Sharp Bettors May Have Gotten Screwed By Alex Smith’s Injury

Sharp bettors were pounding the Kansas City Chiefs for this weekend’s game prior to Alex Smith’s injury.

The Kansas City Chiefs have caught a tough break, as they announced Friday that quarterback Alex Smith will be unavailable for their Week 17 game against the San Diego Chargers.

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But the Chiefs weren’t the only ones to take a hit with the news. Sharp bettors were pounding the Chiefs prior to the announcement, leaving them with bets on what many would say is now a fairly unfavorable line, according to the Sporting News.

"The Chiefs opened up as 2.5-point favorites, and prior to the Smith news, there was a move on the Chiefs Friday morning, which bumped the spread up from -3 to -4 by 8:45 a.m. PT. And then at 9 a.m. PT, the alert came across that Smith would be out, and sports books adjusted down to Chiefs -1.(…)“It’s one of the strangest examples of bad time timing I’ve seen,” said William Hill’s head bookmaker Nick Bogdanovich. “It was a legitimate move by sharp money on the Chiefs. They were moving it everywhere"

However, there is something else to wonder here: Is Chase Daniel, now the Chiefs’ starting quarterback against the Chargers, that big of a drop off from Smith?

While Smith’s 93.4 quarterback rating for the season is respectable, he doesn’t push the ball downfield at all and hasn’t thrown a touchdown to a wide receiver all season. I mean, he’s called Captain Checkdown for a reason.

So, while it’s understandable that bettors would be upset right now considering they could have gotten the Chiefs at -1 rather than -4, Kansas City might not be that much of a worse bet than it was prior to the Smith news.

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