The first game to start the NFL Divisional Round features the sixth-seeded Indianapolis Colts and the first-seeded Kansas City Chiefs. This will be a good game on Saturday. I’m having a hard time deciding whether or not the Colts or Chiefs will advance to the next round. Despite the difficulty of picking the winner, I believe that the Colts have a good chance at handing another team a ticket out of the playoffs.
For the Colts, the main focus defensively should be to not let Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes outscore them. Mahomes is a monster. The likely league MVP threw for an outstanding 5097 yards and 50 touchdowns. Win or lose, Mahomes will get his easy couple of TDs. Even with Indy having the number one ranked scoring defense since Week 7, the Colts have never faced an offense as dynamic as this. I think that no matter how good the Colts’ defense plays, Mahomes will find a way to give it to his elite pass-catchers, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce. Mahomes will carry the Chiefs’ offense and put a lot of points on the board like he has all season.
However, I think that, since Mahomes will have to carry this offense. Due to the lack of a run game and poor defense, his Brett Farve-like playing style will show. This means that Mahomes will try to do too much. I believe that there will be moments where he tries to take big risks, and it will cost the Chiefs.
In his biggest games this season, Mahomes tended to turn the ball over a lot. I expect the Colts’ defense, led by rookie All-Pro linebacker Darius Leonard to force turnovers in key situations. I don’t see the Colts defense being great throughout the game, but I do see them stepping up situationally.
Unlike KC, who have a lot of pressure on them to win this game, Indy and their QB, Andrew Luck, will go into this game with little to no pressure. The Colts have nothing to lose, and they’re rolling. Even though Luck didn’t have a great game, in my opinion, against the Texans last week, he was still able to lead drives down the field by picking apart the bad Texans’ secondary.
I guess the season of giving isn’t over for Luck because he’s been gifted another abysmal secondary to torch. The Chiefs’ defense ranks second-to-last in the league in passing yards allowed per game (275.9 yards). There’s no way this defense is shutting down one of the league’s best QBs. This is especially true if the leader of the Chiefs secondary, S Eric Berry, doesn’t suit up on Saturday.
Trying to stop Luck with a bad secondary is hard. Trying to stop Luck with a bad secondary and not being able to touch him is almost impossible. The Colts now have the best offensive line the football. This unit is something special. They don’t allow defenses to even lay a finger on Luck. This o-line should be hired as the President’s bodyguards because they’re good at protecting their leader.
The big boys up front, led by rookie All-Pro G Quenton Nelson, allowed the fewest sacks in the league in the regular season (18 sacks). They made elite push-rushers like J.J. Watt and Jadeveon Clowney not a factor for most of their wildcard matchup. That game gave me complete faith that the Colts’ o-line can provide that same treatment they give to Watt to Chiefs’ defensive end Chris Jones and company. Thanks to his OL, Luck will have all the time in the world to step up in the pocket and deliver bullets to great offensive weapons like T.Y. Hilton and Eric Ebron.
For each team’s running game, the advantage heavily favorites the Colts. Colts’ RB Marlon Mack is coming into his own this season. While Luck and Leonard receive most of the credit for the Colts’ turnaround season, Mack has had a big part in the team’s success. When Mack has a good game, a load of pressure is taken off Luck, so he doesn’t have to throw 40 or 50 passes.
Running through ginormous holes created by the o-line, Mack got chunk play after chunk play against the Texans who have a top-three rushing defense. Mack carried the ball 24 times for 148 yards and a score. I expect him to have about the same success on the ground because the Chiefs’ run defense is worse than the Texans’. The Chiefs have the sixth-worst run-stopping defense in the league. They allowed 132.1 rushing yards a game in the regular season.
Most likely, the running game for the Chiefs will not be a factor for their offense. They have no real running game since they no longer have their star RB, Kareem Hunt. This will put all of the pressure on offense on Patrick Mahomes.
The Chiefs will struggle to try to get the Colts off the field. Indy will use a good mix of run and pass plays to move the chains against the Chiefs. The Colts are the best team in the league when it comes to converting on third-down (48.6 conversion rate). The Chiefs’ defense isn’t the best when it comes to getting third and fourth-down stops. They have the 25th-best third-down defense (41.5 conversion rate), and they’re tied for the 28th-best fourth-down defense in the league (66.7 conversion rate).
This high rate of conversion that the Chiefs allow will be crucial for them to overcome. It’ll be even more critical if the game is close late. I don’t trust the Chiefs to close tight games.
If the Colts are up late, can the Chiefs not let Marlon Mack waste clock and get chunk plays for a new set of downs? Can the Chiefs’ defense get a third-down stop to get the ball back? For the most part, I believe that they can’t. The Colts run a great four-minute offense. For example, when the Texans tried to start a late comeback against them last week, the Colts ate up plenty of time in the fourth quarter to put that game to an end.
Now, let’s flip the roles. If the Chiefs are up late, can they chew enough clock to secure the dub? I don’t think they can. If the Chiefs are in a position where they have the lead and the ball with a few minutes to go in the game, I don’t think they can keep Indy’s offense off the field. To eat up the clock on offense at the end of the game, you basically need a good RB to move the football forward. The
The Chiefs would have to try to eat clock on the ground against a defense that’s good at not allowing big rushing plays. The Colts allowed an average of 3.9 yards per rushing attempt in the regular season (sixth-best in the league). A team that’s currently lacking depth in the RB department will have trouble trying to eat up the clock on the ground against a team that doesn’t allow that.
An example of the Chiefs trying to close a game by running the football was during their matchup versus the Chargers a month ago. At home and up seven with under four minutes to go, the Chiefs had the ball, and they couldn’t get a first down. The Chiefs tried to chew clock by running the ball, but thanks to the Chargers’ solid rushing defense, the Chiefs could not do so. If the Chiefs find themselves in a similar situation, but this time against the Colts, history will repeat itself.
Surprisingly, Arrowhead stadium hasn’t been a home-field advantage for the Chiefs in the postseason in recent years. You’d think with such a loud fanbase that Arrowhead stadium would be a huge advantage for the Chiefs, right? Well, you’d be wrong. The Chiefs have lost their last six home playoff games. The last time they won a home playoff game was when Joe Montana was their QB. Their last home win was before I was even born. The Colts are red hot. They’ve won ten of their last eleven games, including a road playoff win. The Colts having a dominant road playoff win under their belt is a good sign heading into another road game.
People are going to say that it’s Mahomes’ team now, and it’s a fresh start in KC, however, the people around him have a history of failure in the postseason. On the headset, Chiefs’ HC Andy Reid has a history, with the Chiefs, of having a great team in the regular season that just collapses come playoff time. This history includes blowing a 28-point lead in the third quarter to Luck and the Colts in 2013 and losing to the Tennessee Titans even though KC was one of the best teams in the NFL last season. It’s like Reid swaps out his great playbook with a Burger King menu in the postseason.
We also can’t forget that the QB who Mahomes was the back-up for in his rookie season, Alex Smith, has his fair-share of playoff collapses like Reid. Once again, I understand Mahomes was not a factor in the Chiefs postseason failures in the past, but Mahomes took notes and learned from Smith. It’s like taking notes in math class off of someone who always fails the big tests. Yeah, that person is the wrong guy to get your notes from. A history of not so great postseason trips lowers my trust for the Chiefs even more.
Even though I have criticized Mahomes and the Chiefs throughout this article, there’s still a chance that the Chiefs can prove me wrong. This game can go either way. This game will ultimately be decided by which team can run a better four-minute drill. I think that favors Indy. That’s why if I had to pick a winner for this game my gut tells me that the Colts will face adversity in KC and pull off the upset.
If you don’t agree with my take, feel free to leave a comment below or hit me up on my twitter @StevenPepper38 or Instagram @stevenpepper_.
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