Defying the Odds: Why the Jets vs. Chiefs Showdown Might Be Closer Than You Think

By: Steve Pugh, Founder, Versus Sports Simulator
September 29, 2023

For this Sunday’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the New York Jets at MetLife Stadium, FanDuel has the Chiefs favored by 9.5 points. Makes sense. They’re the defending Super Bowl champions and they just obliterated the Chicago Bears 41-10 at Arrowhead in front of Taylor Swift. Their offense is clicking. And the Chiefs have only allowed 13.3 points per game this season, which has earned them the 5th ranked defense in the NFL.

To boot, the Jets are without newly acquired Aaron Rodgers and they just committed to sticking with Zach Wilson as the starting QB, despite the editorial bashing from Joe Namath. Seems like a slam dunk, right?

What Does the Math Say?

The math says something different. Versus Sports Simulator is actually predicting a low-scoring, one-point win by the Jets. The half-point spread prediction is so close it might even imply an overtime period would be required to settle the game.

Now do I actually think the Jets are going to win the matchup? Probably not. The Chiefs just won the Super Bowl and they have 2-time NFL MVP quarterback Patrick Mahomes and All-Pro tight end Travis Kelce. But the math definitely points to an outcome that isn’t a 10-point win by the Chiefs. Let’s take a look at why that might not be the case.

New York Jets

The Jets are scoring just 14 points per game, but the three teams they’ve played have all been top ranked defensive teams. The Bills are ranked 7th in defense, Dallas 3rd, and New England 1st. If you plot the Jets’ points scored against the defensive ratings of their opponents, and then draw a regression line through the points, you can get a rough estimate of how many points they might be expected to score against the Chiefs’ defense (which is rated 94 on a scale of 60 to 100 and ranked 5th). See the pic below. It looks like the Jets should score somewhere between 10 and 20 points against the Chiefs.

Kansas City Chiefs

Now let’s do the same for the Chiefs. Even though they are considered an offensive juggernaut by most pundits, Kansas City hasn’t played nearly as tough of teams in terms of defense. Detroit is ranked 14th defensively, Jacksonville 25th, and Chicago almost dead last at 31st. When you plot the Chiefs’ points scored against the defensive ratings of their opponents, it’s hard to not notice the correlation. I mean, you can literally draw a straight line through the points on the chart. Take a look.

The Jets’ defensive rating according to Versus Sports Simulator is 93 out of a possible 100 (see the red vertical line in the graph). Now granted, a good statistician knows that the regression line in the graph cannot necessarily be extended outside the range of observations, which in this case it is. Ignoring that for the moment, the NY Jets’ defense is definitely the toughest KC has played so far this year. And according to this regression line, the Chiefs would only score about 9 points against the Jets. I just don’t think that’s happening.

Worst case scenario, let’s assume New York comes out and scores only 10 points against Kansas City at MetLife, the same amount of offense they put up on Dallas and New England. In order for Kansas City to cover the -9.5 spread, they’d have to put up at least 20 points on the Jets. According to our score probability plot, the Chiefs only have about a 33% chance of pulling that off.

Conclusion

Despite all the hype around this Sunday prime time game, these data points are kind of compelling, aren’t they? The math says the Jets will score between 10 and 20 points and the Chiefs will score at least 9 and most probably around 15. Does it really look like KC will outscore the Jets by 10 points? Anything can and will happen in sports...it always does. Even the iconic Taylor Swift is expected to be in the house again this Sunday. But according to the math, it surely looks like this game will be a lot closer than the sportsbooks are saying.

Be sure to check out the game on Sunday, October 1, 2023, at 8:20PM EST on NBC.

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