Tyreek Hill And Travis Kelce Are Healthy Again
Over the last month of the season, the Chiefs were getting by with both Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill at less than 100%. Both players battled Covid-19 and other bumps and bruises. While Hill never missed a game, his nagging injuries and less than 100% conditioning after coming back from Covid limited both his snap count and what he could do when he was on the field. Kelce missed the first Steelers game with Covid and has also had times this season where he clearly looked banged up to the point that he couldn’t move as well as he typically does.
While no player is pain-free at this point of the season, both Hill and Kelce seemed to be back to their regular selves in this game. Kelce felt spry enough to take a pass 48 yards to the house right before halftime. In vintage Travis fashion, he juked the corner covering him to get open and then just outran everyone down the sideline for the score. That big play helped him end the game over 100 yards in a postseason game for the 7th time in his career. That’s one off the NFL record held by Jerry Rice.
Meanwhile, Tyreek Hill was finally able to show off his elite separation in the third quarter when he burnt his corner for a 31-yard deep touchdown catch. While Hill had done some damage in more of a short-to-intermediate range recently, it was the first time we’ve seen him beat someone over the top in a while (partially due to how defenses are playing him). He also showed no signs of the heel issue from last week. At one point he even did a flip in the endzone after he thought he scored on a shovel pass.
While Patrick Mahomes is THE most important player on the Chiefs, if they are going to win another Super Bowl (or even just beat the Bills next week) he is going to need his two elite weapons to truly play like elite players. Coming into this game I had some worries about if they were physically where they needed to be, but this game answered those concerns for me and that is huge going forward in the playoffs.
That having been said, they weren’t the only contributors in the passing game.