Prior to Sunday, the books had made the Bills-Chiefs game in Week 6 a pick 'em. That took me by surprise; I thought the Chiefs were at worst the clear No. 2 team in the league, and I had them even with the Bills in last week's power ratings. After the Bills thoroughly drubbed the Steelers at home, the books reopened the Bills-Chiefs game at Bills -2. With the Chiefs barely scraping by the Raiders on Monday, the line is up to Bills -3 in most places.
So the market has decided the Bills are the best team in t he NFL, which makes sense. But how much better are they than the rest of the field? The Chiefs rank fourth in point differential behind the Bills, Eagles and 49ers, and I don't think anyone would argue that Kansas City isn't a top-five team. So are the Bills at least five points better than anyone on a neutral field? That's what you have to figure out through power ratings when projecting this line.
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 how much better or worse it is from an average team. For example, if you think the Raiders' 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 Chargers 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 Chargers should be favored by two points against the Raiders 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 home-field advantage ratings here.