Categories: Kansas City ChiefsPaul Pulley

The Kansas City Chiefs Will Defeat The Indianapolis Colts

The Kansas City Chiefs Will Defeat

The Indianapolis Colts

by Paul Pulley | January 10, 2019

I really believe the Kansas City Chiefs will defeat the Indianapolis Colts on Saturday afternoon. The primary reason for the victory is I believe the Chiefs will score more points than the Colts! All kidding aside, I realize the Colts have been one of the hottest teams in the league lately, but looking at their schedule, they couldn’t have handpicked a much easier go of it. Especially if their intention was to make their defense look better than it might actually be.

Comparing the Two Team’s Defenses

The Colts have played exactly one (1) team with an offense ranked in the top 10 in the 2018 season, and that was a week 5 matchup with the New England Patriots… a game New England won 38-24. On the other hand… not to make excuses for the Colts… but their top WR, T Y Hilton and RB, Marlon Mack, didn’t play in that game.

In the 11 games after playing New England, the Colts played 9 games versus teams with offenses ranked at best in the 20’s, and most of those in the upper 20’s or worse and yet they still aren’t able to field a top 10 defense. In fact, the Colts passing defense has given up an average of 7.4 yards/play on the season, compared to the Chiefs passing defense that has allowed 7.5 yards/play.

The Colts and Chiefs defenses are almost identical in allowing just over a 40% success rate on 3rd downs.

The big discrepancy in the passing yards between the two teams is that the Chiefs defense, mostly playing with a lead, has had to defend against 90 more passing plays than the Colts defense has over the course of the season, that’s about 16.6% more passing plays. So it seems neither defense is all that adept versus the pass, the Colts passing defense is the next to worst defense in the league, allowing just over a 70% success rate against their opponents passing game, and again, these are opponents primarily without a powerful offense.

On the other hand, the Indianapolis Colts run defense is in fact, a top 10 defense. The Colts defense against the run ranks 8th in yards/game and 6th in average yards/attempt. The Chiefs run defense is the opposite, ranking 27th in yards/game and 31st in yards/attempt.

Facing the Chiefs Offense

With or without WR Sammy Watkins — hopefully with — I believe the Chiefs receivers, primarily WR Tyreek Hill and TE Travis Kelce with QB Patrick Mahomes throwing the ball, will shred the Colts defense. Kelce has been playing lights out recently and while Hill was a little hobbled a few weeks ago, he looked like he was in top form in week 17 and with the extra week to rest, Hill will be ready to fly past the Colts defenders and run them into the ground.

Let’s also not forget about Chris Conley and DeMarcus Robinson: DRob especially is very good at finding holes in zone defenses when Mahomes breaks out of the posket.

The return of RB Spencer Ware should help the ground game and I’m expecting to see a lot of RB Damien Williams catching passes out of the backfield, and with his speed, he should be able to get into the Colts secondary with some regularity.

Undoubtedly, HC Andy Reid, with an extra week to game plan, will have some new offensive plays designed for for this game. Certainly, some of those plays will not work, especially early in the game, but of the plays that do work, I’m sure there’ll be multiple options to each set that will keep the defense of Indianapolis on it’s heels.

With the Colts defense being very similar to the Pittsburgh Steelers defense… Coach Reid might have studied or reviewed the Chiefs week 2 game tape during this Bye Week (a game the Chiefs won 42-37) and will have taken some of the best plays that were successful then and will reuse them with an added twist or two. I’m speculating of course….

The Elephant in the Room

Most of us, well, maybe mostly me, have harped plenty on the Chiefs defense and their… vulnerabilities. I will say that the defense looked improved the last two games since coach Reid forced his defensive coordinator, BS (also known as Bob Sutton), into making some adjustments. Adjustments not only in personnel, but also in style and somewhat in scheme. While these improvements have been, shall we say “slight,” they have been improvements nonetheless.

I’m expecting the Colts to run primary 11 personnel (one RB and one TE), so we should expect the Chiefs defense to respond by playing a lot of nickel, mostly their 2-4-5 defense.

Finally, in summary, in conclusion…

I’m not expecting the Colts to be a pushover, like the Texans were three years ago. Any time an opponent has a QB like Andrew Luck on their team, it will be a good contest. If the Chiefs fail to put points on the scoreboard early and allows Indy to get their running game going, this could turn into a close contest, but I believe the Chiefs will come out strong and score a lot of points. Either way, I still think the Chiefs will prevail.

Paul Pulley — ArrowheadOne

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