The Kansas City Chiefs are a slight home favorite against the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game to be played next Sunday. The early Bengals-Chiefs odds come with the status of Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes uncertain as he deals with an ankle injury.
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The Chiefs opened as a 2-point favorite against the Bengals, per DraftKings. Cincinnati has won three in a row against Kansas City, including last season’s AFC Championship game and a regular-season game this season (each 27-24), and seven of the past eight.
“It’s going to be a fun one,” Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow told The Associated Press. “Two of the top guys in the league, two of the top teams in the league, great defenses, great overall teams, great coaches.”
On Dec. 4, in NFL Week 13, Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker missed a 55-yard field goal with 3:24 left in the fourth quarter, after Mahomes was sacked on third down from the Bengals 33-yard line. Kansas City trailed 14-3 in the second quarter.
“We started off slow, we got back in the game, into the flow of things and [then] we had a turnover late and a missed kick,” Mahomes said then.
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Last Jan. 30, in the AFC Championship, the Chiefs had a chance at a winning touchdown near the end of the fourth quarter, but Mahomes was sacked on consecutive plays and they settled for a tying field goal. Mahomes then threw an interception on the third play of overtime.
Kansas City led 21-3 in the second quarter, and failed to score from the 1-yard line at the end of the half.
“Our defense really stepped up and made plays in the second half,” Burrow said then. “And on offense we made plays when we had to.”
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This game will again be played at Kansas City (6:30 p.m. ET), which was the top seed in the AFC. If Buffalo had defeated Cincinnati, the AFC Championship would have been played at the neutral site of Atlanta.
“Better send those refunds,” Burrow said of the tickets sold for an Atlanta game.
Mahomes came out of the AFC Divisional Round game Saturday against the Jacksonville Jaguars in the first half after his right ankle was rolled on, and though he was able to finish the 27-20 win, was clearly hampered by the injury. The Chiefs’ Super Bowl odds got worse despite the win, with Mahomes’ injury the main concern.
ESPN reported on Sunday afternoon that Mahomes has a high ankle sprain. An injury of this nature would normally leave a player with a 4-6 week timetable for return, but Mahomes is rehabbing under the belief he’ll be ready to go for the AFC Championship.
“It feels better than I thought it was going to be now,” Mahomes told ESPN. “Obviously, I have a lot of adrenaline going right now, so we’ll see how it feels. But I’ll hop right in the treatment and try to do whatever I can to be as close to 100 percent by next week. Luckily for us, we played the early game on Saturday, so we get an extra almost half a day that I can let that ankle rest.”
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid shared the sentiment that Mahomes is still in the “we’ll see” stages.
“Let’s just see how it goes here the next couple days. It’s going to be sore, I know, but let’s see where he is at,” he said. “He’s had this before, and he was able to keep pushing through.”
The Bengals defeated the Bills 27-10 as 5.5-point underdogs at Buffalo on Sunday.
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