Inside the Lines Chiefs vs Giants picks: Act now before line moves to key number on Sunday Night Football

The Inside the Lines team uses its proven NFL model to identify our best SportsLine player projections versus the best available odds to build our best bets.

By Stephen Oh

& Inside the Lines Team

Sep 18, 2025 at 1:41 pm ET • 6 min read

Inside the Lines team

The SportsLine Projection Model was developed and powered by the Inside the Lines team. You can visit SportsLine for our model's main market bets (spread, total, money line) but if you are looking for ALL our personal best bets for free, check out our recently launched Inside the Lines blog. These are just a fraction of our best bets, which are all free on our new blog. We will be providing our team's personal best bets for every NFL game during the 2025 season.

Here are our picks for Sunday Night Football between the Chiefs and Giants:

Kansas City Chiefs -5.5 (-120)

The range in the point spread for a veteran-laden, battle-tested team with a veteran, HOF QB like Kansas City usually is pretty tight. But the Chiefs' lack of a running game, injuries at receiver, and aging of Travis Kelce combined with the super high ceiling, but equally low floor that Russell Wilson provides the Giants' passing game has created a very unusual range of point spreads.

Giants backers can get +6.5 (-110) and perhaps even +7 by kickoff on BetMGM and Borgata.

Our model favors the Chiefs by 8.5, so we're going to take our action to FanDuel, which is charging -120 for -5.5. The line implies a score of Chiefs 25.5, Giants 19.5, but our model projects a score of Chiefs 26.5, Giants 18. The Chiefs' lack of production from the running backs had as much to do with the quality of the run defenses they faced (Eagles, Chargers) as it did the decline of Pacheco and Hunt.

The Giants have allowed 178 yards per game on 5.9 ypc their first two games. They were bad last season. allowing 136 yards and 4.6 ypc per game. The Giants' run defense is the just what the ailing Chiefs' running game needs to get right. A running game that can get even 4.0 ypc as projected from the two running backs moves the chains enough and allows KC to do enough in play action to go over their team total.

We saw the floor of the Giants' passing game in Week 1 (168 yards) and their ceiling (450) in Week 2. The Chiefs' pass defense showed their floor in Week 1 (allowing 318) and their ceiling in Week 2 (allowed 101). I "think" Patrick Mahomes' best days are behind him, but I "know" Russell Wilson's best days are behind him. I'm willing to bet that the Spagnuolo will do a much better job defending the Russ moon ball to Nabers and Robinson than the Cowboys' defense will and, as a result, the Giants will come in under their 19.5 TT.

Patrick Mahomes Over 25.5 Rushing Yards (-125 Fanatics)

While I think the Chiefs' running backs will have some success I also know that the Giants' pass rush will beat the inexperienced pair of Chiefs starting tackles and/or draw penalties resulting in many 2nd and 3rd and long situations. In the past Patrick Mahomes would average around 20 rushing yards in the regular season, whatever he needed to win games, but then he'd up that to 40+ in the playoffs when the competition got serious.

The Chiefs' struggles at RB and OT has triggered his playoff rushing response early to the tune of a 2020 Lamar Jackson-like 57 and 66 yards with a rushing TD in both games. His last four games have all been 'gotta have it' games and the one time he did not go over this line he had 25 in the Super Bowl. We are getting good line value here as well with Caesars already at 30.5 (-112) on the over. Our projection of 31 is only good value at the Fanatics line.

Kareem Hunt Over 6.5 Receiving Yards (-118 Caesars)

Of the two RBs the older Hunt looks more like his old self than Pacheco and it makes sense because Pacheco, while chronologically young, is an undersized, power running back who has had serious injuries. Hunt was always more about versatility and had a 10 target, 7 rec, 65 recyd game as recently as 11/10/24 which was when Pacheco was injured.

I think Andy Reid (and Mahomes) know Kelce isn't the Kelce of old. He's old Kelce. With Xavier Worthy probably not ready to go, they lack a proven downfield threat. The Giants' pass rush will force Mahomes to either run (pick above) or dump the ball off to the RB and I think Hunt will get the 2 catches he'll need to get the 9 or 10 yards we project.

Russell Wilson Over 15.5 Rushing Yards (-106 DraftKings)

There's not a ton of model value (projecting 17 rushing yards) and I was hoping to see some nice Cam Skattebo lines, but I don't yet see those. This is one where as long as we're not actually fading the model projection, the more subjective factors are driving my pick.

Russell Wilson desperately wanted to be known as a great pocket passer but he was always at his best when he used his legs. His early success with the Steelers resulted in minimal scrambling but once his passing regressed to his 'post-Seattle mean' he went back to scrambling. In an effort to prove he's still the better option than Jaxson Dart he has rushed for 44 and 23 yards in his two games as a Giant. Overall he has gone over 15.5 in 6 of his last 8 games.

Props Cheat Sheet

Don't like the picks you see above? These are 'automated picks' based on straight projection vs best line/price as of Thursday afternoon. The lines may not be the same as above because this was updated later.

What makes a bet an "Inside the Lines Best Bet?"

These are ones where:

1) Best Projection: Our SportsLine Model's projection shows clear value versus the line and we love certain statistical trends, X's and O's and subjective supporting data that supports our side but isn't directly factored into the model. For example, say we love a running back to go Over 14.5 carries and his backup is projected for 5.5 carries, but the backup is questionable and there's a chance he can be ruled out, which surely will change our projection to 16.5 (third-stringer gets 3.5) and the line would likely go from 12.5 to 15.5. If we have value on a side and the only unknown factors that will change are in our favor, we'll consider it our "Best Projection."

AND

2) Best Price: There is an outlier best price that we should take advantage of before it steams in "our direction." In most of these cases, the best-priced book is using "standard odds making logic" to set the line, but our team has identified a unique situation where standard odds rules don't apply. For example, maybe a player is -110 to throw an interception, but in his last three seasons he has averaged just 0.4 interceptions on the road compared to 0.7 at home because the team plays on a fast track at home and averages 5+ more pass attempts at home.

Step 1 provides greater accuracy and Step 2, especially when combined with a nice Profit Boost or Promotion, significantly lowers the bar for being profitable ... which is why we like to feature our best line sportsbooks offers.