N.F.L. Week 1 Predictions: Our Picks Against the Spread

Detroit Lions at Kansas City Chiefs, 8:20 p.m., NBC

Line: Chiefs -4.5 | Total: 52.5

Kansas City appears to like to play a sport inside a sport: How many gamers could be taken away earlier than Patrick Mahomes can’t thrive? The speedy receiver Tyreek Hill, as demonstrated final 12 months, was expendable. So have been different receivers like Sammy Watkins, DeMarcus Robinson and JuJu Smith-Schuster. The group goes by working backs rapidly sufficient that Mahomes doesn’t have to introduce himself. But by all of it, Travis Kelce has been there at tight finish. Beyond Mahomes’s very first begin, which got here with the group’s key starters resting within the last week of the 2017 common season, Kelce has been on the sphere for all 79 of Mahomes’s begins within the common season and all 14 of his postseason begins.

Kelce’s hyperextended knee has that streak in jeopardy and whereas nobody would recommend the Chiefs are with out choices ought to he be pressured to sit down, his absence will surely alter Kansas City’s sport plan.

The defending Super Bowl champion, Kansas City is rightly the favourite at dwelling, however with an inclination to begin the season sluggish after which race to wins, the group could not need to fiddle with the Lions. Detroit’s offense, led by quarterback Jared Goff, was a top-five unit final season and working again David Montgomery, a newcomer from the Bears, ought to make the group much more potent. Pick: Chiefs -4.5

Sunday’s Best Games

Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears, 4:25 p.m., Fox

Line: Bears -1 | Total: 43.5

On Oct. 25, 1992, quarterback Jim Harbaugh led the Chicago Bears to a 30-10 win in Green Bay, Wis., over the Packers and their first-year beginning quarterback, Brett Favre. It was Chicago’s fifth consecutive win in opposition to Green Bay in a rivalry that had grow to be decidedly one-sided. But that was about to alter.