The Houston Texans woke up the offensive juggernaut in the Kansas City Chiefs

The Offense Must Keep Rolling

While the Chiefs may have had the most memorable performance of the divisional round, you can make a very strong argument that no team is on a more impressive run right now than the Tennessee Titans. After going on the road and knocking off the defending Super Bowl champion New England Patriots in Foxboro, they followed that win up by going on the road again and knocking off the team most people believed was the best team in all the NFL in the Baltimore Ravens.

The Titans are a very tough and very physical football team. They punched the Ravens in the mouth and bullied the soon-to-be MVP Lamar Jackson and the entire Ravens roster for four quarters. That’s the game that the Titans want to play. That’s what they are going to want to do to the Chiefs on Sunday. They want to play an ugly close game where they can hand the ball off to Derrick Henry 30 times. The Chiefs can’t take the bait.

The Chiefs shouldn’t try to go out and prove they can out slug a physical team like the Titans. They need to keep the offense rolling and make the Titans play keep up. If Mahomes plays like he did today and the offense keeps clicking, the Chiefs have a huge advantage. Yes, Derrick Henry is the best running back in the NFL and a huge weapon. Yes, Ryan Tannehill has been fantastic for the Titans this season, but the Titans aren’t built to win a shoot out.

While the Titans defense has looked great in the playoffs, they weren’t an elite unit this season. Here’s where their defense ranked in some key areas in the regular season:

• Points Per Game – 12th
• Yards Per Game – 21st
• Passing Yards Per Game – 24th
• Passing Touchdowns Allowed – 17th
• Completion Percentage Allowed – 23rd

The Chiefs defense was better than the Titans this season in all of those areas. While saying the Titans shut down Tom Brady and Lamar Jackson sounds amazing, the truth is neither of them are near as dangerous as a pure passer as Mahomes. Brady is near the end of his career and didn’t have the elite weapons needed to compensate for his aging skills. Jackson is electric and presents huge problems for defenses, but he simply hadn’t had many games where he had to carry the team by throwing the ball.

Andy Reid’s offense led by Mahomes with weapons like Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill will be a different animal. In the Titans victory over K.C. earlier this season, Mahomes was still able to throw for 446 yards and 3 touchdowns. The problem was settling for field goals on four different drives plus a Damien Williams fumble that was returned for a score. That game was also before the Chiefs major defensive turnaround kicked in.

While Derrick Henry will still be a huge factor in this game, his ability to dominate the game will be greatly hampered if the Chiefs offense can keep putting big numbers on the board. It’s by far the biggest key to Kansas City winning and advancing to the Super Bowl so many of us have been waiting for.

The Houston Texans put a huge scare in the hearts of Chiefs Kingdom on Sunday. While it was certainly not how any of us would have liked for that game to start the end result was the awaking of the Chiefs offensive juggernaut that may just be the key to them winning a Super Bowl. It was an amazing game unlike any I have ever seen. Here’s to hoping the offense keeps rolling into the AFC Championship Game, because if it does, the Super Bowl likely awaits.