Chiefs face make or break in Oakland

In other words, a loss effectively means that even if we assume the Chiefs win on the Raiders Bye week, they’ll need to be three games better than the Raiders over a 10-game stretch. Losing this week means that if the Raiders go 5-5 in their last 10 games, the Chiefs would likely have to go at least 8-2 over the same period of time in order to have a decent shot at the playoffs. It is imperative that the Chiefs win this week. Period. How do they do that?

As I’ve said repeatedly, it starts with the offensive playcalling. Specifically? Way fewer screens, way more medium-deep passes, and way, way more runs (like, way more). Reid is going to have Jamaal Charles back at (supposedly) 100 percent this week. He’s already had Spencer Ware. His defense is best when they’re not constantly on the field. This means run early, and run often. It also means taking some shots down the field and, as strange as this may sound, placing some priority behind scoring points, and running plays on the right side of midfield.

They also need to use their defensive pieces more wisely, but a lot of the problems there are due to having so much youth on that side of the ball – they simply don’t know exactly what they have there, yet. As weird as it seems, I’m really not that worried about the defense. A young unit without their best player struggled on the road against a Hall of Fame quarterback. Imagine that.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with all of that, the bottom line is this – the Chiefs absolutely must win on Sunday if they want to make the playoffs. This game is make-or-break.