Could KC Be Beaten By Broncos' Beefy Defense?

After a Week 5 game that I'd rather forget, our Kansas City Chiefs bounced back with a nine-point victory over the playoff-bound Buffalo Bills last week. A well-known rival now stands in the way of another KC winning streak. Do the Denver Broncos have a real chance at an upset?

Despite starting the day with a losing record, a closer look at Denver's schedule reveals some key ingredients of a successful football team. The Broncos faced off with two other AFC championship contenders in the Tennessee Titans and Pittsburgh Steelers to start this season, and Denver lost both games by a combined total of seven points. It doesn't much matter if Drew Lock can only put up 18 points if the Broncos defense can hold a Cam Newton-led Pats offense to just 12. The old "bend, don't break" cliche seems apt for the Broncos defense; while they fail to crack the top ten in stopping the pass or the run, Denver's 22 points allowed per game is still the 11th-lowest average in the NFL.

That should conjure in me some form of concern, even worry. It does not. Denver's offense is to blame for that. Patrick Mahomes gets some credit too, but that practically goes without saying at this point.

Only the Washington Football Team and the two New York football teams average fewer points per game than Denver. If I didn't fear Josh Allen last week, I can't pretend to fear Drew Lock and the Broncos today. It's worth noting that Denver has faced off against good or great defenses every week they didn't play the Jets this year. However, the Chiefs defense looks legit on paper now, too. Kansas City's opponents average only 21.2 points per game - 0.8 points fewer than Denver's opponents.

Even the Broncos' strengths won't stop Patrick from scoring at least enough to overcome Drew Lock and a Denver offense that's still struggling to find their footing. I expect something like a 30-20 win to keep Chiefs Kingdom calm and content.

Mahomes Bound to Bounce Back Facing Bad Bills Pass Defense

Today, we will witness an intriguing meeting of two legit AFC champ candidates who both hope to bounce back from recent stinkers. Our Kansas City Chiefs stunned me and most of the football world by losing to the Las Vegas Raiders last week. Will they rebound this afternoon, and will Patrick Mahomes outperform the polarizing QB standing in KC's way? 

Josh Allen played like an MVP candidate through the first four weeks of this season, then looked bad in his last game when the Tennessee Titans blew his Bills out 42-16. I like Allen. His proven ability to learn and grow can't be discounted. The Bills are presumably playoff-bound and he's just as much the reason why as any other player in Buffalo. That's enough to bring many in the media to think Allen will achieve elite status at some point, and perhaps that take is warranted. However, nobody thinks Josh Allen is Patrick Mahomes. 

Patrick clearly had one of his most forgettable games last week amidst a memorable stretch of historically unprecedented success. Mahomes arguably never played a worse second half in his entire career. Still, if you just compare the difference between the reaction to these two quarterbacks playing poorly in their last game, you can see the clear difference in status right now. Allen struggled, and everyone now wonders which version of him is to be expected every Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday, or Tuesday, or whenever.) Mahomes struggled, practically everyone was surprised by it, and practically nobody wonders whether Patrick will return to his typical elite form. 

We all know Mahomes' performance wasn't up to his own standards last week, but it's important to remember the same for the strategy employed by the Chiefs' head coach. I expect Andy Reid to acknowledge a lack of balance in last week's offensive gameplan as part of the reason the Chiefs were stunned by the Las Vegas Raiders. This means Clyde Edwards-Helaire should have a more significant impact this week, but that's not to say that Patrick won't be chuckin' it today. Buffalo's defense ranks in the bottom-10 in stopping the pass, and we know the Chiefs offense comes into this game with something to prove.

Kansas City's defense struggled in its own right recently, but their key weakpoints aren't facing a particularly bad matchup today. Only the Houston Texans allow more rushing yards per game than the Chiefs at the time of this writing, but only five teams in football average fewer yards on the ground per game than the Bills. It's time for KC to get back to their winning ways with a convincing, if not hard-fought victory over a solid squad. I'm going with a 42-34 win for a Super Bowl-winning Chiefs team that will be very well-prepared to silence doubters worldwide.

Chiefs Ready to Rock Raiders' Shaky Defense

Vegas think's we'll beat Vegas in comfortable fashion today. To be more clear, the Vegas oddsmakers currently favor our Kansas City Chiefs by 10.5-11 points against the freshly relocated Las Vegas Raiders today. However, that shaky meeting with New England last week conjured some real concern in Chiefs fans. A legit QB with a bunch of haters to prove wrong and a Wild Card spot to fight for should incite more fear than every QB on the Pats' roster not named Newton combined. Derek Carr will provide us a proper test today, as his strengths align perfectly with the weaknesses of Kansas City's defense. Unfortunately for the team that used to represent the Chiefs' arch-nemesis, the Raiders' inadequacies elsewhere on the depth chart suggest that KC's dominance is bound to continue.

The Raiders seem poised to claim the #2 spot in this division after playing respectably against tough competition in the first four weeks of the season. They beat a Carolina Panthers club with a healthy Christian McCaffrey in Week 1, then surprised many with a win over the New Orleans Saints in Week 2. They've lost two straight since then, first to the Pats and last week to the impressive Buffalo Bills, so you could still say they've only lost to teams that are probably playoff-bound.

Carr and Patrick Mahomes exceled through the first quarter of the season with a surprisingly short passing attack. Carr and Mahomes both have an average of yards per passing attempt that ranks in the bottom five of the league amongst healthy starters, yet they both have Passer Ratings that rank in the top six. The Raiders may find success with this style against an underwhelming core of KC linebackers, especially with Carr's growing reliance on TE Darren Waller. They may stretch the field with that successful short passing attack enough to take some shots with speedster rookie wide-out Henry Ruggs III, a guy I was totally in love with during this year's draft. He's listed as questionable today, but whether he's effective or not, Carr and Company match up well against an injury-riddled KC secondary and an underperforming core of linebackers.

All that may work pretty well, but our man Mahomes will have plenty of opportunity for success today, too. Vegas gives up a bunch of yards through the air and on the ground, and their pass rush is one of the worst in football. Patrick Mahomes always plays well against the Raiders, and Derek Carr always plays poorly at Arrowhead. Whatever advantage Las Vegas has against KC's defense pales in comparison to how the Chiefs stretch the field with speed and exploit mismatches with Travis Kelce. Last week's win was relatively ugly for the Chiefs, but at least it gives this dangerous offense something to prove this week. I expect Kansas City to enjoy a comfy 38-24 victory, since apparently enjoying boring victories over the Raiders is now a city-wide tradition as common as barbeque and complaining about the weather.

Patriots Provide KC A Key Test Despite Cam Newton's Absence

Our Kansas City Chiefs overcame their presumed competition for the conference crown last week with relative ease, and tonight they face off against a ghost of their peculiar past. The New England Patriots won't be fully operational today without Cam Newton leading the offense, but could Bill Belichick and a defense that still commands respect stun the football world with an upset over our Chiefs? If so, how?

KC could increase New England's odds and increase the heart-rates of fans like me by stumbling out of the gates, and they've been susceptible to that lately. After finishing in the top ten in 1st quarter scoring during their championship campaign, the Chiefs entered Week 4 ranking second-to-last in the NFL with 2.2 first quarter points per game this season. New England's defense has allowed only 3.3 points to opponents in the 1st quarter this season, and that can only be bested by six defenses in football.

A slow start for KC could save the Pats from an early slaughter, and their defenses excels at disrupting opponents' short-to-intermediate passing game. It's almost like Bill looked at what his own team accomplishes with the same offensive strategy and said, "don't let that happen to my defense." Today will provide us with a strength-on-strength matchup featuring perhaps the two best football minds in the game. The intrigue of such a meeting of the minds makes me even more bummed that we don't get to see how this new Pats squad looks with Cam healthy.

Stats indicate that Patrick Mahomes is averaging shorter, quicker passes this season, which may sound like a let-down to some fans in the Kingdom. However, there's a big, beautiful reason why football savant Andy Reid utilized this change in strategy, and his multi-faceted reasoning further exemplifies his unique savvy.

First, it's important to note that this short-pass strategy gives defenses the old Muhammad Ali "okey-doke" before delivering some key knockouts by landing long-pass haymakers, kinda like how KC just victimized the highly-touted Baltimore Ravens. It also makes the Chiefs' newest weapon more unpredictable, as Clyde Edwards-Hellaire could damage a defense equally via run or reception. Clyde is key to this change because he completes Kansas City's total coverage of the field with their offense. Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce already stretch opposing defenses to their limits, but now the new #25 is here to turn "spread the field" into a major understatement. If he proves to be worthy of a first-round pick, it's gonna feel like cheating.

I don't think the Pats can stop the Chiefs when Cam is healthy, and part of me hopes that's some juicy foreshadowing, but that means my prediction for today isn't in doubt. I think our Chiefs win a comfy 34-17 game while I imagine Bill wringing his hands like a comic book villain and calculating his strategy for next time...