Kansas City Chiefs: Four players to watch vs Buccaneers in Week 12

Who should Kansas City Chiefs fans be keeping an eye on as the defending Super Bowl champions face the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?

The Kansas City Chiefs will hit the road for the second straight week and this time their opponent will be the new-look Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Chiefs are coming off a narrow win over the Raiders on Sunday Night Football while the Bucs are trying to bounce back after losing to the Rams on Monday Night Football.

This matchup pits Patrick Mahomes against Tom Brady for the fourth time in Mahomes’ career (Mahomes is 1-2), but this time Brady is on another team and has a much wider array of weapons at his disposal. Even with all of that in mind, the Bucs have struggled at times this season to put everything together.

Three weeks ago we saw the Bucs get shellacked by the New Orleans Saints in Tampa (on Sunday Night Football no less) and we also saw a lot of their struggles come to light against the Rams on Monday night. Tampa hasn’t played well in primetime and fortunately for them, this game isn’t technically in primetime (though it is the “Game of the Week” on FOX).

Let’s take a look at four Chiefs who need to show up big time in this weekend’s game.

Tyrann Mathieu

While scrolling through Twitter during the Chiefs/Raiders game, a lot of fans were very vocal about how Tyrann Mathieu was having a bad night. He’d had a similar outing against the Raiders earlier in the season, at one point throwing his arms up in the air out of frustration.

While we all know the Honey Badger is a good player and will turn things around, I’ll be curious to see if he and the other Chiefs safeties have a better day against Rob Gronkowski and Cameron Brate than they did against Darren Waller.

Mathieu has been the voice of the defense and as such, has expressed his disappointment with how the defense has been performing recently. Will the Honey Badger step up his game this weekend?