Saints at Chiefs Results

Laddie Morse

How sweet it is. First the Kansas City Royals beat the New York Yankees 4 to 2 in New York, then the Kansas City Chiefs beat the New Orleans Saints 26 to 13 here in Arrowhead Stadium. What a night it was for the midwest faithful. Each of our teams basically doubled up the scoring on their opponents. 5-and-0 sounds so nice, doesn’t it. The biggest revelation is that the Chiefs probably played the hardest first five games on anyone’s schedule too.

Maybe what we need to do is stop and pay reverence to Andy Reid and his coaches.

Let’s begin by taking a look at the Chiefs defense.

David Bell has often said that if the defense can hold the opposition to 20 points or less, the Chiefs should win, especially with the offense they have created. And, they should win 99 out of 100 times. Well, the Chiefs mighty D… Steve Spagnuolo’s crew… held the formidable offense of the Saints to only 13 points. Plus, it could have even been less.

When you consider that the Saints powerful rushing attack led by Alvin Kamara was ranked 4th in the league prior to the game, holding him to 26 rushing yards is almost unheard of. What may be even more telling is that Kamara had a 4.5 YPC average coming into the game but could only muster a 2.4 YPC average during this contest.

What may have been the disappointment of the night was that the Chiefs gave up a long TD pass to Rashid Shaheed (0:14).

On the other side of the ball, the Chiefs were able to do what the Saints could not: run it. Kareem Hunt had 102 yards and a rushing TD to go with those stats. Patrick Mahomes added 22 rushing yards and an all important first down late in the game by using his legs (0:17).

Next, we have a strange formation that the Chiefs lined up in. We’ve seen it before with Travis Kelce taking the snaps in the T formation, with Carson Steele to his left and Xavier Worthy to his right, he hands off to Worthy who takes in in for the score with Steele plowing the way (0:11).

Xavier immediately gives the ball to his mother in the stands, as it should be (0:09):

One of the questions many Kingdom fans wanted answering was: who was going to take the injured Rashee Rice’s place? Well, we may have gotten an answer to that one even though Patrick Mahomes said after the game that many players would share that responsibility (0:22).

JuJu Smith-Schuster had 7 catches for 130 yards. Travis Kelce added 70 yards receiving to that total and Kingdom fans couldn’t be happier. JuJu was 7 out of 8 targets and Kelce was 9 out of 10 while Mecole Hardman caught all four of his target adding 33 yards in the process.

I was thinking about giving this award to RB Kareem Hunt but with JuJu Smith-Schuster balling out and filling in a void that needed to be filled, to such a great degree, it has to be him. Here’s JuJu on a 50 yard completion (0:18):

Yiu could say Patrick Mahomes magic is back (after all he had 331 yards passing), or you could say Kareem Hunt isn’t done (after all), but you’d difinitely have to say JuJu Smith-Schuster is the man of the hour.

This one comes from Joshua Brisco and his piece, “JuJu Smith-Schuster’s Big Game Earns Praise from Patrick Mahomes, Andy Reid: ‘He’s a Pro'” for SI.com:

What did you think of the game?

Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne