Five reasons Kansas City Chiefs will beat Titans in AFC Championship
By Chris Clark
Injuries and Personnel
Week ten was Mahomes’ first game back after the knee injury and it was easy to be skeptical about how he’d perform. Unfortunately, his big return performance got lost in the shuffle of the loss.
His 446 yards passing and three touchdowns would make even the great quarterbacks envious. Even with such an incredible performance, it does make you wonder if Mahomes did leave any plays on the field with the uncertainties that come with returning from injury.
Chiefs’ defensive end Frank Clark was also returning from injury in this game, after battling a pinched nerve in his neck for the first half of the season. Unbeknownst to Chiefs fans, this is why Clark had underperformed for most of the season.
At that point in the season, Clark had only tallied three sacks in seven games and had even missed two games altogether due to the injury. In his return game in Week 10, it’s likely that Clark was still limited.
The Chiefs also were short two key players in that game – left tackle Eric Fisher and right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardiff. The absence of Fisher, especially, would have been a limiting factor in this game. Mahomes, who has great pocket awareness and is elusive, was sacked twice in this game. Thankfully, both of these players are healthy and are set for this week’s rematch. The offensive line looks the best it’s looked all year, with Mahomes not getting sacked once in last week’s Divisional Round match-up against the Texans.
What was one of the bigger coaching blunders of the season, the Chiefs decided to make interior defensive lineman Mike Pennel inactive for that game in Nashville. Pennel is a meaty 330 pound lineman who is great at stuffing the run.
Why the Chiefs would allow one of their better run stuffers to be inactive against the Titans’ Derrick Henry remains a mystery. This game will certainly be different with Pennel in there helping to stop the big, powerful running back.