Kansas City Chiefs vs Houston Texans: The opener

Football! Finally...

After a weird offseason, starting with a Zoom draft, regular season is about to kick-off tonight. With no preseason games and limited practice sessions in the offseason, it will be interesting to see which team managed to prepare properly for the opening week. Teams like defending champions Kansas City Chifs probably had big adventage in this situation, since they didn't need to make many adjustments comparing to the last season. They are going to host Houston Texans, against whom they played twice last year. Houston was one of the rare teams that managed to take down the Chiefs last year. They were actually on the verge of eliminating them in the playoffs as well, but managed to squander a 24-0 lead that they held early in the game. Memory of that loss is probably still painful for the Texans and I'm pretty sure they're fired up and will seek revange tonight.

High scoring affaire

Both games last year were high scoring and I don't expect much to change in that aspect. Both offenses match-up well vs the opposing defenses. Houston might be tempted to use their new offensive weapon (David Johnson), that they acquired in a trade for DeAndre hopkins, in attempt to try and slow down Patrick Mahomes and his offense. But even in a shootout, they should be just fine. With all that speed on the outside (Cooks, Fuller), Chiefs secondary will struggle to keep up. Especially without Fuller and Breeland, who formed a strating trio at cornerback with Chavarius Ward last year.

Houston's defense will for sure run into a similar set of issues. Gareon Conley was placed on IR. And if we assume that Bradley Roby is going to shadow Tyreek Hill, Kansas City will probably take their chances with Sammy Watkins, Mecole Hardman and DeMarcus Robinson vs Vernon Hargreaves, Lonnie Johnson and John Reid.

Chiefs vs Texans betting picks

There was a lot of information from training camps around the league in past couple of weeks. But with zero preseason football being played, we need to be careful about the reliability of those reports. For example, there was big hype about Chiefs rookie RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire. He recieved high praise from both coaching staff and the beat writers. But do I really believe that he will be a clear cut workhorse for them from day 1? No, not really. He will definitely get a chance to earn that type of role later in the season, but you simply don't see a rookie being trusted with pass protecting 500 million dollar QB, in his NFL debut.

That is why I expect we'll see quite a lot of Darrel Williams on the field tonight. Market bought the hype about Edwards-Helaire and inflated those rushing yards line, while offering Darrel Williams at "discounted price". I'll gladly buy some of that cheap stock and see him take 8-10 carries tonight, which should be enough to comfortably cover the total.