The NFL Wild Card Weekend will get kickstarted with a battle of two impressive AFC teams. Kansas City and Indianapolis both started hot out of the gate and cruised to playoff entrances with time left to spare in the regular season. They now get to face off for a second time for the right to move on to the divisional round.
A lot will be made this week regarding that first match-up. Kansas City was waxed on their home field in a game that saw them commit four turnovers and numerous, senseless penalties. It was perhaps one of their weaker showings on the season and is also indicative of major concerns as they head into the playoffs.
K.C. started 9-0 and then dropped five of their final seven. All five losses came to AFC playoff teams (twice to Denver, twice to S.D. and once to Indy). Many experts believed they were overvalued when sitting at 9-0, but now it would appear they are a bit underrated if anything at all.
Andrew Luck is the best young quarterback in the league and you cannot take anything away from what he and his team have accomplished this season. They scored road wins over San Francisco and Kansas City to go along with being the first team to best Seattle and Denver this year as well.
They have a balanced attack and kept moving along steadily despite the loss of Reggie Wayne midway through the year. But they have issues defensively and clearly do not have the better roster top to bottom.
Indy has linebacking concerns that should be extremely problematic in how they matchup with two extremely talented and versatile running backs from K.C. in Jamaal Charles and Knile Davis. Andy Reid is a mastermind at getting his backs involved in the passing game. As far as that week 16 loss, its fair to say that Reid elected not to show a full deck of cards following a dominant opening drive.
Reid should be able to isolate linebackers in single coverage against both backs and his duo of handy tight ends in this game. Antoine Bethea and Laron Landry are very skilled safeties who are excellent in run support. Vontae Davis is a nice matchup for Dwayne Bowe as well.
Ultimately, however, i look for K.C. to further exploit a defense that was only 22 against the run this year. So long as the Chiefs avoid turnovers, they should be able to at least move the football on this team and turn the tables a bit as the rematch proceeds.
But this game will likely come down to Luck and what he can do against one of the league’s top defensive units. Luck was solid in K.C. But that game was one that did not see several key Chiefs suit up. It also involved a series of red zone trips that failed to produce touchdowns, and that simply can’t happen here.
The Colts were very average when it came to red zone efficiency, getting into the end zone at only a 54% clip on the year (good for 15th in the league. In the second half of the season and, most notably, in their last three outings, that number fell to below 50%.
I like what Indy has done over the course of the season. Grabbing trent Richardson and developing a power run attack was a superb idea to minimize Luck’s exposure and to also keep their weak run defense off the field. Chuck Pagano really proved himself as a coach in terms of not following the rest of the league and electing to pay attention to clock management initiatives when it comes to offensive development.
Still, this is simply not a good match-up. The Chiefs have offensive pieces to take advantage of Indy, and they also have a team with a ton of speed. One could argue the Colts might actually be better off playing this one outdoors as the fast track could help Charles, Davis and Dexter McCluster get loose for big plays.
Additionally, their red zone issues could haunt them here. This game opened at K.C. +2.5 and over the last day or so has been bet down on some books to +2/1.5. I would not read much into that, but it is clear that Vegas has no intention of providing what they perceive to be the better team a full field goal.
I found the Chiefs at plus 2.5 on a book today and bought the half point. This is a good team and a motivated one. Their season ending loss to San Diego on the road showed how much depth their roster has. Both Reid and quarterback Alex Smith will enter these playoffs with a chip on their shoulder given their circumstances one year ago. That’s worth something to me, and I look for the Chiefs to pull the upset.
Chiefs +3 – B 1/2 (-120)
