I knocked the Kansas City Chiefs down a half-point last week coming off their loss to the Indianapolis Colts, but I wasn't that worried about Kansas City. That Colts game had a lot of things go wrong that didn't seem like repeatable issues. Turns out, I shouldn't have moved them at all, and one week later they have a good case for being the league's best team, even over the Buffalo Bills.
The Bills of course are dealing with a mountain of injuries, particularly on the defensive side, but their offense h asn't exactly looked unstoppable the last few weeks. But what the Chiefs did to the Bucs, a team with an outstanding defense — particularly against the run — looked like a Super Bowl-level performance. Kansas City rushed for 189 yards in the game and Patrick Mahomes threw three touchdowns while looking like the greatest backyard football player ever on several occasions. On a neutral field this week, I'd be hard-pressed not to make the Chiefs favorites over the Bills, but we'll see how healthy the latter is in January. Even saying that, I couldn't move the Bills' rating down too much coming off a win, so these teams are tied in my Week 5 power ratings.
What are power ratings? Well, anyone who has followed football (or really any sport) for any length of time has encountered a power rankings list that projects teams from best to worst. Where power ratings for NFL betting differs is that you're affixing a point total to each team that tells you ho w much better or worse it is from an average team. For example, if you think the Broncos are the midpoint of the league, their power rating would be a zero. If you think the Vikings are a little bit better, you might make them a +1. The Rams may be another step above and worth a +2 rating. Going the other way, you may think the Colts are a -1 or -2 team (or even worse).
After you've rated all 32 teams in this fashion, you can take the difference between two teams in a scheduled matchup to determine what the line would be on a neutral field. In our example above, we'd say the Rams should be favored by two points against the Broncos on a neutral field. Then you add in home field advantage, which for a long time was considered three points as a standard but is actually lower on average in this era of football. I actually determine unique home field advantage totals for each team based on data from the last five years, and you can find my breakdown of this year's ho me-field advantage ratings here.