That’s how you cap off a 14-3 season. The Kansas City Chiefs showed no mercy to the Las Vegas Raiders as they humbled their AFC West foes 31-13 to clinch the #1 seed in the AFC and a first-round bye.
This is how you show you’re the class of the AFC.
The Chiefs came into this game as overwhelming favorites and really could have rested their usual starters, such as Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Chris Jones, Frank Clark, etc., and still have won this game. That’s how much disparity was between the two sides as the Raiders were starting Jared Stidham for a second straight week and weren’t playing for anything but pride in front of their fans.
Nevertheless, the Chiefs took that pride and snapped it in half as they utterly and thoroughly destroyed what was left of the 2022 Raiders, leaving nothing but shattered hopes, broken dreams, and a lot of bruised players and damaged coaches’ egos.
The Raiders offense under former Patriots backup Jared Stidham probably surprised a lot of people last week as they nearly pulled off the upset win of the year against the San Francisco 49ers, but today showed what they truly are: a leaderless, hopeless mess.
Stidham completed 22/36 passes for 219 yards, 1 TD, and 1 INT and heavily relied on Davante Adams (5 REC, 73 yards) for perhaps the pairs’ final games in the Silver and Black, while Josh Jacobs was a ghost coming out of the backfield with just 45 yards on 17 carries. In fact, Stidham ended up as the Raiders leading rusher with 7 CAR for 50 yards and 2 FUM, though that is mostly down to the Chiefs defense relentless pressure and conviction.
Lead by Chris Jones (5 tackles, 2.5 sacks, 2 TFL, 6 QB hits), Nick Bolton (16 tackles), Juan Thornhill (7 tackles, 1 TFL, 1 PD, 1 INT), Justin Reid (6 tackles, 1 sack, 1 TFL, 2 PD, 1 QB hit), and Mike Danna (3 tackles, 2 sacks, 2 QB hits), the Chiefs defense put together one of their best performances of the season with 70 tackles, 6 sacks, 6 TFL, 6 PD, 14 QB hits, 2 FF, 1 FR, and 1 INT.
Simply put, there was nothing Stidham could have done with Chris, Jones, Mike Danna, Frank Clark (1 tackle, 1 QB hit), and George Karlaftis (3 tackles, 0.5 sacks, 1 TFL, 1 QB hit, 1 FR) literally in his face on every play and Justin Reid, Trent McDuffie (7 tackles, 1 PD), and Juan Thornhill waiting to pick him off every wayward pass.
And, trust me, there should have been 5 additional interceptions by the Chiefs defense. Despite Frank Clark leaving the game with an injury, this was the best possible way for the Chiefs defense to head into the playoffs.
Reversely, the offense had a rather mundane game with 349 total scrimmage yards and only 181 passing yards.
Patrick Mahomes never had to come out of third gear as he completed 18/26 passes for just 202 yards and 1 TD, while the running game was broken up into a committee with Isiah Pacheco (8 CAR, 64 yards, 1 TD), Ronald Jones (10 CAR, 45 yards, 1 TD), Mahomes (3 CAR, 29 yards) himself, and Kadarius Toney (3 CAR, 26 yards, 1 TD) all racking up over 25 rushing yards on at least 3 carries.
Moreover, the Chiefs leading receiver was Justin Watson with just 1 catch for 67 yards as both Travis Kelce (6 REC, 38 yards) and Juju Smith-Schuster (2 REC, 35 yards) had less than 40 total receiving yards. By all accounts, the Chiefs offense had one of their worst games of the season but were able to lean on their defense for big stops and capitalize Raiders mistakes into touchdowns. And that’s a winning formula if there is in the NFL.
Nonetheless, with this win today and their play across the 18 Weeks of the year, the Chiefs (14-3) have proven without a shadow of a doubt that they are the very best team in the AFC and more than deserving of the AFC Crown. We’ll see if the extra bye week helps or hurts the Chiefs when the Divisional Round comes around but seeing how this is a Super Bowl winning roster, I don’t think they’ll fall into the #1 seed traps that most inexperienced teams do.
As for the Raiders (6-11), they’re just bad.
Benching Derek Carr for Jared Stidham has resulted in nothing but the same as they ended the season losing four of their last five game. This roster and franchise is heading into a new era as a new franchise QB is needed in the Sin City, or else the same 6-11 woes will continue to rear their ugly heads around this once proud team.
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