Are The Chiefs Underrated By Oddsmakers? Numbers Suggest So.

• The Kansas City Chiefs are favored by three points over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
• The favorite has won the Super Bowl in 35 of the previous 54 Super Bowls.
• KC has -170 moneyline odds, giving them an implied 59% chance of winning.

LAS VEGAS - The Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers opened with the Chiefs favored at -3.0 points.

The line has since moved to Chiefs -3.5 as bettors take stock of what the matchup is expected to look like. However, the shading on this line favors the Bucs +3.5, so effectively the line is vacillating between 3.0 and 3.5.

"Three weeks in a row now, where we opened up one of these Buccaneers games, the sharp guys just flooded us with Buccaneers bets," said John Murray of the Las Vegas Superbook.

There are a lot of betting trends associated with this spread, so let’s take a look at some betting trends that could influence Super Bowl 55 betting.

In the past season, a total of 41 games closed at -3, which includes both the regular and postseason. Those who the online sportsbooks saw as winning by 3 went 25-16 SU but 20-21 ATS.

The second number isn’t incredibly important, as it mostly demonstrates that the sportsbooks are very good at setting spreads. The first number, however, could mean that a wager on the Chiefs moneyline at -170 could be a good play.

A division of 25/41 is around 60%, meaning that 60% of teams favored by three won the game on the moneyline. At -170 odds, this carries implied odds of .59%, although when you cut out the vig, it looks more like 63%.

In other words, bettors are more or less paying a fair price for the KC Chiefs moneyline.

The favorite in the Super Bowl has won the game 35 times, and lost it 19 times - 35/54 gives a 64% chance of this event happening historically - which would seem to further imply that the KC moneyline could be a solid play.

It might seem counterintuitive for a column about sports betting telling you to just simply take the favorite on the moneyline.

Take it from The Ringer’s Rodger Sherman:

Sometimes, the best play is to KISS - Keep It Simple, Stupid.