Chiefs feel they're hitting their stride for playoffs | KCSN Daily 1.11
NFLPA All-Pro's, KCSN podcasts, quotes and more Chiefs news
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The Chiefs have participated in some close games throughout the 2022 regular season with 10-of-17 games being decided by one score or less. In Week 18, the team put together the closest thing to a complete game that they had in weeks.
Patrick Mahomes feels that the team has seen a snowball-like improvement in recent weeks on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball.
“Yeah, I think we’re playing well, man,” Mahomes told reporters on Monday. “I mean defense has stepped up, played really good these last few weeks. Offensively, we’ve had good spurts. Obviously, we feel like we can play even better. I’ll always feel like we can play better as an offense, but it’s coming from everywhere. You have Kadarius (Toney) is having big games, Skyy (Moore) is getting involved, obviously Travis (Kelce). We have guys everywhere getting involved (and) making plays happen.”
The offense is spreading the ball around, but the defense is also catching fire at the right time. According to Justin Reid, it’s because of the number of reps that all the players have now.
“Yeah, this is time of year that you want to get hot,” Reid said. “There was a lot of new faces coming into this defensive system. Like I said at the beginning of the year - that the playbook was deep and really the best way to get experience is just through reps, so our young guys have been getting a lot of reps under their belts. Like I said earlier, they’re no longer rookies, they’re first-year players.”
That experience enabled a strong finish for Kansas City, one they hope persists past the first-round bye week.
“A win is a win,” Mahomes said. “We’re worried about winning, not covering spreads, so we’ll try to keep that momentum rolling and get a win this week, or this next week actually.”
“We were able to finish the regular season on a high note and we’re going to have to take that momentum with us whenever we start approaching this first game of the playoffs,” Reid concluded
Outside The Trenches - The BEST location for Chiefs vs. Bills Neutral Site AFC Championship:
KCSN’s BJ Kissel, Nick Leckey, and Tucker Franklin talk about the latest news and headlines from the Kansas City Chiefs before talking about the upcoming Super Wild Card Weekend and impressive stats from the Chiefs offense and defense.
NFLPA First-Team All-Pro selections:
A total of four Kansas City Chiefs players were voted in by their peers for the inaugural Players’ All-Pro Team. You can learn more about how this All-Pro differs from those done by organizations like the Associated Press here.
(Photos via NFLPA)
KCSN Update:
KCSN’s BJ Kissel sits down with Brett Kollmann to break down the AFC matchups on the NFL's Super Wild Card Weekend and discuss the potential opponents for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Quotable:
“The biggest thing for me is, obviously you don’t know for sure who you’re going to play so what I’ll do is watch a game or two from each team that we have a possibility of playing, kind of each day just to get a general sense of the team without (it) being too much of a deep dive. Luckily, two of the teams we’ve already played this year, so I have a general sense of them already. But you do that, you make sure you stay working out, stay moving around not just sitting on the couch all week and then when we get ready to go next week I just try to be prepared and ready to roll. So just a little bit of both. You get off your feet and you rest, but you still move around enough that your body is in a good shape whenever you get to the first playoff game for us.” - Patrick Mahomes on how he’ll spend the bye week
Just the little intricacies of the game. For me, a lot of it was finishing — finishing on tackles. Making those next-level, pro-type decisions on the field. Just playing like a pro, honestly. I feel like I have gotten better and better as the season progressed. - George Karlaftis on what he needs to continue to improve heading into the playoffs (via Darren Smith)
Quick Hits:
From No. 15: Patrick Mahomes wasn’t joking when he said he would stay active this week. He got some work in with Mizzou WR commits Joshua and Micah Manning on Wednesday.
From East-West Shrine Bowl: The annual All-Star game has announced the two coaching staffs for their upcoming game. KCSN will once again be in attendance at the East-West Shrine Bowl, so keep an eye out come early February.
From New Heights: Chiefs TE Travis Kelce and his brother Jason Kelce spoke about the Week 18 “Snow Globe” play and some of the reactions to it.
From KCSN: Our Joseph Hefner has the final tally on rookie snaps through the 2022 NFL regular season. It’s quite remarkable what the Chiefs were able to accomplish with so many rookie snaps.
NFL’s super wild-card weekend schedule:
Saturday:
49ers vs. Seahawks at 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX
Chargers vs. Jaguars at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC
Sunday:
Dolphins vs. Bills at 1:00 p.m. ET on CBS
Giants vs. Vikings at 4:30 p.m. ET on FOX
Ravens vs. Bengals at 8:15 p.m. ET on NBC
Monday:
Cowboys vs. Buccaneers at 8:15 p.m. ET on ESPN
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