Chiefs and Bengals meet in this week’s best matchup in Cincy, how will it shake out?
The red-hot Cincinnati Bengals are riding high off of another dominating victory against their rival Baltimore Ravens last week. They played an explosive game of football, with three touchdowns of over 50 yards against the Ravens’ secondary, but let’s not get off track here. The Bengals will have to show what they are made of against the hottest team in the NFL, a team that is going for nine straight wins and has had three straight games of scoring over 30 points while giving up less than 19 points per game on defense.
The Chiefs came off of their most dominating win of another playoff team all year by destroying the Steelers 36-10. In this game where Patrick Mahomes was missing his starting right tackle and Travis Kelce and Mahomes only missed four passes and threw for three touchdowns. The Chiefs’ offensive line was also super impressive, the running backs for the Chiefs were able to gash defenses for big gains in recent weeks. The Chiefs have been so impressive on offense, that Mahomes has turned around the narrative on his “off-year,” he’s still having an incredible season. Mahomes will still finish with his second-best totals in yards and touchdowns total. The offense for the Chiefs has been impressive but the defense has possibly been more so.
Coach Spagnuolo has changed this team to a proper defense since the back-breaking loss to the Titans, they are aggressive and have been able to get pressure at will. Moving Chris Jones back inside and acquiring Melvin Ingram have been big moves that have made the Chiefs defense hard to plan for. They like to blitz everybody and are not afraid of giving up a big play to do so, press coverage and all-out blitzes are commonplace for Kansas City.
This is going to be an incredible game or a game where Chiefs fans have to get a cardio-gram after. The Chiefs are coming into this game with some confidence, they have gotten back to where they wanted to be and haven’t lost a game since Halloween. The Chiefs’ defense has turned into one of the best units in all of football, they are physical, hard to scheme for, and they feast off of turnovers.
The Bengals are a feast or famine type of team, they either come out and throw for 400 yards and run for 100 or they put up a bunch of great offensive numbers but turn the ball over. Burrow has impressed everyone after coming off of a catastrophic knee injury last season and he had an all-time performance against the Ravens where he threw for 524 yards and four touchdowns. The Bengals offense also has a great running back in Joe Mixon, who has made the Pro Bowl and is third in the league in rushing. The Bengals offense is hard to defend and the Chiefs defense will have a tough task to take on this explosive unit.
But they are up to the task this week, the Bengals have had problems with playoff teams this season. They have played four teams with playoff aspirations and have a losing record against them; the Browns, Chargers, Niners, and Packers all beat the Bengals. They have had a pretty easy schedule compared to the Chiefs, who played against a team with a winning record during the entire eight-game winning streak.
This is where I have to predict the game, it’s a tough one but I think the Chiefs get the victory in Cincinnati, the Chiefs offense and defense has been clicking for two straight months and I don’t see a reason as to why it’s going to stop this week. The Chiefs have been playing like the team they are supposed to be, the best team in the AFC, and the Bengals are going to play a title-contender for the second time this season.
Prediction: Chiefs 35 – Bengals 24
