Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers Preview, Injury Report, Analysis | NFL Week 1

Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers Preview, Injury Report, Analysis | NFL Week 1

Hello, Chiefs Kingdom, and welcome into a very special episode of the Chiefs Report. Today, we’re previewing our season opener against the LA Chargers in Sao Paulo, Brazil. That’s tomorrow night. But before we get into our three keys to victory, which we’re going to run through, I want to hear from you guys. Who do you have in this one? Let me know in the comments. If you’re rolling with our Chiefs, type KC. If you’re rolling with the Chargers, type LAC. Let’s get right into this thing. [Music] All right, Chiefs Kingdom. Like I said off the top, we are talking about our season opener against the Chargers today. It kicks off tomorrow night, and we’ve got three things we’re going to break down for you on the way into our preview. Starting off with an injury report. We’ve got a couple players on the team who are currently injured. Two rookies to discuss. Then we’ve got our keys to victory. I’ve got three major keys to victory for you guys that I want you to keep an eye on throughout the game. And lastly, I need your guys’ help. I need you to subscribe for more Chiefs content. I need you guys to let the bosses know you like what I’m doing here on the channel and block us in. Hit that bell because we’re going to have a ton more content. Maybe we can even get some watch parties going eventually if enough of you guys are getting down with us. So, go ahead and lock us in. Do not miss out on content this season. Subscribe today. There has never been a better day to do it in my opinion. But let’s go ahead and get into this Chief’s injury report. Starting with Jaylen Royals and Omar Norman Lot. The only two guys on the Chiefs injury report I should say. And if you saw our video yesterday, you’re kind of already familiar with these situations. Jaylen Royals is something we’ve been monitoring over the last few weeks. He’s dealing with knee tendinitis. It’s kept him out of practice. It’s something Andy Reid has said he was hoping he would be able to get back to week one barring a setback, but unfortunately setback has arrived. So, no Jaylen Royals in week one. He did not travel with the team to Brazil. Omar Norman Lot on the other hand, our second round draft pick out of Tennessee, did travel with the team to Brazil, but at this point he’s still questionable with an ankle injury that’s had him limited throughout training camp. He’s been dealing with that. Steve Spagnolo said he’s just been struggling to get ramped up. He was dealing he was performing quite well during the preeason and in some sections of training camp practice, but once that injury hit, it’s just been really hard for him to get ramped back up. So, not expecting to see him in week one. On the Chargers end of things, we do have an injury to note for them, and it’s one that’s pretty significant in my opinion. Elijah Molden is currently questionable to suit up. He’s dealing with a knee injury of his own. And if you’re not familiar with Elijah Molden, he had a bit of a breakout year in LA last year, signing a free agency contract with them, coming over from the Tennessee Titans, and playing his best season so far. So, if they’re down Elijah Molden, I think that plays right into our hands. We’ll get into our need to have a receiver step up later in the video when we talk about keys to victory, but that’s definitely going to be helpful if they’re missing one of their key corners. Speaking of getting into those keys to victory, let’s go ahead and do that right now. Let’s not waste any more time. And the first one is stopping the run. Something we all know about Jim Harbaugh teams is that they want to beat you on the ground. They want to establish the run, dominate you in the trenches, and Omaran Hampton is going to be their key to doing that. Naji Harris is still I’m I’m going to laugh here and I’m sorry, Naji. It’s It’s not funny, but he did have an unfortunate incident this off season uh with a firework over Fourth of July. So, I really expect them to be heavily leaning on Omaron Hampton. And we know, like I said, Harbaugh’s going to try to establish the run. If you look at his first year in LA, their splits and wins and losses are dramatic. If they can establish the run, if they can get towards that 130 rushing yards per game, they’re probably going to win. But if you can hold them on the ground, if you can make their offense onedimensional, force Justin Herbert to throw the ball more than he wants to, you can beat the Chargers. We saw that time and time again last season, especially in the postseason against the Houston Texans, who I want to say limited them to 50 rushing yards in that game, which is just a phenomenal performance against a team that really wants to go out and establish the run. So, I think that is a huge key for the Chiefs. But you got to look at our defensive line. The depth chart in that room is very interesting. This year we’ve had a lot of reshuffleling, bringing in Mike or bringing Derek Naughty, excuse me, and letting go of Mike Panell. So, I need these guys to step up. This is going to be an interesting test, especially without Omar Norman Lot in the room. Jerry Tillery, Chris Jones, Derek Naughty, and George Caroftus are really going to have to clamp down on this Chargers run game. But if you’ve been keeping an eye on Chargers news lately, there is a major factor for them that I think is going to make it easier for us to establish the run. And that’s that they’re missing Rashan Slater. If you’re not familiar with Rashawn Slater, he is one of the best left tackles in the NFL. And he is set to miss the entire season with a torn patellar tendon. That is a enormous loss for LA. Honestly, it’s kind of hard to overstate what a loss this is for LA. Jim Harbaugh is the type of coach that literally refers to his offensive lineman as weapons, and they don’t have a better weapon in that group than Rashawn Slater. It’s forced them to really reshuffle things along the offensive line here. You can see on screen now, they’ve kicked Joe Alt, who played right tackle last season, over to the left side of the line. So, that’s going to be an interesting test for him. He has not played left tackle since his time at Notre Dame. But what I really think is an opportunity for Kansas City is the right side of that line, specifically Trey Pipkins III. He is the weak link in this offensive line in my opinion. The piece that the Chiefs have to exploit. If you look at his splits against Rashan Slater last season, he’s just not anywhere near as good. These these are two different worlds of performance where Rashawn Slater is elite, Trey Pipkins is a liability on the offensive line and we’ve seen that time and time again throughout his career, whether he’s been playing guard, which he did last season, or tackle, which he’s done at times prior to them drafting Joe Alt. So, we are going to get into even more keys to victory, a player that I think the Chiefs absolutely have to shut down. But before we do that, we’ve got to get into a shout out to prize picks. We’re gonna get back to our keys to victory in just one second, but first, I want to show some love to today’s sponsor, prize picks. You and I make decisions every day, but on prize picks, being right can get you paid. Don’t miss any of the excitement this season on Prize Pick where it’s good to be right. And when you download the Prize Pix app today and use code CLNS, you’ll get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. 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Download the Price Pix app today and use code CLNS to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That’s code CLNS to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup prize picks where it’s good to be right. So key number two, now that we’re back into it, is to take away Lad McConi. If you watched any Chargers football last season, which you should have watched at least two games of Chargers football, the games in which they played the Chiefs, you know how good Lad is and you know how important he is to this offense. He last season as a rookie, remember, 124 targets, 91 receptions, 1300 yards, 14 yards, almost 15 per catch, and eight touchdowns. He is by far the best target that they have, the best weapon available for Keenan or excuse me for Justin Herbert. So, we need to force him to go to other options. And when you look at the rest of the options that are available to him, they’re not good. Quinton Johnston throughout his career has had drop issues. Keenan Allen is over the hill. Trey Harris and Darius Davis in or excuse me, and Keandre Lambert Smith are both rookies. None of these options are proven at this point in their careers other than Lad McConi. So focusing on taking him away, using Trent McDuffy to shadow him throughout this game now that we have Christian Fulton in the active roster to play that outside spot to lock down Johnston or Keenan Allen. We can let Trent McDuffy just go at Lad McC. And that is exactly what I want to see. I want to see McDuffy shadow him. I want to see him shut him down. Let’s get into our third and final take or excuse me, key to victory and that is getting a receiver to step up. This is something we’ve talked about a couple times when I’ve been on this channel is that the receiver room for Kansas City is going to be a massive key this year. When you look at the dep chart, it’s pretty rough right now. We’ve got Rashi Rice suspended. He is easily our best receiver. We’ve got Jaylen Royals, a rookie who we talked about earlier in the video, injured right now. He’s not going to play in Brazil. So that opens up opportunities in my opinion for three guys in particular and those three guys are Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown, and Taekquin Thornton. Xavier Worthy is the number one guy I want to highlight though. I’ve said it before, if the Chiefs are going to get through Rasheed Rich’s absence se successfully, it’s going to be because Xavier Worthy steps up. But I want to hear from you guys right now. Let me know who do you think needs to be the number one Chiefs receiver to step up. Are you with me? Is it Xavier Worthy or is it somebody else that I’ve mentioned? Let us know down in the comments. Let’s get into some more discussion of why I think Xavier Worthy needs to be that guy who steps up, though. When you look at his season last year as a first round draft pick, he was great. 98 targets, 59 receptions, over 600 yards, over 700 total yards of offense, and nine total touchdowns. we were able to get him involved in a number of different ways both as a receiver and a bit of a gadget player as well taking some jet sweeps and he was super effective in that role but to make or but if the Chiefs are going to get through the absence of Rasheed Rice he needs to go from being gadget type receiver too to being a true receiver number one he needs to be a reliable consistent option for Patrick Mahomes in this offense but if he can’t be the guy that steps up there are some other options Number two in my opinion is Hollywood Brown. We brought him in last year as a free agent and he just didn’t really ever get going due to injuries. And throughout his career, over the last few seasons, those have been a factor for him. He’s only played 14 games over the last four years in two separate times. And in the other two seasons, he’s played a combined 14 games, just two in the regular season last year before he really got going in the postseason. But he’s 100% healthy now. And when you look back to that 2021 season where he was mostly healthy, had an elite quarterback like he’s got this year and Patrick Mahomes had Lamar Jackson that season. That was a thousand yard season from him. 91 receptions and six touchdowns. And he’s still just 28 years old. And hey, maybe I’m a little biased. I’m an Oklahoma Sooners fan, but I would love to see Hollywood be a major factor in this offense this season throughout the regular season if he can stay fully healthy. One last guy that I think really has an opportunity, and we talked about him in my video yesterday, Taquan Thornton. He was a very interesting pickup for Kansas City this off season. Somebody that I’ve followed throughout his career from Baylor to New England where he was expected to step up into that deep threat role and it never really worked out for him with the Patriots. But can we blame him? Things with the Patriots in their passing game over the last few seasons have been far from consistent. Going from M. Jones to Drake May. Josh Dobs was getting snaps at some points over there. But I think Taekquin Thornton has an opportunity now in Kansas City with an elite quarterback like we talked about with Hollywood Brown in Patrick Mahomes to step up and be that deep threat. We’ve looked for a guy to step up into that role going through options after Tyreek Hill. Think about Micole Hardman. Think about Sky Moore. Could Taquon Thornton finally be that guy who steps into that role when you look at him as a physical build? Back to the scouting report. 62 185 with speed to take the top off. He ran a I want to say sub4340 back at the combine. This is a elite athlete who I think really should have an opportunity in this offense, but if he can’t cash it tomorrow night, probably not going to see a ton more. So, very interesting. We will see what Taekquin Thornton and the rest of the Chiefs are able to do tomorrow night in the season opener. You guys let me know if you think the Chiefs are going to win. Drop KC in the comments. Drop LAC in the comments if you’re rolling with the Chargers. And make sure you like this video and subscribe. Like I said off the top, I’m trying to make this a permanent part of what I do here at Chat Sports. So, let me know in the comments if if I if you’re enjoying what I’m doing here. And subscribe and hit that notification bell to lock us in. [Music]

Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers Week 1 preview in today’s episode of Chiefs Report by Chat Sports. Visit https://prizepicks.onelink.me/LME0/CLNS and use code CLNS and get $50 in lineups when you play your first $5 lineup! Host Jackson Durham breaks down the Chiefs Week 1 injury report featuring Jalen Royals and Omarr Norman-Lott and Kansas City’s keys to victory over the Chargers including stopping the run and getting a WR, like Xavier Worthy or Tyquan Thornton to step up. For more Chiefs news and rumors subscribe to the Chiefs Report today! https://www.youtube.com/chiefstv?sub_confirmation=1

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Who needs to step up in the Chiefs WR room on Friday?

Kansas City Chiefs vs. Los Angeles Chargers Injury Report:
– Jalen Royals – Out (Knee)
– Omarr Norman-Lott – Questionable (Ankle)
– Elijah Molden – Questionable (Knee)

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Xavier Worthy (2024 stats)
– TGT: 98
– REC: 59
– YDS: 638
– CAR/RUSH YDS: 20/104
– TOT TD: 9

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2024 Chiefs Passing Stats Leaders:
Patrick Mahomes: 67.5 completion percentage, 3,928 yards, 26 touchdowns, 11 interceptions

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– Kansas City Chiefs Just Got BAD NEWS: Trent McDuffie Contract Update | Chiefs Injury News – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrRAp6GasRw
– Rashee Rice Replacements: Chiefs Free Agent Targets + Xavier Worthy STEPPING UP? Chiefs Rumors – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq2wPpfa3-Y
– 🚨FULL REACTION 🚨 Rashee Rice Suspension OFFICIAL + Kansas City Chiefs 53-Man Roster RELEASED – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KksbbgH6t_U

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