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Geoff Schwartz
FOX Sports Betting Analyst
The final weekend of the NFL season is always a hard one to handicap because the overwhelming majority of teams already know their postseason fate and have nothing to play for.
Historically, some coaches tend to ease up on the gas pedal a bit by resting starters and lightening up the game plan. Meanwhile, others are always in full-throttle mode, even with the backups.
Profiting off these trends shows there’s still value in finding edges in some of these games that “don’t matter.”
So, with that in mind, keep reading to see what picks I’m making for the final weekend of the NFL regular season.
Kansas City Chiefs @ Los Angeles Chargers (4:25 p.m. ET Sunday, CBS)
The Kansas City Chiefs are AFC West champions and locked into the third seed for the playoffs. Win, lose or draw on Sunday, they get at least one home playoff game this postseason.
Andy Reid has been here before. He’s had Chiefs teams that enter the final weekend of the season knowing they have nothing to play for. In these situations, he always rests his starters.
I played in one such game in 2013, against the Chargers.
We were locked into the fifth seed, and the eight most important players on the team did not dress for the game. Other starters who had to dress didn’t play unless there was an injury. That year, the backup offense scored 24 points.
Famously, in Week 17 of the 2017 season, Patrick Mahomes made his first start because the Chiefs were resting Alex Smith before the playoffs. The team scored 27 at Denver.
In 2020, the Chiefs scored 21 when they sat starters against the Chargers.
So it is clear, even with Chiefs backup players in the game, Andy Reid’s offense has shown the ability to score points.
The difference this season, of course, is that the Chiefs offense isn’t special and they have struggled to put numbers on the boards. However, sitting some of the starting wide receivers might…
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Publish date : 2024-01-03 18:57:51
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