AFC championship game spread flips, Bengals now favored to beat Chiefs
All of those bets on the Cincinnati Bengals caused the sportsbooks to make a significant change in the point spread of the AFC Championship Game.
The Kansas City Chiefs are now underdogs at home for the AFC title game. The Bengals, who were 1.5-point underdogs on Monday morning, flipped to a 1.5-point favorite at BetMGM on Monday afternoon.
It's rare to see a game with this much anticipated betting handle see the favorite change. But there are plenty of reasons bettors are high on the Bengals going into the game, and the biggest is Patrick Mahomes' ankle injury.
Mahomes suffered a high-ankle sprain in the first quarter on Saturday against the Jacksonville Jaguars and was affected the rest of the game. He'll undoubtedly play on Sunday but it's unclear how injured he'll be.
There's also respect for the Bengals, who looked very good beating the Buffalo Bills on Sunday. The Bengals were getting more than 80 percent of the money bet on the spread for the AFC Championship Game at BetMGM as of Monday morning.
It is very rare for the Chiefs to be an underdog in the Mahomes era, and even weirder to see them as a home underdog. The Chiefs have done well as an underdog with Mahomes at quarterback. Perhaps the favorite shifts again as the week goes on, but as of Monday afternoon, the Bengals were the team giving points.
