Noticed the same. Weird.

Time to fire up the Chiefs Kingdom Editorial Board.

Spill the beans. What exactly was said

I wish it was a four-man front. In the championship last year, the Bengals were getting home regularly with three-man fronts and dropping eight in coverage.

I assume we have a plan for that this year!

Good news. How did he play the week after in 2019

Is anyone else feeling almost eerily calm about this game and the injury?

I just feel like there's no way in living hell Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes are going to lose 4 straight games to one team, not to mention a 2nd consecutive AFC Championship at home to that team. It almost feels mathematically impossible, especially with how close the other 3 games have been and how much we had to completely shit ourselves to lose them.

I just can't see it.

Yes. And it was his left ankle in 2019. Different dynamic for throwing. Mahomes will be will be fine. But the defense and special teams still need to step up. Mahomes won't be able to carry the team on his back this Sunday. But even with a gimpy ankle, Mahomes is still better than most all other healthy QBs. GO CHIEFS!!!

That was coach speak.

They are playing Joe Cool.

Is it possible that Mahomes literally being Mr. Gumby is the reason he’s able to recover so quickly from these injuries?

From the arm angles, to the kneecap, to the seemingly mild high ankle sprain, it seems clear that his ligaments are not the same as most humans.

The Bengals just held an explosive Buffalo offense to only 10 points. With Mahomes as the QB, the Chiefs defense never does that to a team unless the other team has a backup QB or shitty offense in general. Last time KC played these guys, Cincy's offense put up 430 yards with only 1 punt. The KC defense has to step up in a major way.

I hope they bend joe cool over and hang it in him deep within his vital organs

I don’t believe anything Andy says this week. It’s all coach speak. He is not going to reveal how serious Patrick’s ankle really is.

Counterpoints (and I have been a Chiefs skeptic all season):

--> Josh Allen was pushed off his game, it is much harder to do to Mahomes (although notably that's what happened last AFCCG)
--> the roster was half-sick last time they played; if you watch Nick Bolton, he did not look like Nick Bolton
--> the Chiefs tackled horrifically in the game; they have tackled very well since

Spags dropped the defense a ton and banked on them to rally up on checkdowns. They sucked at that. Otherwise, Spags had them in position all game.

I suspect they'd be better if they were able to.

Keep in mind: Chiefs had this game in hand up until Kelce fumbled.

If Burrow had led a mad dash 21 point come from behind rally with less than 8 minutes to play in all three of those games, I'd be super nervous. The Bengals made plays and did what they were supposed to do in those games, but nobody will ever convince me that Cincinati imposed their will on the Chiefs in all three matchups. The Chiefs blew it and shat their drawers every single time.

Burrow is surgical with his passes. The only way to stop that is with pressure on Burrow. His WR’s are going to be open if given 3+ seconds. He will literally pick them apart surgically without pressure.

It’s time the CEO of SackNation gets his 1st playoff sack and hopefully a couple more.

They did, and props to them for it, but man did Allen have bad game. He missed at least two TD passes if not three.

Absolutely agree that the defense MUST play their best game of the season this week. Anything less likely won't work.

Eh. Allen just slightly misfired on 2 passes that would've been 14 points for the Bills. The Bengals defense is incredibly good but that Bills performance was just as much them being uncharacteristically shitty.

Solid, not unreal.

The Bengals were just slightly better than us in rushing yards per game given up, rushing yards per play given up, and rushes against per game. They didn't see much running against them, much like KC, but they can be ran on.

If you can shut their offense down and keep pounding them, or at least pounding them early and maintaining point for point, I think it'll end up paying dividends later in the game.

The only thing I ever question is Reid actually doing that. He probably won't.

I mean, injured Tyler Huntley and the Ravens managed more points than the Bills. They just had an incredibly bad day all around.

The KC offense was a hell of a lot better in the 2nd half of the most recent game than that AFC title game, no doubt about it. They scored 2 TD's in the 3rd quarter. They would have scored at least 6 points in the 4th quarter without Kelce's fumble and Butker's missed FG. Two massive screwups late in the game.

The Bills looked like they'd just completely emptied the tank thru the season and it all just came to a grinding halt.

I dunno, Allen just fell ass apart, their offense was deep balls or nothing with no rhythm and the defense was just a bunch of good solid depth pieces with no difference makers.

The INT that KC got that was not allowed was killer. Changed the game early on.

Nothing of Patrick Mahomes is the same as most humans. Dude is 1 of 8 billion.

Chiefs DL guys should get their arms up high and go for the batted balls. Joe Burrow has perhaps the quickest release of any QB in the league. But he also leads the league in batted balls this season. This is one of his few weaknesses. Get those hands up high with the right timing and knock the ball down at the line of scrimmage.

Mahomes could be armless and go scorched earth on any Raiders "defense" of the last 20 years.

Absolutely. And you just reminded us that this may have been the dearth of the Butker experience this season.

Butker is a gamer and was nails against the Jags. I imagine that continues here.

Mahomes is probably hitting his prime next season, this tricky quarter-quarter-half defense the Bengals/Broncos run just seems to be the last defense the league has tried on him that has worked. He's not far away from truly unlocking it.

As we've been saying: if Brown can neutralize Hendrickson, the Chiefs will play around Wylie and Mahomes will do what he needs to win this game (assuming he is mostly healthy).

And Roughing the Passer that extended the same drive if I remember right. That was pretty much the only pressure they got on Burrow the entire game and the refs penalized them for it.

I think that's a pretty fair assumption after what we've seen. That whole thing with the knee cap was one of the strangest things I've ever seen in sports.

Then you watch Key fall on that ankle, and I'm 100% convinced there isn't another player in this league who would have been able to keep playing after that. He's taken some awkward hits at other times as well where I've thought it was going to cause problems, and he hops right up.

Don't be a pillowbiter. Spill it

Exactly.

We should not be comparing the Bengals to any trash defense like the Raiders.

OBJ is not neutralizing Hendrickson. You need to scheme around him too.

Good news. If we could just get through his game, he'd probably be more or less fine by the SB

I'm gonna get to the bottom of this

I am sworn to secrecy. You're lucky you got anything.

You are the biggest attention whore on the internet.

Here's one against Tampa earlier in the 2022 season. Somehow it led to zero injury:


https://i.imgur.com/uYRY1cO.jpg

the ankle is a lot more flexible in that direction

The bills got what they deserved. Run your franchise qb into lineman and backers all season long with no regard to health or safety and the result is what you saw yesterday. Allen looked like a battered dude who had nothing left. And the bills secondary is woof terrible.

We're ****ed

Okay Woodward N. Bernstein

Jinx applied

Based on what I found, in the Bengals regular season game this year, our offense was very balanced compared to what we usually do.

27 pass/25 rush

I bet we do something similar. Again, our O-Line and D-Line HAVE to play better this time.

He is an Alien..

The Chiefs are really good at batting them down, too. Tip a couple, get a pick.

I don't remember them having any type of batted ball success on Burrow the last time they played, but I hope they'll be able to do it this time. Something needs to change in a major way after giving up 430 yards and only 1 punt.

Me.

We definitely need to and buffalo showed (but didn’t exploit) that they can attack with the short game. We did it wonderfully the first time against cincy and we didn’t even have Toney.

However so much of how they’ve played us in the past relied on cincy spying mahomes. I suspect we can catch them off guard with some quick strikes where they play is way too short. We can’t rely on long developing plays but I think mahomes can be way more effective in the intermediate game than we think.

He had a high ankle sprain in the first game that year? I don't remember that at all.

I do remember him destroying the Raiders the next week. One of his best games ever.

“He’s done amazing things with limited time,” Reid said of Mahomes, via Nate Taylor of TheAthletic.com.

If Reid is saying something like this, it speaks volumes. Usually all you get is "We'll see how things go here throughout the week."

I feel weirdly good about it. Cincy seems to smugly be looking to the Super Bowl. They’re tired and apart from mahomes we’re fresh.

Our defense (knock on wood) won’t be sick like last time.

I don’t think they’re prepared for McKinnon and Toney who I think are keys to beating cincy.

And Reid knows what’s at stake. I bet we see a flurry of crazy plays and a lot more exotic formations and movements. I know burrow and chase are pros, but it just feels like the mahomes injury could be just enough to get complacent whereas we seem dead focused on this week.

just passing along a nugget of good will

my understanding is that mahomes will have the game of his life sunday

So your source is Miss Cleo?

The Bengals are going to do something incredibly stupid on defense early, thinking Mahomes is less than superhuman, and Andy is going to exploit it for an early TD that will decide the game late.

Send a zero blitz I ****ing DARE you, Lou.

I saw it!

Well-placed source.

You know I have them. ;)

I expect an autopsy to reveal rubber joints akin to Secretariat's oversized heart.

League circles have indicated

Is it the same source that wrote that stupid hit piece?

Left ankle injury in 2019. It hurt his mobility, but I don't remember him struggling with velocity on his throws. This new injury on the right ankle feels different. Quite a few throws on Saturday were lacking velocity in a major way. He wasn't able to use the right ankle to help drive the ball around the field. That's concerning. We'll see if a week of rest & treatment can make a large improvement on this issue.

4 players, 3 of which are new to the team, is the plan for this game. #10 pounding the ball, #1 screen game, #19 and #24 quick passes at or just behind LoS.

Hopefully it’s not the same source that broke that fake Mahomes/Bienemy rift story.

Thank you Clay"Adam Schefter" Wendeler of CP:thumb:

That was the crazy spin and toss to ceh. Still bugs me that defender dove low

Completely independent of that shitshow.

When has Andy ever done that with an injury? He's usually pretty vague if he isn't quite sure how bad it is. He's not the kind of coach that will try and spin something negative to make it look better than it is. He has never done that.

I would bet what Andy runs this weekend will be nothing like what the regular season game was. Same would be true if it was against the Bills.

There's one common denominator tho

Only thing I’d want to be careful of is that last time mahomes was hurt he wore down as the game went on. I remember some remarkable first halves followed by second halves where he couldn’t put any mustard on the ball. Indy and Houston come to mind.

He’s prepared the whole year for this. He is going to do way better staying at home and this game will be a really good excuse to trust the scheme and weapons. Something he shies away from at times. Not only is he supposedly healthier in 2019 his style of play is way better suited to manage the injury than last time.

Yeah, I mean to be fair, it was a fresh injury. I feel like a week of treatment and he'll be better than he was post injury vs. Jax.

No there isn't. I've been right before.

This source is impeccable. Mahomes will ball out.

So what's the news? You don't have to reveal your source

Hence the need to sell the Bengals on the fact that they need to prepare for a mobile Mahomes as much as it is possible

Exactly. He's not going to be the same as he was right injuring it after 8 days of treatment and such.

Mahomes gonna spank Cincy boys. The whole team wants this game.

I mean, they can prepare for mahomes to move in the pocket. But do you throw a spy on him? I can’t imagine we want mahomes ever running even if he has a country mile of open space.