Just one game left in Week 1, and the schedule-makers saved a good one for last.
Denver at Kansas City. Patrick Mahomes playing his first real football in nine months against the team that swept Kansas City last season. A 14-3 Broncos outfit that led the NFL in sacks walking into Arrowhead. A 43.5 total, which is the market's way of saying it expects this tight and mean.
Denver's offense scored 43 touchdowns last season. Kansas City scored 38. Then the Chiefs spent an entire offseason mailing their secondary to other franchises, four regulars from last year's secondary gone, and on Monday night they line up a rookie making his NFL debut against a team that already beat them twice.
And on Kalshi, every single Bronco worth owning is priced below the rate he actually found the end zone last year. Not one guy who slipped through the cracks. All of them.
Kalshi prices below are as of September 13, 2026, read off the exchange at 10:30 p.m. ET on Sunday (event 26SEP14DENKC); sportsbook prices are from OddsShopper's live-odds feed at the same minute. Lindy's own read was 5:30 p.m. ET and his prices are noted beside each play. Prices move. Re-check before you trade.
So here are the three, strongest first, before another word of setup.
The OddsShopper Parlay Builder — every leg graded live (EV, xWin, true odds) before you lock a ticket. Open the live board.
The Three Plays
| Play | Kalshi ask | After fee | Effective | Best sportsbook | At Lindy's 5:30 read |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RJ Harvey, Yes 1+ TD | 24¢ | 25.28¢ | +296 | +310 (Fanatics) | 23¢ (+313) |
| Courtland Sutton, Yes 1+ TD | 27¢ | 28.38¢ | +252 | +250 (Fanatics) | 26¢ (+266) |
| Jaylen Waddle, Yes 1+ TD | 30¢ | 31.47¢ | +218 | +230 (BetRivers) | 29¢ (+228) |
Effective odds are fee-adjusted at Kalshi's published taker rate, then converted to American, because a cent price with the rake still in it is not a number you can bet. Format note, and that is the entire tutorial: Kalshi posts one-sided threshold contracts, so a "1+" contract is your sportsbook's anytime touchdown. The best-sportsbook column is the top US-accessible price on OddsShopper's screen at the same read, and tonight a book pays more than the exchange on two of the three; take whichever venue pays longer.
Harvey is the best bet on my board. Cheapest contract, highest base rate, two ways to reach the end zone. Sutton is right behind him. Waddle still clears, just by the least. Three separate tickets. Never a parlay. Split evenly at tonight's prices, any one of them finding pay dirt turns a profit on the whole card; that math is at the bottom. The case on each follows.
| 43 | 4 | 0 |
|---|---|---|
| Denver Offensive Touchdowns, 2025 | Kansas City secondary regulars gone | Denver players with a Week 1 designation |
One note before the film, and it is the reason any of this clears. Take the third name on that list. Jaylen Waddle scoring a touchdown is one outcome, on one field, on one night, and tonight BetRivers pays +230 for it, DraftKings and Fanatics pay +210, and the exchange pays +218 after fees. Same touchdown, 20 cents of spread, and the book you happen to open decides which one you get. Shopping for your number is not just a good idea, friends: it is a necessity. The live anytime touchdown odds across every book sit on one screen for exactly this reason. Do that all season and it is the entire margin between grinding out a profit and quietly donating.
Lindy's readers: every number in this article came off a board that shows all of it at once, which is the only way any of this works. That is the whole product: every book and the exchange on one screen, so you stop leaving 20 cents on the table out of habit. OddsShopper Pro starts with a 7-day free trial, and code LINDY25 takes 25% off your first week or month after it.
If you want the game itself rather than the end zone, every number on it got run in Broncos vs Chiefs Prediction: AI vs Kalshi on All 46 Lines, and the full 12-name scorer board with both venues' prices is on the Broncos vs Chiefs anytime TD board. This piece is only about the touchdowns.
The whole Denver touchdown board is marked down like the day after Christmas. Which, given that Denver walked into Arrowhead on Christmas Day and won, feels about right. Here is why it is wrong.
The Broncos Side Nobody Wants To Respect
Denver went 14-3 last season. First AFC West title and first No. 1 seed since 2015. They beat Buffalo 33-30 in overtime in the Divisional Round. Then they lost the AFC Championship Game 10-7.
Here is the part that belongs on a billboard: they played that championship game with Jarrett Stidham at quarterback. Bo Nix broke his ankle on the second-to-last play against Buffalo.
This team was one healthy ankle away from a Super Bowl, and it walks into Monday night as a road underdog the public loves on the moneyline and ignores in the end zone.
What is real about them is the line of scrimmage, and it is ridiculous. The Broncos led the NFL with 68 sacks and a 10.29% sack rate, the second straight year leading the league, on a 29.8% pressure rate. They also allowed the fewest sacks in football at 23. Best pass rush and best pass protection in the same season: that is Happy Gilmore turning up with the 400-yard drive and a putting game, and it basically never happens.
They are also, somehow, completely healthy. No Denver player carries a Week 1 injury designation. The only absence is edge rusher Jonathon Cooper, who had eight sacks last year and sits on the Commissioner's Exempt List.
Kansas City cannot say any of that. Left tackle Josh Simmons is out with a back injury, so rookie Kahlil Benson draws Nik Bonitto and his 14.5 sacks, on the blind side of a quarterback playing his first real football since ACL surgery. Safety Chamarri Conner is out with a knee. Chris Jones was held out of Saturday's practice with a calf and carries no designation. Sleep tight, Chiefs Kingdom.
One honest caveat, because I am not going to pretend it is not there: Denver went 11-2 in one-score games with a minus-three turnover margin on 14 takeaways, against a league average of 19.7. Nobody repeats that. But regression is a season-long argument, and tonight I only need them to reach the end zone twice.
RJ Harvey: Denver's Leading Rusher Is Not Denver's Leading Scorer
Here is a fun way to lose a bar bet. Who led the 2025 Broncos in rushing touchdowns?
Not J.K. Dobbins, who led the team in carries and in rushing yards. Not Bo Nix, though he is a menace down there and took five himself. The answer is the rookie: RJ Harvey.
Seven rushing touchdowns, five receiving touchdowns, 12 in total, and he found the end zone in nine of his 17 games. That is 52.9%. He did it as the second back, on 146 carries, while Dobbins was out-touching him by a wide margin for the first ten weeks.
Kalshi has him at 23 bid, 24 ask on 1+ touchdowns, a cent above where it sat at 5:30.
Twenty-four cents. The market is pricing a 24% chance on a player who scored in better than half his games as a rookie. Add the 1.28-cent fee and you are in at 25.28, which is +296. Fanatics is a touch longer at +310 and DraftKings sits at +295; take the longest number in front of you.
Now, I am not going to hand you the 52.9% and run, because it is flattered by circumstance. Dobbins had season-ending foot surgery after Week 10, and Harvey's rate after that was 5-of-7. With Dobbins healthy, which he is Monday, Harvey scored in 4 of 10, 40%. Use that number. It is the honest one, and it is still 15 points clear of what you are being charged.
The reason it works even with Dobbins upright is that Harvey does not need the goal-line carries to score. He caught 47 passes for 356 yards as a rookie. He is the Joker in this offense, the guy who gets split out, motioned, and thrown to in space. Two paths to the end zone, and the market is pricing him like he has half of one.
RJ Harvey, YES on 1+ touchdowns. Price 24¢, after fee 25.28¢, effective +296. Take it to 30¢.
The fine print. Inside the five, with both backs healthy in Weeks 1 through 10, Dobbins out-carried Harvey seven to three. The goal-line work is Dobbins'. Harvey's touchdowns came from everywhere else, which is the bet, but if Denver's scoring drives all end in short-yardage plunges, this ticket watches. Denver also added rookie Jonah Coleman behind them, and Bo Nix vultured five scores himself last season.
Courtland Sutton: The Receiver Everybody Forgot About In March
Denver shipped a first, a third and a fourth to Miami for Jaylen Waddle, and from that minute forward every conversation about this receiving corps has been about the new toy. Completely understandable. Also extremely convenient if you happen to be holding the old guy's ticket.
Courtland Sutton caught 74 balls for 1,017 yards and seven touchdowns last season, scoring in seven of 17 games, 41.2%. That was his second straight 1,000-yard year and his third straight season of seven-plus scores, after 10 and 8. He is a captain.
Kalshi: 26 bid, 27 ask. A fee of 1.38 puts you in at 28.38, or +252, on a 41.2% base rate. Fanatics has the same touchdown at +250 and DraftKings at +240, so the exchange is the price here by a hair. At 5:30 it was 26.
He is also the single worst matchup Kansas City could have drawn. The Chiefs traded Trent McDuffie to the Rams, lost Jaylen Watson to the same team, lost Bryan Cook to Cincinnati and Joshua Williams as well, and are down four regulars from the secondary that already finished 29th on third down. What is left is L'Jarius Sneed on a limited practice week, a rookie in Mansoor Delane making his NFL debut, Alohi Gilman, who allowed a 113.7 passer rating in coverage last year, and a backup safety starting because Conner is out.
Sutton is 6-foot-4 and makes his living winning jump balls inside the 20. That secondary is going to spend Monday night in a lot of Cover 3, with a rookie, hoping.
Courtland Sutton, YES on 1+ touchdowns. Price 27¢, after fee 28.38¢, effective +252. Take it to 32¢.
The fine print. The Waddle trade is a real threat to this, not just narrative. Sutton's target share has to come down with a 100-target receiver added to the room, and the red-zone looks are the ones a new toy usually gets first. Denver also spread 25 receiving touchdowns across ten different players last season, which is the opposite of a concentrated target tree.
Jaylen Waddle: The New Toy Nobody Has Priced As A Scorer
Denver spent an entire offseason being asked about Jaylen Waddle. Of the three, he is the one the market has come closest to pricing right, and at 30 cents it still has not caught up to his rate. That gap is the opportunity.
Waddle scored in six of his 16 games last season, 37.5%. Kalshi has him at 29 bid, 30 ask, which is 31.47 after the fee, or +218. BetRivers pays +230 for the identical outcome and DraftKings and Fanatics pay +210, which is the shop-your-number lesson from the top of the page in one row. At 5:30 it was 29.
And he is precisely the profile that ruins a thin secondary. His 2025 average depth of target was 13.2 yards, his air-yards share was 38.7%, fourth in the entire NFL, and he lined up wide on 76.5% of his snaps. That is a field-stretcher's usage, and Denver's one preseason sample had early-down air yards nearly doubling.
A rookie corner making his NFL debut and a safety who allowed a 113.7 passer rating do not get to make many mistakes against that. One of them is a touchdown, not a completion.
So why third? Because 37.5% is the lowest base rate of the trio, and because a 13.2 aDOT puts him behind Sutton and Evan Engram in the red-zone pecking order. It clears at 30 cents. It just clears by the least, and I am telling you that up front rather than dressing it up as a co-favorite.
Jaylen Waddle, YES on 1+ touchdowns. Price 30¢, after fee 31.47¢, effective +218. Take it to 34¢. If your book has +230, that is the better ticket.
The fine print. Six touchdowns is a thin base to extrapolate from, and a brand-new receiver in a brand-new offense is exactly the guy a coaching staff eases in. Kader Kohou, who Kansas City added this offseason and keeps on its practice squad, also spent years covering Waddle every day in Miami practice and knows the release package cold, a scouting report Kansas City's staff gets to use whether or not he is elevated for this game.
Three Tickets, One Idea, And Absolutely No Parlay
Read this part twice, because it is the whole difference between using these correctly and lighting money on fire.
These are three separate tickets. They are NOT a parlay. Do not build them into one. You cannot do it natively on the exchange anyway, and if you go find a way to stitch them together somewhere else, you have taken three plays that already move together and stacked their failure on top of itself. One quiet Denver night and the whole thing is a zero instead of a split.
What we are doing here is carving out the main pieces of the Broncos offense. We are not trying to eat the whole turkey.
All three cash on the same condition: Denver reaching the end zone more than once against a secondary gutted down to the studs. Kansas City traded Trent McDuffie to the Rams. Jaylen Watson followed him there. Bryan Cook went to Cincinnati. Joshua Williams is gone too. That is four regulars out of one secondary in a single offseason.
| 4 | 29th | 113.7 |
|---|---|---|
| Kansas City Secondary Regulars Gone | Kansas City third-down defense, 2025 | Passer rating allowed by their new safety |
What is left to cover Denver: L'Jarius Sneed, limited in practice all week. Mansoor Delane, a rookie making his NFL debut. Alohi Gilman, signed this offseason after allowing a 113.7 passer rating in coverage. And a third-year backup at safety. That group replaced a unit that finished 29th on third down with an All-Pro corner on it.
How I'd Size It
Treat the three as one thematic position, not three independent shots. Whatever you would have risked on "Denver finds the end zone against this secondary," split it across the three contracts instead of putting a full position on each. And if you want to weight it rather than split it evenly, weight it in the order they are written: most on Harvey, least on Waddle.
The upside of spreading it: you do not have to be right about which Bronco scores. Denver put 25 receiving touchdowns across ten different players last season. Picking the exact guy is a coin toss. Owning the backfield, the red-zone possession receiver and the field-stretcher at once means you need the team to be right, not the depth chart.
The downside, stated plainly: correlation runs both ways. A 43.5 total and Payton's 16.1% fourth-down go rate both hint at a field-goal night, and if Denver is held to one score these miss together. That is the price of the structure.
What The Rest Of The Board Is Telling You
That is the card. Here is the rest of the board, because it is the reason the end zone got left behind in the first place.
| Market | Kalshi (bid / ask) | Sportsbook | Kalshi volume |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chiefs Win | 56 / 57¢ | -135 (DraftKings) | 267,310 |
| Broncos Win | 43 / 44¢ | +114 (DraftKings) | 968,526 |
| Chiefs By Over 2.5 | 48 / 49¢ | KC -2.5 (-110) | 130,132 |
| Over 43.5 Points | 49 / 50¢ | 43.5 | 46,370 |
Kalshi read 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday; volume is lifetime contracts traded on that market. DraftKings, FanDuel, BetMGM, Caesars and bet365 all sit at KC -2.5 and a 43.5 total on the live odds screen.
Denver is the most-traded side on the entire board and it is not remotely close: the Broncos moneyline has traded nearly a million contracts against about 267,000 for Kansas City. We tracked it in Broncos vs Chiefs Odds: Everybody's On Denver, roughly 100,000 Denver contracts over three days with 96% of them on the buy side, and the price never budged off 44 cents. Not a wobble. Four straight sessions of people mashing the buy button into a number that would not move. That is a market maker parked on a fixed offer all week with a folding chair and a cooler, serving everybody who walks up.
The books tell the same story, per this week's published betting-splits reporting: 70 to 75% of tickets and 80 to 92% of the handle on Denver, and a line that walked from KC -3 to -2.5. Money and movement in the same direction, no sharp report anywhere. This is a public game, and the public is not being stupid about it.
Which makes the price the punchline, and it is the trap laid out in The Coin Flip Is The Most Expensive Trade On Kalshi. Denver at 44 cents looks like a bargain next to DraftKings' +114. Add the 1.73-cent fee and it is 45.73 cents, or +119, against +115 at Caesars and bet365 on the same screen. Nearly a million contracts of one-way traffic bought Denver backers about four cents over the best book, and at 5:30 p.m., when the ask was 45, the fee ate all of it and the exchange matched DraftKings to the decimal.
The moneyline is roughly fair, on either venue. The touchdown ladder hanging right next to it, the one we just spent three tickets on, is not.
What 45 Years Of Head Coaching Says About Monday
Andy Reid has coached 437 regular-season games. Sean Payton has coached 292. That is a rare luxury in this business: situational splits that are actually samples instead of three data points and a narrative.
| Tale Of The Tape | Andy Reid | Sean Payton |
|---|---|---|
| Career Record | 279-157-1 (.640) | 184-108 (.630) |
| With Current Team | 149-64 (.700) | 32-19 (.627) |
| Season Openers | 17-10 | 9-9 |
| Openers, Current Team | 10-3 | 1-2 |
| Career ATS | 53.4% | 54.2% |
| 4th-Down Go Rate, 2025 | 26.0% | 16.1% |
| 4th-Down Conversions, 2025 | 24-of-32 (1st) | 10-of-20 (29th in attempts) |
| No-Huddle Rate, 2025 | 2.5% | 12.9% |
| Pass Rate Over Expected, 2025 | 4.0 points above | 1.6 points above |
Career records via Pro Football Reference. ATS via nfelo. Tendencies via nfelo and NFL.com, 2025 regular season.
Everybody is going to quote the opener split at you this week: Reid is 10-3 in Week 1 with Kansas City, Payton is a coin flip for his career. Before you build anything on it, know that Reid is 1-2 in his last three openers and Kansas City has started 0-1 in two of the past three seasons. That trend has been quietly rotting for a while.
The split I actually care about is fourth down, because it is enormous and it is recent. Reid went for it 26% of the time and converted 24 of 32, the best conversion rate in football. Payton went at 16.1% and attempted the 29th-most in the league. In a game with a 43.5 total, that gap is the difference between drives that end in six and drives that end in three, which is the entire question for a touchdown contract.
And lately? Payton owns him. Payton has won three straight in the series, including a 2025 sweep, Denver's first sweep of Kansas City since 2014 and its first Arrowhead win since 2015. Put the asterisks where they belong, though: the first of the three was the 2024 finale against Kansas City's backups, and Mahomes tore his ACL and LCL on December 14 and did not play the Christmas Day game Denver won. That sweep was one win over Mahomes and one over Gardner Minshew.
Why I'm Leaving The Whole Kansas City Side Alone
There is a full board of Chiefs contracts sitting right there and I am not touching one of them. The reasons are different in each case, and all three are worth knowing.
The Aging Legend
Travis Kelce is back for a 14th season and I hope he plays until he is 45. But run his touchdown totals since 2022: 12, then 5, then 3, then 5. Last season he caught 76 balls for 851 yards and found the end zone in five of 17 games, 29.4%.
Kalshi wants 31 cents, which is 32.50 after the fee. So the market is charging you more than his actual scoring rate for a 36-year-old tight end who has gone from 12 touchdowns to five or fewer in each of the last three seasons. There is nothing to fade there, just a bad buy to skip.
The Shiny New Toy
Kansas City's run game was a corpse last season: 430 carries and three runs of 20 yards or more, dead last in the league. So they signed the reigning Super Bowl LX MVP and hired the coordinator whose last two stops ranked 4th and 3rd in explosive run rate. Correct problem, correct solution, and over 17 games I think it works.
I just cannot pay these prices to find out tonight. I scanned every rung of Kenneth Walker III's rushing ladder looking for a way in, either direction, and came back with this.
| Contract | No costs | After fee | Breakeven | 2025 No rate | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No On 50+ Yards | 45¢ | 46.74¢ | 46.7% | 35.3% | -11.4 |
| No On 60+ Yards | 49¢ | 50.75¢ | 50.7% | 47.1% | -3.7 |
| No On 70+ Yards | 62¢ | 63.65¢ | 63.6% | 64.7% | +1.1 |
| No On 80+ Yards | 81¢ | 82.08¢ | 82.1% | 70.6% | -11.5 |
Lindy's read of the rushing-yards ladder, 5:30 p.m. ET Sunday; this table was not repriced with the rest of the page. Walker's 2025 rushing game log: 20, 105, 38, 81, 86, 34, 66, 42, 67, 67, 71, 56, 29, 17, 100, 51, 97. Mean 60.4, median 66.0. Edge is the 2025 rate minus the fee-adjusted breakeven.
Three of the four rungs are priced efficiently or worse. The 60+ contract, the one everybody reaches for because it sits closest to his median, is the single worst square on the board: it lands dead on the fee peak and charges a full 1.75 cents to enter a coin flip. Only the 70+ rung clears breakeven at all, by exactly one point.
One point of edge, laying -175, on a back whose whole profile is breaking one long run and settling it on a single snap. That is a coin flip wearing a spreadsheet. I will be buying Walker all season and leaving tonight alone.
The New Blood
Then there is the bottom of the board, where the lottery tickets live. Cyrus Allen at 7 cents. Jalen Royals at 4 bid, 7 ask. Jared Wiley at 0 bid, 4 ask. Xavier Worthy at 22.
Worthy is the instructive one, because he is the name people recognize. He played 14 games last season, caught 42 passes, and scored one touchdown, in one game out of 14, a 7.1% rate. The exchange wants 22 cents. You are paying roughly triple his actual rate for brand recognition.
As for the Cyrus Allens of the world: I cannot find a 2025 NFL production profile worth pricing off, and neither can the market. That is exactly why he is 7 cents, and exactly why 7 cents is not automatically cheap. A number nobody can model is a guess with a smaller ticket, not a bargain.
The one Chiefs contract with a real argument is Rashee Rice, who scored in four of the eight games he played and sits at 37 cents. That is a real gap and I am still passing, for two reasons: eight games is a thin sample, and buying a Kansas City touchdown pulls directly against the three tickets I just took. Pick a side, commit to it.
The Card, With The Fee Math
| Contract | Price | After fee | Effective | Best sportsbook | TDs in 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RJ Harvey Yes 1+ TD | 24¢ | 25.28¢ | +296 | +310 (Fanatics) | 9 of 17 games |
| Courtland Sutton Yes 1+ TD | 27¢ | 28.38¢ | +252 | +250 (Fanatics) | 7 of 17 games |
| Jaylen Waddle Yes 1+ TD | 30¢ | 31.47¢ | +218 | +230 (BetRivers) | 6 of 16 games |
Kalshi asks and sportsbook prices read 10:30 p.m. ET Sunday, September 13, 2026. Fees at the published taker rate of 0.07 x price x (1 - price), rounded up. The last column is the number of games in which the player scored at least one touchdown.
More on this: Broncos Vs Chiefs Anytime TD Odds: Kalshi Vs The Books · The Board Is on Barkley, The Trade Is Goedert. · Can Five AI Models Beat The Market On Kalshi Player Props? · 49ers vs Rams Kalshi Player Props: Who Gets Fed In Melbourne · NFL Week 1 Kalshi Player Props: Six Contracts That Stick Out
Final Thoughts
Here is the number that makes this structure work, and it is the entire argument for keeping these as three separate tickets: split evenly, you only need ONE of the trio to find pay dirt to turn a profit.
If Harvey is the only one who scores, you are up roughly 32% on the total outlay at tonight's exchange price. Sutton alone, 17%. Even Waddle alone, the shortest price of the three, nets you about 6%. Two of them getting in and you have better than doubled your money. That math is at tonight's prices, though: at the take-it-to ceilings, a Waddle-only hit loses about 6%, which is why the ceilings are ceilings. Notice that the payout ladder runs in the same order as my conviction: the guy I like most is also the guy who pays the most.
That is precisely what a parlay takes away from you. Stitched into one leg, all three have to land or you get nothing. Kept separate, one Denver touchdown by any of the three guys we carved out pays for the whole card.
Touchdown contracts were 43.5% of everything traded on Kalshi's NFL board at my 5:30 p.m. read, with first-scorer adding another 12.5%. That is where the crowd is. It is also where a crowd that spent all week hammering the Denver moneyline (nearly a million contracts traded, and 96% of the 100,000 we tracked were buys) somehow never got around to buying the Denver end zone.
They bought the team and skipped the end zone. Against a secondary this thin, that is the wrong half of the board to be loud on: the touchdowns are where the number is wrong.
Shop all three against your own books before kickoff, and if you want the picks the rest of our experts posted for this game, the free expert picks page has them. OS Pro puts every book's price for these three next to the exchange in real time, with a 7-day free trial and 25% off after it with code LINDY25.
Stay ahead of the markets.
Daily insights and expert picks on Kalshi, Polymarket, and what's moving markets.
Free forever. Unsubscribe anytime.
See you at kickoff.
Lindy
Kalshi prices quoted were read from the exchange at 10:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 13, 2026 and will move before Monday's 8:15 p.m. ET kickoff; confirm the bid and ask before trading. Sportsbook prices are from OddsShopper's live-odds feed at the same read and should be re-checked at the book. Statistics cited are 2025 regular-season figures from Pro Football Reference, ESPN, NFL.com, StatMuse, Sumer Sports, FTN/Football Outsiders and nfelo; 2026 preseason personnel rates are small samples and are labeled as such. The edges here are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Trading involves risk and contracts can settle at zero. If you or someone you know has a gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER.
