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.
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