Arrowhead Pride
Let’s see what AP staffers (and readers) think about Sunday’s game between Kansas City and Carolina.
Before the Kansas City Chiefs’ Week 11 road matchup against the Buffalo Bills, a couple of contributors on our Arrowhead Pride panel picked Kansas City to lose. Still, we ended up with an aggregate prediction of a 25-23 Chiefs victory. That carried 22 points of error compared to the 30-21 loss: it missed the point spread by 11 points, Kansas City’s score by four points and Buffalo’s score by seven. Just 25% of our contributors picked the Bills to win. Our readers were significantly less confident in the Chiefs. 38% thought Buffalo would win — although just 7% thought it would be an easy victory.
In Week 12, the 9-1 Chiefs face the 3-7 Carolina Panthers at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina. According to FanDuel Sportsbook, Kansas City is favored by 10.5 points.
Let’s see what the staff — and our readers — think about the matchup.
It’s easy to look at this game and say that it’s a classic matchup where the Chiefs throttle down and play in the mud with a bad team — but I don’t think the Panthers have any formula to keep this game close. In the last two weeks, we’ve seen the offense have trouble keeping Mahomes clean — but Carolina has the league’s worst defensive line; I don’t know how the Panthers can get any stops. On defense, I think coordinator Steve Spagnuolo will be able to get Carolina behind the sticks on running downs, forcing quarterback Bryce Young to try and throw from a condensed pocket. Knowing Spagnuolo’s tendency to blitz and show from different spots, I think the Panthers’ offense will struggle. I think this is a pretty easy win for the Chiefs.
Chiefs 31, Panthers 13
I know it’s tempting to think the Chiefs will come into Charlotte and hammer the Panthers — and I certainly won’t say it can’t happen — but that just doesn’t seem to be in the team’s character right now. I think it’s more likely that Kansas City will just try to get back to what’s given them an extremely successful season: being efficient on offense and making timely stops on defense. If the team can do that against Carolina, it could easily lead to a bigger margin of victory — but I don’t expect a blowout.
Chiefs 31, Panthers 20
This matchup feels like one that Kansas City should dominate in all three phases. But the team’s inconsistency on both offense and defense makes it hard to trust that will happen. The Chiefs must come out firing and maintain their intensity throughout the game. Too often, they’ve played down to their competition — only to flip the switch on late in the game. So here’s the big question: Will this be the game where the Chiefs finally take care of...
