Kansas City Chiefs need to take the New York Jets seriously

The Kansas City Chiefs face the winless New York Jets this weekend, but that’s no reason to slack off.

A large majority of people are going to be picking the Kansas City Chiefs in their survivor pools this weekend, especially if they’re following the “Pick against the Jets” strategy that has been fool proof up to this point. As of now, the Chiefs are massive favorites against the Jets, but games like these are sometimes troubling for Kansas City.

We all know that the Chiefs are far and away the better team than the Jets. They’re 6-1 on the year and have looked mostly good en route to that record. Meanwhile, the Jets are 0-7 and have not looked good during their winless season.

Be that as it may, we’ve seen the Chiefs slack off in games against lesser opponents this season and they can’t do that in Week 8. Yes, the Jets are terrible. They’re probably going to land the No. 1 overall pick in the 2021 NFL Draft (though knowing the Jets, they’ll probably screw that up too). Adam Gase is a terrible head coach. All of these things are true.

While I’m not worried about Kansas City losing to the Jets, I am worried that this team might not give it their all against a team that if they play their absolute best, should smoke the opposition. New York is TERRIBLE and this game is going to be played in Kansas City, giving the Chiefs even more of an edge. The only way they lose this game is if the Chiefs decide to slog through this game like they did against the Chargers and Raiders.

The Kansas City Chiefs should beat the Jets handily, but we’ve seen this year’s team slack off a bit.

Winning the Super Bowl definitely gave this unit confidence, but that almost works against KC at times because they feel like they don’t have to play their hardest each and every week. We saw how sloppy they looked in Week 2 against the Chargers and they were very fortunate to win that game.

We saw again how sluggish the team played in Week 5 when they lost their first game of the season to the Raiders. Las Vegas was the better team that week and they played Kansas City’s own game against them. The Chiefs decided not to show up that week and that was against the Raiders, who could be vying for a playoff spot in a few months.

The Jets won’t be fighting for any kind of playoff spot, but even though the organization might be tanking, the players want to win. If the Chiefs give New York any kind of breathing room, it could be costly. That’s why the Chiefs need to step on the Jets’ throats early on in this game and never let up.

If they’re up by 20+ points in the second half, pull Patrick Mahomes and put in Chad Henne. Pull Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Le’Veon Bell and put DeAndre Washington and Darrel Williams in instead. Those kind of moves are fine, but the Chiefs have to put themselves in a position to do that first. If they mess around and don’t take this week’s game seriously because they read all of the headlines, then this game could be much closer than we think.

And yes, I’ve watched the Jets and know how bad they are, but never underestimate any team. Ever. It could prove costly.