Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes has been ruled out of Sunday's playoff game against the Cleveland Browns with a concussion, changing the flow of the game and betting market as a result.
He left in the third quarter to be evaluated for a concussion before being ruled out early in the fourth quarter. Moments later, the Browns scored a touchdown to close the gap to 22-17.
The Chiefs led 19-10 at the time of the injury and tacked on a field goal to extend it to a 22-10 lead.
Veteran Chad Henne is the replacement for Kansas City. Our staff's consensus spread ratings — compiled by Chris Raybon, Sean Koerner and Matthew Freedman — rate the drop-off from Mahomes to Henne as a 6.7-point difference.
Raybon makes the Chiefs more than a touchdown worse as a result:
Mahomes threw 50 touchdowns in his first full season. His backup, Henne, has thrown 48 over the past decade. I personally have the difference between them rated at more than a touchdown (7.5), but the difference in our consensus ratings is still close to seven points.
At 22-17 at time of publish, the Chiefs were still a 3.5-point favorite at DraftKings on the live line. Cleveland was +170 to win.
BetMGM took a $25,000 live bet on Cleveland at +8.5 shortly after Mahomes went down. Meanwhile at PointsBet, the most notable action was from Chiefs backers cashing out early.
At halftime of Sunday's game with Kansas City cruising, the Westgate SuperBook in Las Vegas released look-ahead lines for the AFC Championship game between the Chiefs and Bills. That line favored Kansas City by 4 points, but that was prior to the injury.
DraftKings opened the Bills as 1.5-point favorites with a total of 50.5.
