Kansas City Chiefs: Panthers are an intriguing team

The 7-1 Kansas City Chiefs host the 3-5 Carolina Panthers in Week 9.

It’s been pretty smooth sailing for the Kansas City Chiefs so far. While they’re heavy favorites over the Carolina Panthers in Week 9, the Panthers are one of those sneaky teams who can upset anyone, but also lose to anyone.

Not many people gave the Panthers any kind of chance at being relevant this year and it made sense as to why. They had moved on from the Cam Newton era, Greg Olsen signed with Seattle, and Luke Kuechely retired before he even turned 30.

Carolina also fired Ron Rivera and hired former Baylor head coach Matt Rhule to help start the rebuild. The Panthers signed Teddy Bridgewater as their quarterback as well, giving them kind of an interesting offense with him and Christian McCaffrey.

While I don’t expect the Chiefs to lose to the Panthers, this is a team that has been pretty crafty this season. They’ve been competitive in pretty much every game they’ve played in so far with their biggest loss coming against the Bucs in Week 2 when they lost 31-17.

The Kansas City Chiefs are the better team, but sometimes that’s not enough.

The Chiefs have shown at times this year that they get bored when playing against lesser opponents. We’ve seen it in match-ups against the Chargers, Patriots, and Raiders and the Chiefs were fortunate that only one of those resulted in a loss. I was worried they wouldn’t take the Jets seriously, but they ended up steamrolling them, which was a good sign.

The Panthers offense is in the bottom ten as far as points per game go, but their defense has improved mightily after a rough start. Carolina’s D is in the middle of the pack when it comes to how many points they allow each week. They struggled against a fiery offense in the Bucs, but that was early in the year before they had really found their footing.

This game could kind of look how the Jets one did, which is that the Panthers might keep it close for the first half, but the Chiefs will break away later on and win pretty handily. That being said, it wouldn’t surprise me if Bridgewater were able to do some damage against the Chiefs secondary or if McCaffrey (in his first game back since Week 2) has a big game.

The Panthers aren’t an intimidating team, but they’re no slouch either. That’s why the Kansas City Chiefs have to throw Carolina’s record out the window and take this game seriously. Otherwise, it could be much closer than we’d all like for it to be.

Carolina has exceeded expectations so far and they’ll be looking for the upset when they march into Arrowhead Stadium this weekend. Hopefully the Chiefs are ready for the challenge.