Arrowhead Pride
When the NFL originally scheduled Sunday’s Week 4 clash between the Kansas City Chiefs and Baltimore Ravens, few anticipated an early-season contest between two teams with 1-2 records. But that is where the teams that played in 2023’s AFC Championship game now stand.
Both teams will walk onto GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium ready to make a statement.
“They’re a tough football team,” Kansas City head coach Andy Reid said before Wednesday’s practice. “It should be a good, tough football game. That’s the way you prepare yourself.”
Though the Ravens may be playing without some key defensive pieces — including star defensive tackle Nnamdi Madubuike, whom Ravens head coach John Harbaugh has already ruled out for Sunday with a neck injury — Reid expects Baltimore defensive coordinator Zach Orr to have his squad ready.
“He brings guys from all over when needed,” Reid noted, “and at the same time, they play good sound defense on top of that. They’ve got good players. I’m sure he will have some change-ups from what he did with us last time; we’ll just have to adjust to it. But he does a nice job with that defense — [and] he has a lot of flexibility there [with] what he can do and with the players.”
By the eye test, Baltimore has looked like the better 1-2 team, having scored 30 and 40 points in their two losses. In contrast, the Chiefs’ offense has seemed to be stuck in neutral through much of their 12 quarters of football. In each game, however, the offensive line has steadily seemed to find more time for quarterback Patrick Mahomes to make big plays.
“I think that’s been huge,” said the quarterback on Wednesday. “This last defensive line that we played had all types of first-rounders [and] all types of talent — and our offensive line did a great job at giving me time to throw the ball down the field.
“My feet, you can tell, are a little more calm because I understand that these guys can protect and they can get me time to make these throws. I’ll continue to get better and better at that, and try and make some of these throws more accurate down the field — instead of hitting one to two a game.
“Making that three to four — and then five to six — then defenses will back up. [That] will help us out with other stuff within the offense.
“I’m just excited for where this offense is going, I know it hasn’t been a perfect product that we put out there so far — but there’s a lot of good, too.”
Mahomes also knows efficiency on offense will give Kansas City defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo more freedom to be creative.
“We’ve got to start faster,” he admitted. “Every game, we’ve said that — and we haven’t really gotten to do that. We were moving the ball early in the game last week, but we were settling [for] field goals. When...
