The Kansas City Chiefs didn’t intend to spend too much time away from football on their bye week. They had virtual team meetings on Monday and Tuesday, but today they return to practice for the first time ahead of the divisional round of the playoffs.
Members of the coaching staff like Joe Bleymaier, Alex Whittingham and Terry Bradden have been working on the advance scouting, checking out the four possible opponents that the Chiefs could possibly face in the divisional round. Kansas City already faced the Baltimore Ravens earlier this year, so they’ll turn their attention to the three other possible opponents.
“It’s a strong field out there in the AFC, and so we look forward to that challenge,” Chiefs HC Andy Reid said on Monday. “Whatever one of the four teams that it’s kind of narrowed down to—we play the last seed that is seeded in the AFC, so there are about four teams there that we would need to be ready for. We’ve already kind of started that process. We had an idea of that going into this week so we had a little bit of a jump start on it, but we’ll go ahead and prepare ourselves. I mean, you look at the seventh seed in Indianapolis and that’s a good football team, so then you go right down the list and they’re all very productive and very strong.”
The Chiefs won’t know who they’ll face until the conclusion of the games on Saturday and possibly Sunday. They’ll play the lowest remaining seed in the playoffs. That means a lot of the game planning work won’t be in full effect until after this week of practice.
So what will the team get to work on this week if they can’t begin to prepare for a specific opponent? Getting better by any means necessary.
“For us, we have to get better,” Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes said following Week 16 against the Falcons. “Offensively I have to get better to put us in the right position so that we can go out there and execute at a higher level when we get to playoffs when we need to go out there and score.”
The Week 16 game against the Atlanta Falcons left a sour taste in Mahomes’ mouth. He believed that he could have played much better during that game, which is why he went to work right away when he was informed that he wouldn’t be the starter during Week 17.
Mahomes spent a lot of time at the practice facility, watching game film, drawing up plays and doing anything he could to improve. He still went through the week of practice leading up to the Falcons game as if he’d be the starter, despite working on the scout team. He went through his normal pregame routine, even though he didn’t dress for the game. It’s all for the sake of staying focused and making sure that you keep improving with the most important games of the season coming up.
“If you watched us throughout the season, it feels like we always raised up and played better in the big games,” Mahomes said. “I don’t know if that’s a good or a bad thing. Knowing that the next three are going to be big games, I know that I’m going to get the best effort out of every single guy on this team and we’re going to raise our game to be even better. I’m excited for it because I know what this team can do. It can be a special run.”
The foundation has been laid with the Super Bowl victory last year. All of the Chiefs’ goals from this season still lay in front of them and the real “Run It Back” tour begins today.
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