Ahead of their matchup against the Pittsburgh Steelers, the Kansas City Chiefs are getting ready for their first wild card game since the Patrick Mahomes era began.
With the Raiders defeating the Chargers on Sunday night, coupled with the Steelers’ dramatic overtime win over the Ravens and the Jaguars beating the Colts, the Steelers have clinched a playoff berth after a very hectic season.
KC has clinched the No. 2 seed in the AFC conference and is also ready to go. And it will be a rematch of Steelers – Chiefs at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium! In week 16, Kansas City dominated their game against Pittsburgh winning 36 to 10. Patrick Mahomes was 23-of-30 for 258 passing yards and three touchdowns back then. The defense forced three turnovers and sacked Ben Roethlisberger twice during the game.
However, it will be a big mistake to underestimate the Pennsylvanian team. Pittsburgh’s offense has been struggling, but TJ Watt is still a danger, and Pittsburgh got pretty lucky this season!
“These guys are playing like a number one seed right now,” said Coach Andy Reid. “We’ve got to make sure we’re ready for that. I think they’re playing well together. I think they’re doing a nice job with that. Ben’s (Roethlisberger) playing well. The runner’s running well. The offensive line’s doing a nice job, and Pittsburgh’s always good on that defensive side. They fly around. They’ve got some all-star players on that side of the ball that do really well. Their wide receivers are very good too on the offensive side. They’re a good football team. They’re well-coached and the organization with the Rooney family is strong. It’s been strong for so many years.”
So the whole team will prepare accurately for this very different Steelers team, a new challenge for the Chiefs this weekend.
Safety Tyrann Mathieu declared: “Obviously, a couple of weeks ago the game didn’t go the way that they wanted it to. As a team, we were able to get off to a fast start. I don’t think we’re necessarily expecting it to be that kind of a ball game. Just watching these guys the last couple of weeks, even before we played them a couple of weeks ago, this was a big fourth quarter, second-half team. So, for us, coming into this game, we understand it’s going to be a four-quarter game, possibly could be more, and then you’re dealing with a quarterback that really has all the experience in the world. He’s won two championships, he’s been to the playoffs a bunch, and then he has some great talent around him as well. So, we’ve got our work cut out for us. I think for us, it’s all about how we start the game and then how we finish Sunday.”
Containing TJ Watt will be key also this Sunday, to avoid any issues with Patrick Mahomes. Sacking the Chiefs’ young quarterback would break any offensive strategy from Kansas city and slow them down drastically.
However, the Kansas City team also talked about Ray-Ray McCloud, the Steelers punt and kick returner who is having a great time. He has gotten better every game and he is very hard to tackle, so the special team needs to be very careful this weekend.
It seems like the Steelers of the wild card game is much more different from the team the Chiefs handled in week 16, and the recent history in the playoffs against Pittsburgh is not very positive, so it would be better not to take it lightly.
