Tennessee Titans @ Kansas City Chiefs: Physical Titans can make their mark

NFL expert Tom Selwyn (@Tom_Selwyn) shares his expert opinion on the best bets available from Sunday evening's Conference Championship match-up in Kansas City.

Tennessee Titans @ Kansas City Chiefs | Sunday 19th January 2020, 20:05 | Sky Sports

Man, these two teams got off to such different starts in last week’s Divisional match-ups.

Tennessee couldn’t have started any better than they did against #1 seeded Baltimore, getting up 14 points early on and forcing the Ravens completely out of their game plan. Lamar Jackson is a fantastic player, but if he’s throwing the ball 59 times then you’re in trouble (he also had 20 carries and not all of those were designed runs).

Kansas City on the other hand put themselves in the type of hole that I think only they could come back from. They went down 24–0, but then completely erased that deficit and took the lead in under a quarter. That was the type of explosive offense that I was expecting when I backed them to lead after every quarter and I’m still trying to work out how they allowed themselves to come out of the gates so flat.

Despite my annoyance at how they started, the way the Chiefs came thundering back was undeniably impressive and in the Titans they get to face another AFC South team that they lost to earlier on this season.

Much like the Texans before them, the Titans are not favoured to repeat the feat and despite their accomplishments so far this postseason, it’s hard to disagree given how the Chiefs, especially on offense, looked from the 2^nd Quarter onwards.

This feels like the sort of game that is going to be decided by double-digits or less than a Field Goal and I’m more inclined to believe it will be the former in favour of Kansas City. That doesn’t mean I don’t think Tennessee can score, however, as Derrick Henry is on a phenomenal run right now and also ran all over the Chiefs in their first meeting.

It was 188 yards on 23 carries and two TDs for Henry that time out and with the way he’s been running he should certainly get his yards once more, especially if Chris Jones is limited in any way for the Chiefs. QB Ryan Tannehill as well has shown that he’s more than capable of getting his team into the end zone since he replaced Marcus Mariota in the starting line-up, averaging the best yards per attempt in the league.

My gut feeling is that whatever the final score is Kansas City will be representing the AFC in the Super Bowl. Patrick Mahomes is just too good and can hurt teams in so many ways. With Mahomes’ ability and the talented pass catchers around him combined with Andy Reid’s play-calling, the Chiefs – much like they did against the Texans – should have too much firepower for the Titans.

But, there’s a reason that Kansas City’s statistical resurgence on defence happened the week after they faced Tennessee. They are a big, physical team that I think will be able to run on the Chiefs once more. So, despite my feeling that this will be the Chief’s day, I’ll be backing the Titans to score Over 21.5 points at 11/13 (Sportingbet).