I have full confidence that Spags/Andy will have an effective game plan in place to cover the Bengals, especially if we have our full menu of defensive players available. I'm quite confident that we'll see lots of different coverages in order to try and contain their WR's.

I'm way past second guessing this Team/Coaches. They generally get it done in the Playoffs:)

Like I said, we don't need them to be perfect or even be stout. Just get the offense the ball back a few times.

I'm glad we lost to them earlier, TBH. Now we know.

A very good point.

I’d love to see the Chiefs offense pound the Bengals on the ground and keep Burrow off the field a bit. Heavy doses of McKinnon, DWill, and CEH…

JT O'Sullivan (QB School) broke down the end of the game in a video he relased today. It's a good watch (YouTube).

It shows the issue being a culprit folks might not expect... Armani Watts. There were some plays early in that drive for the Bills' last TD where Watts was "wrong" and it left Davis wide open. Plays where if you substitute Mathieu and his superior instincts and experience, he probably isn't "wrong" and the throw is at least tough for Allen.

Props to Gabriel Davis, though. That route he ran across Hughes where Hughes fell down was brilliantly executed. If Hughes manages to keep his feet as he reacts, I think it's still a TD because the route was so well run, but Hughes would at least have had an opportunity to make a play.

I also can't watch the last 2 minutes without wondering how different it all is if the Bills are facing a 30-21 deficit like they should have been.

Do they use designed runs for Allen as liberally in that situation as they did in this case? (I suspect not, which also eases what KC has to worry about on D).

I think in that scenario the Bills likely still score, but the Chiefs get the ball back and kill the clock in their 4-minute offense.

Outcome is obviously a Chiefs win, but it would have been a very different feel. And there would be a lot more talk about the defense playing really well without Mathie to hold the Bills to 28 points.

72 hours...3 days

It's like the Bucs learning from the in-season game that they had no chance if they tried to man up on Hill and did not keep both safeties deep. They also learned some tactics they'd need to use on the DL (things they wouldn't have known coming into that game, that they didn't do a lot of normally).

If the Chiefs had not played the NFC South in rotation last year, I think there's a good chance KC comes out and bum rushes the Bucs at the start of Super Bowl LV, just like they did in the regular season.

I am glad the Chiefs played the Bengals so recently. They've seen them up close, had the sting of a loss, and now can apply the painful lessons directly.

Well it wasn't unexpected for me. I haven't seen Watts play anything but poorly on defense. I've been saying for a year that he was worthless and he pretty much proved that the other night.

That being said, even Thornhill got caught cheating up a couple of times, leading to big plays.

They just can't let that happen again, regardless of personnel.

I think Watts has value. You just can’t expect him to come in for a Mathieu injury and call the defense how you had planned to. We were behind the 8 ball once Mathieu was out.

We gonna have to work on that and shine it up a bit Patrick

This can be done with the short/intermediate passing game.

I'd rather see the Chiefs come out using the passing game to set up the run... especially on first downs.

As a pure special teamer, sure.

As a safety, he's completely lost out there nearly 100% of the time. He's a liability on defense and should never see the field.

Exactly.

We don't need to run the ball more and more importantly, we won't run the ball more. That's not what this team does.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr"><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Chiefs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Chiefs</a> defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo revealed that the team had a specfic Tyrann Mathieu-driven plan for Buffalo. KC lost Mathieu — one of the league’s most durable players — after just seven plays, and it did show. Spags credited Chiefs offense for keeping them playing.</p>&mdash; Pete Sweeney (@pgsween) <a href="https://twitter.com/pgsween/status/1486787174355943430?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 27, 2022</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>