With their playoff hopes officially dashed, the Cleveland Browns will turn their attention to the defending Super Bowl champions as the Kansas City Chiefs will come to town this Sunday. Kickoff is at 1:00 PM.
The Browns will be on CBS once again for this matchup. Ian Eagle, Charles Davis and Evan Washburn will be on the call. Here are the 3 things to watch for.
Don’t beat yourselves
It’s pretty self-explanatory. The Chiefs haven’t been nearly as dominant as they have been this season but this team is still finding ways to win games. If Cleveland wants to come away with an upset, they simply just have to not beat themselves. No turnovers, no costly mistakes. Simple stuff.
When you have quarterback Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid on the other sideline, you don’t want to make things easy for them. Play smart, make the right decisions and you can come away with a victory.
With Pressure Mahomes, make life uncomfortable
One of the glaring weaknesses for Kansas City’s offense is their offensive line (mainly their left tackle posting ). It’s been a revolving door at the tackle spot for the Chiefs, rookie Kingsley Suamataia and Wanya Morris haven’t been getting the job done so the Chiefs decided to sign D.J Humphries to fill in at the left tackle spot. Humphries is coming off a torn ACL injury he suffered last season so you can expect some rust coming from him.
However, Humphries tweaked his hamstring last week and his status is up in the air for Sunday.
According to NGS, #Chiefs D.J. Humphries allowed 8 pressures on 40 pass-blocking snaps in WK 14 against the LAC the 2nd-most pressures and the 2nd-highest pressure rate 20.0% allowed by a Chiefs LT in a game this season. Humphries allowed a pressure to 5 different LAC defenders.
— Justin Churchill (@ChurchillAtoZ) December 9, 2024
Cleveland’s pass rush has been up and down this season, but they can find some success on the left side if they match up Myles Garrett with whoever is starting at the left tackle spot.
If there is a matchup to look out for, it’s that specific one.
Don’t give Mahomes the opportunity to close the game
- When the game is on the line, the one person you don’t want to give the ball to late in the 4th quarter is Patrick Mahomes. The numbers don’t lie with areer highs in both 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives:
Patrick Mahomes the last three games:
261.6 YPG
5 TDS
0 INT
97.7 RTG / 3 GWD’sMahomes has 7 game winning drives on the season. The most in the NFL. pic.twitter.com/oLkRYcz3HI
— Joel Moran (@joelvmoran) December 9, 2024
It might not always look impressive but he’s one of the best in the league for a reason. He finds ways to get it done, no matter how the circumstances may look. The Browns best case scenario is that its best to not give Mahomes the opportunity to win the game if the game were to be close.
Kansas City is only favored by -4 in this game which says a lot about how Vegas views how this game could potentially go. If the game is close, hold on to the football. It would be a bad decision to let Mahomes finish the game with the ball.
