Kansas City Chiefs: Four keys to beating the Pittsburgh Steelers

The Kansas City Chiefs will reap the rewards of their 12-4 division title winning season this coming Sunday when they host a divisional playoff game at Arrowhead Stadium.

After the wild card games this past weekend we now know that their opponent will be the Pittsburgh Steelers. While this isn’t a surprise given that they were heavy favorites against the Miami Dolphins, it is an opponent that many fans were hoping to avoid. The Steelers are red hot having won eight straight games including their 30-12 shellacking of the Dolphins on Sunday. Y

ou add to that the fact that the Steelers handed the Chiefs their worst loss of the season when they drubbed KC 43-14 in Week 4 and its not hard to understand why many will be picking the Steelers to advance despite KC’s home field advantage. While it may not be easy, I do still believe the Chiefs can beat the Steelers.

There are four key things that the Chiefs must do if they want to beat Pittsburgh and advance to the AFC Championship Game. I almost added a fifth key of not turning the ball over, but honestly I think that is a key to winning any game in the NFL and even more so in the playoffs. You could also add not shooting themselves in the foot with penalties but again I think that also kind of goes without saying.

The four keys that I did go with are ones that I think are very specific to this 2016 Chiefs team. I don’t think any of them are individually that unrealistic, but it may take KC achieving all four of these keys in order to come out on top of one of the best teams in the NFL right now.

I thought about trying to rank these four keys in order of importance, but ultimately I decided they’re all essential. So in no particular order, let’s get started with…..