Kansas City Chiefs vs. Denver Broncos Preview & Prediction | PFF

Kansas City Chiefs vs. Denver Broncos Preview & Prediction | PFF

Chiefs and the Broncos. So, the Chiefs coming off of a loss to the Buffalo Bills right before their bye-week. Now, they’ve had their by-week here, getting a little bit healthier. To press the reset button a little bit, they’re five and four. And if the playoffs were to start this week, Dalton, they wouldn’t be in there. So, obviously, they got to make up some ground here in the standings. And it’s and it could start for them here in Denver. But Denver, one of those teams that not always pretty, but hey, they’re eight and two and they’ll take that any year. You want to start talking about the Broncos or do you want to talk about the Chiefs first? Well, let’s talk about everybody’s current most polarizing quarterback, Bo Knicks, right? It just seems like especially last I thought it was Patrick Mahomes. I thought it was I thought I thought you going You could you could have gone with either of them. It feel it feels like everybody’s just kind of accepted their fate with Mahomes at this point, right? That if you doubt him, he’s going to beat you anyway. And that’s how it works. But with Bo Knicks, especially especially coming off the just the ugly game that last Thursday against the Raiders, got the win, no question, 10 to7, but um it it was ugly offensively on both sides and especially for Denver. There’s been a lot of questions about even at 8-2 is Bon Knicks the guy that can carry them through games like this. Well, the challenge he’s going to have in this game more than any individual player or matchup is dealing with Steve Spagnolo and all the different looks he can throw at you. When you look at Bo Knicks and how he responds when defenses disguise their coverages and when they don’t this year, it’s a pretty stark difference in that. Okay, the Chiefs disguise their coverages, rotating safeties at the fifth highest rate in the NFL, right around 40% this season. When defenses disguise their coverages, Bicks has a 56.5 passing grade with five yards per attempt and two big-time throws, five turnover worthy plays. Not great. Now, when they stay pretty stagnant and they give him the pre- snap looks that he can see pretty easily, they don’t disguise. 73.7 passing grade, yards per attempt, goes a yard and a half up there. 15 big-time throws, six turnover worthy plays. It’s going to come down to big moments and how Steve Spagnolo messes with Bo Nicks’s eyes and if he can find ways to create opportunities downfield through that or is he going to get jittery in the pocket kind of like he did against the Raiders last week and not set his feet, not be able to throw it accurately. I think Knicks versus Spagnolo is the biggest matchup in this game. It’s it’s it’s hard for me to take the Broncos in this game. Um given that the Chiefs know that they’ve got to kick it into high gear, that they’ve had a week off to rest and that they’ve had a week to game plan here. So, it’s it all of that is makes it really tough for me to take the Broncos. On the Chief side of things though, you know, while they were having the by-week, we were talking about the trade deadline. There were all sorts of conversations. Hey, do they trade for Bruce Hall? Do they trade for Chuba Hubard? need to be more dynamic out of the backfield. I talked about a couple of weeks ago how the Chiefs had the lowest, I believe it was the lowest, if not then it was very close to the bottom, lowest amount of missed tackles forced per attempt when rushing the football from just their running backs on early downs. And so they weren’t really getting any of those plus runs, plus yards when it came to those early down situations, putting themselves in more difficult third downs, even sometimes that the great Patrick Mahomes could not overcome. And I think that’s why we’ve seen some offensive struggles for them. They have 14 explosive runs from the running back position, which is tied for dead last in the NFL this year. And that includes all downs, not just early downs. They’re also, you can tell that they they know they don’t have the dynamic ability out of the back field. That’s why, you know, whether it’s Rasheed Rice or Xavier Worthy, they’re tied with the fifth most rushing attempts in the league from their wide receivers. So, they’re trying to get something. They’re trying to manufacture a run game with the speed that they have at wide receiver. To me, Dalton, they’ve got to get Bashard Smith more involved. He is the most dynamic back. I know, you know, Isaiah Pacheco, he wasn’t in the last game that they played. We thought that it was going to be more of Bashard Smith, but it wasn’t. And I wonder if there’s just sort of this rookie, you know, he’s not exactly reading his keys the way that he needs to or maybe it’s pass blocking, you know, just doing what he needs to do from a a rookie and just an inexperienced perspective. But the fact of the matter is he’s by far their more most explosive running back. And if they’re going to compete against the best in the AFC, if they’re going to get back to the Super Bowl, and if they’re going to win another Super Bowl, they have to be more dynamic out of the backfield. Rashard Smith now that the trade deadline has come and gone. He holds the key there. Do we get more of him in this game? I think that is going to be a big tell. We thought that we were going to see that two weeks ago before the by-week and we did not. I wonder if they recognize that this week to say, “Hey, let’s get him now more involved into the game plan because they know that they’re going to need his speed moving forward.” Taking the Chiefs here. Um, for as much as the Broncos have won over the last few weeks, they’ve won ugly and they’ve won ugly against some bad teams. I don’t know how they’re going to win ugly against the Kansas City Chiefs. So, I’m going Chiefs 24, Broncos 17 here. A couple more stats for you on the Chiefs running back. So, one of one of them is you’re going to go, “Oh, yeah.” And one of them I I’ve got a weird bit to this for you that actually ties into another game we have here coming. Um, so the Chiefs running backs are last in the league in yards after contact. That’s not shocking, right? Okay. They are second to last in missed tackles forced total, not just early downs. Take a wild guess at who is last in the league from their running backs in missed tackles forced. Uh, Cleveland Browns. Nope. I I would have never ever said this. This is wild to me. Oh, is it the Bucks? Nope. It is the Baltimore Ravens. Whoa. Ravens running backs have forced 12 missed tackles this year. Garrick Henry only 10. Would have never guessed. I would have and and they have 12. The Chiefs have 19 at the second low. They have by far the fewest. The Ravens are just not missing. They’re not forcing missed tackles in the I was just looking at it now and I was shocked to see that the team in last place there was Baltimore. That was that’s wild to me, man. I would have never thought I would have never expected that. Yeah, that was I I know I’ve just from like looking up other stats over the last couple of weeks, I know the Bucks are pretty low on that list. Um they haven’t had Bucky Irving for a handful of weeks, so that definitely goes into it. I know the Browns are are low on that list as well, and we haven’t talked about them yet, so I thought that was going to be the tell. I never would have guessed the Ravens. Never never would have guessed the Ravens. Your your bottom five are Baltimore, Kansas. These are some weird ones. Wow. Baltimore, Kansas City, Minnesota, the Eagles with Saquon, and then the Jets fifth. Those are your bottom five. That’s crazy that you have the Ravens and the Eagles in the bottom five of that list. That’s that’s just wild to me, especially. Well, we’ll talk about the Eagles here in a second as well. Are you taking the Chiefs in this one? I’m going Chiefs. Mahomes in his career is 13-1 against Denver. I’m not going against that record. 24 to 20. I think Spagnolo wins enough of those battles against Knicks. And I think Mahomes just finds a way cuz if the Chiefs lose this game, they’ll be four games out having lost one game to Denver already. They’d be just out of it. I can’t imagine they could be dead in the water for the AFC West title uh this

PFF’s Dalton Wasserman and Trevor Sikkema preview the matchup between The Kansas City Chiefs and The Denver Broncos.

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