Beating the 2020 Chiefs – Can the 2020 Kansas City Chiefs be beaten? Sure they can. The question is, how to beat them? Let’s take a look at how easy or difficult that might be. Here are the steps.
STEP ONE: Winning the Division
Everyone knows that the first step to winning a championship is making the playoffs, but to do that, you must first win your own division. In the case of the Kansas City Chiefs who look to #RunItBack, that means outdistancing the: Denver Broncos, Los Angeles Chargers, and the Las Vegas Raiders. The Andy Reid led Chiefs have been able to beat up on those teams over the past 5 years and he’s done so with a .900 winning percentage (27-and-3).
STEP TWO: Winning the Offseason
Presumably, Andy Reid has spent a good deal of his recent offseasons studying how to beat his AFC foes and now, it looks like those same foes have been studying Andy Reid and his offense, enough to make moves that are designed to beat him by emulating his own blueprint: acquiring fast players with the ability to stretch the field. So, let’s look at the offseason progress of each AFC team.
The Denver Broncos
Ben Linsey of Pro Football Focus says the Denver Broncos are the most improved team in the AFC West so they sound like a good place to begin. Linsey says of the Broncos:
“The Broncos had a clear plan of attack with this draft: get Drew Lock help on offense. Mission accomplished. Jerry Jeudy gives them the top wide receiver in one of the best wideout classes in recent memory. He is a true No. 1 option in the passing game, joining Courtland Sutton, who also showed he could win in that role last season. K.J. Hamler — a dynamic slot weapon with game-breaking speed — and Albert Okwuegbunam (4.49-second 40-yard dash) only add to the speed of this group.”
That sounds like a good haul. However, we know that rookies don’t usually ball out in year one and… and… Drew Lock is not Patrick Mahomes. Getting all of those puzzle pieces to fit is the trick, isn’t it? Broncos GM, John Elway hasn’t had much luck in that department since Peyton Manning retired 5 years ago. Here’s a look at his draft this year:
While that appears to be a good draft, it may not be enough to make up the five game difference between his Broncos and the Chiefs record in 2019. Here’s a look at the Broncos record in each year since that time:
That’s a .422 winning percentage. It’s surprising to me that John Elway still has a job but, he’s a Denver legend and I guess you get a lot of grace for that standing.
With Jerry Jeudy, Courtland Sutton and KJ Hamler to help stretch the field, it looks like the Broncos have done the best job this offseason of mimicking Andy Reid’s offense. Since imitations are rarely better than the original, we’ll have to wait and see if Elway’s moves have made any difference this year.
The Las Vegas Raiders
Perhaps the most obvious case of personnel impersonation belongs to Jon Gruden and the Las Vegas Raiders. On the face of it, the Raiders first round pick of the speedy Henry Ruggs out of Alabama seemed like a good one. However, Oklahoma’s CeeDee Lamb and Jerry Jeudy from Alabama were also still on the board making the Ruggs selection an obvious attempt to out-Reid Andy Reid. Will it work? With Derek Carr at the QB position, I have strong doubts about that. Plus, Ruggs never had more than 46 receptions in a season in college, so projecting him to #1 status, like a Tyreek Hill, seems silly. Especially in year one. If you recall, Hill had a total of 61 catches for 593 yards in his rookie year and if Ruggs has more than that, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. Here are all of the Raider’s 2020 Draft picks:
That looks like a very good draft to me but their record hasn’t been very good in recent years. Here’s the Raiders record and AFC finish over the past four years:
The Raiders winning percentage over the past four seasons is: .453. The Gruden-led Raiders winning percentage for the past two years is .343 so you have to question if he’s leading them in the right direction. I know, I know, it’s the “two-steps backwards and now take some giant leaps forward” approach. I’m not betting on Vegas.
The Los Angeles Chargers
Playing in a new stadium this season has got to be a plus, right? Only if you have enough fans to drown out the droning noise heard from opposing fans to fill your arena each week. The Chargers have made perhaps the most significant changes this offseason. Well, at least the most significant change: not re-signing long time QB Philip Rivers. He now resides in Indianapolis and is getting ready to give it a go with the Colts, who happen to think he still has “upside.” You heard that right, someone in Indy thinks Philip has upside.. the man who turns 39 years old in December. Now… back to the Bolts. They not only discharged Rivers but let their star RB, Melvin Gordon, sign with an AFC West rival, the Denver Broncos. They’ll be going with Austin Eckler at RB and Tyrod Taylor at QB while their first round draft pick, Justin Herbert, gets his understudy GED in the meantime. Here’s the rest of their draft:
PFF has also predicted the Chargers dismal fate of being projected with the #1 pick in the 2020 draft:
Of course, nothing is written in stone — that’s why they, play the game — but it does appear that the Bolts have taken a step backwards this offseason. Even if Justin Herbert turns out to be Peyton Manning incarnate (although Manning was never a diety in my eyes), but even if he’s very, very good, remember that Manning’s record his first season was 3-and-13. Here’s the Chargers efforts over the past four seasons:
It’s odd that the Chargers have the most regular season wins over the past four years, of any of the Chiefs AFC West foes, but they also look like the team that’s heading in the wrong direction.
STEP THREE: Winning on the Road
Most fans will tell you that there is an advantage to playing at HOME in the NFL. Most pundits accept that fact as well. There are no “locks” in the NFL but according to research from lineups.com, “home teams usually win in between 55 and 60 percent of the time.” Although the Chiefs were only 5-and-3 at HOME in 2019, they were also 7-and-1 on the road, with the game in Mexico City being counted as a ROAD game (it was actually counted as a neutral site game). Teams that can maintain a winning percentage at HOME and then keep on winning on the ROAD, usually make the playoffs… and then who knows what can happen.
The Chiefs lone road loss in 2019 was in week 10, to the Tennessee Titans in Nissan Stadium. Then, the Chiefs didn’t lose after that game making a run all the way through to, and then winning, the Super Bowl (wow, not sure there was ever a sentence I loved typing more… especially the last half, the part where the Chiefs win the Super Bowl).
The only other teams in the NFL to match the Chiefs 7-and-1 ROAD record were: the Baltimore Ravens, the New Orleans Saints, and the San Francisco 49ers. While the Saints and the 49ers remain among the NFC presumptive favorites in 2020, it looks increasingly like the Chiefs and the Ravens will be making it a two-team race for the ages in the AFC. The Ravens and the Chiefs have the last two quarterbacks who won MVP in a QB driven league. They appear to be the two teams who will control the AFC for the next several years.
STEP FOUR: Winning the Margin of Defeat
The Baltimore Raven finished with a 14-and-2 record in 2019 but in their two defeats, they lost by the margins of: 5 and then 15. The Chiefs finished 12-and-4 and in their four defeats, lost by the margins of: 6, 7, 7, and 3. So, the Chiefs were never more than one score away from winning or tying the game. It should be noted that the Ravens beat the Browns later in the season by 31-to-15 after suffering their worst defeat to them earlier in the year. However, those Browns scored 40 points on them in that first game, a team that normally averaged around 20 points per game.
While it looks like teams with the firepower can use the “outscore-the-competition” method to beat the Ravens, that’s just not going to work against the 2020 Chiefs, not with Andy Reid navigating the offense and Steve Spagnuolo’s “put your foot on their throat” defense ascending.
STEP FIVE: Winning the Conference
With the Chiefs drafting a 1st round running back, one who can make their offense better… and who thought that was ever even possible, then selecting the 2nd fastest LB in the draft, one with coverage skills, plus adding a plethora of speedy corners… the rest of the AFC West looks like they’ll be playing for runner-up, again.
The Baltimore Ravens, on the other hand… look like the team with the best shot at beating the Chiefs this season. The two teams meet in week three and that will be a significant game, even though it’s early in the year.
While the Ravens open the season at HOME, it is against the Cleveland Browns, a division foe, and team that gave them trouble in 2019. Assuming they get past the Browns, they travel to meet the Texans, who will have just come off the Chiefs HOME opener… and so Houston will host the Baltimore in their own HOME opener.
Since the Chiefs will be playing in the NFL Season Opener, which takes place on a Thursday evening, Andy Reid will have 10 days to prepare for his next opponent, the Chargers, in Los Angeles. That game will be the Chargers HOME opener in a brand new stadium, but I’d expect that game to be well attended by Chiefs faithful.
If both the Ravens and the Chiefs meet in game three as unbeaten teams, that will be a Monday Night Football game to remember but, it will be played in Baltimore. Although Andy Reid does well in games he has longer to prepare for, one extra day may not matter much since the Chiefs will have a built in travel day.
The winner of this game will have the upper hand throughout the rest of the season since this year, only one team in each conference will get the first round bye in the playoffs. However, whoever wins, will also have the upper hand because if they finish with the same record at season’s end, the team who has the edge in head-to-head competition gets the bye. In other words, the team that wins this game, would have to lose one extra game more than the other did, over the course of the next 13 games (14 weeks) in order to lose that bye.
Winning that game in the 3rd week becomes even more important when you consider that that Raven are said to have one of the weakest schedules this coming season. Mark Sessler at NFL.com says,
“Laced with the NFL’s softest strength of schedule, the Ravens are tasked with just one occurrence of back-to-back road contests. They open the season at home against a Browns team with a newbie coaching staff and finish with manageable home dates against the Jaguars and Giants before visiting the Bengals in Week 17.”
Here’s a look at the Ravens draft picks:
The Ravens had six of the top 106 picks in this draft. If they hit on even half of those picks, it means they’ll be a formidable opponent for the next several years to come. Patrick Queen will help this year at some point. RB Dobbins gives them an excellent backfield along with Mark Ingram. Trading for DL Calais Campbell was excellent and even though he’ll be 34 before the season begins, he’s still a force to be reckoned with.
That’s how you can beat the Chiefs in 2020, and the team with the best possible chance appears to be the Baltimore Ravens. Go Chiefs!
Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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