.
Leave a Reply