Heavenly Peace: Chiefs Should Get Some Rest
The AFC West title could be on the line Sunday. A Chiefs win and a Raiders loss would give Chiefs their first division win since 2005. Chiefs will no doubt be tempted to pull out all the stops to win, but they shouldn‘t. Division titles are all too often the booby prizes’ of playoff teams. I believe that Chiefs should rest some of their best starters against San Diego and risk losing the game. Here’s why:
A Bye Week Helps
The biggest reason we want the Chiefs to win the division is so they can get a bye week. A bye week gives you a chance to get some of your hurt and tired players closer to 100%. If it’s really important to rest your starters, why gamble on the possibility of a bye week when you can just give them the week off and get the same result? Certainly having an extra week to plan and home-field advantage helps, but does it really help enough that you would want to risk a gimpy Justin Houston, or Spencer Ware’s bruised ribs against the Chargers on the off chance that Denver can handle a Raiders team with a solid defense and great run game?
Injury Risks
Imagine rolling into the playoffs without Travis Kelcie or Tyreek Hill. How good do you feel about the Chiefs chances? Chiefs don’t have to take these guys completely out of the game, but limiting their workload to avoid an untimely injury would be very smart. Raiders lost Carr playing a bad Colt’s team, now their fans can’t even get excited about going to the playoffs for the first time in forever.
The biggest reason to rest starters against the Chargers though, is that Chiefs can get away with it. I’m not saying go to completely backups, but it’s worth noting, Chiefs came darn close (thanks refs!) to beating SD with depth guys before. Chargers are a good team, but they have more talent on IR than on the field. Chiefs have one of the deepest rosters in the NFL and a fair number of their depth players are outright better than Charger’s starters (at least right now). Who knows? If Chiefs decide to rest starters they might even discover a rookie who’s better than they thought like Terrence Mitchell. Maybe a guy like DeMarcus Robinson could finally see some snaps. Then again, I may be drunk with Kool-Aide and Chiefs would lose badly to the Chargers without their stars. Whatever Andy Reid does, I’ll be fine with, probably, maybe, I hope so. What would you do?
Bonus Thought
It sounds absurd to say it, and it’s far too early, but Peyton Manning pretty much held the Broncos together. Without him, Denver’s locker room is becoming toxic. Elway hasn’t had much luck low-balling free agents once Manning left and it probably gets worse next year. Who wants to play on that offense? Sanders and Thomas sure don’t. Maybe that’s why they drop so many passes these days. The shocking thing is that Denver actually has an ok QB in Simien, but will probably end up going to Paxton Lynch and fourth place in the AFC West next year, because their Oline is garbage is Lynch can run. Gary Kubiak is not a great head coach, but since he’s good buddies with Elway, it’s going to take a season or two before they let him go. If we didn’t have to deal with an up and coming Raiders team, I would say Chiefs are locks to win the division the next two years.
And those are my Sizzling Takes. How about yours?
