Three reasons to be optimistic for KC Chiefs vs Bengals

Defensive line

One of the biggest reasons Chiefs fans should feel good about this game is the Chiefs defensive line vs Bengals offensive line matchup. The Bengals allowed nine sacks versus the Tennessee Titans in the divisional round and were lucky enough to escape with a win, but they won’t be as lucky against the Chiefs if the pass-rush is on it.

The Chiefs defensive line played well against Pittsburgh and took some time to heat up against Buffalo, but overall they’ve shown up this offseason and they dominated the Bengals’ offensive front in the regular-season meeting. The pass-rushing tandem of Chris Jones and Melvin Ingram will be hard to contain. Frank Clark, Tershawn Wharton, and Jarran Reed have been nice complementary pieces and if it means anything to you guys, Khalen Saunders was activated off of IR this week which gives the Chiefs more depth.

I’m not saying the Chiefs will get nine sacks as the Titans did, but if they get even close to that number, the Chiefs are just too good of a team for the Bengals to overcome being that lackluster up front. The mistake the Chiefs made in the first game defensively was that they sacrificed coverage too much to blitz when their pass-rush was doing just fine and there were no adjustments made to contain Ja’Marr Chase.

If they can clean that up and let the pass-rush go to work then you might see the Chiefs defense return to their mid-season form when they were holding teams close to under 20 ppg.