Week 6 Lions vs. Chiefs game preview: Can the Chiefs rebound against hot Lions team?
The Chiefs need a win badly on Sunday Night Football, and the path to that is in the trenches and playing a complete game in all three phases.
It is Week 6, and the margin of error for the Kansas City Chiefs (2-3) is already slim.
A win over the Detroit Lions (4-1) would put them at 3-3 and a minimum of one game out of the division with their best wide receiver, Rashee Rice, returning for Week 7.
A loss would sink them to 2-4, likely two games out of the division and would put them in several “got to have it” scenarios for the rest of the season.
“It’s extremely important, there’s no way around it,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “This is a really good football team that we’re going to play. They play extremely hard, and they have a mentality (that) they’re going to come in and win a football game, so we have to match that intensity, we have to match that mentality and knowing that it’s going to take our best football (from) everybody.
Offense, defense, and special teams, and we have to go out there and prove it on Sunday. We have got to start off with a great week of practice and then come in with the mentality that we’re going to find a way, no matter how it looks, that we’re going to find a way to get a win.”
Since the NFL moved to a seven-team playoff format, the AFC’s seven seed has had one 11-win team, two nine-win teams and two 10-win teams.
With parity in the NFL this season, 10 wins will likely punch a ticket, meaning the Chiefs need to go 8-4 for the rest of the season. That is admittedly moving the goal post to the expectations held at the beginning of the year, but anything can happen when you get into the big dance.
The Chiefs’ next three games are at home, against the Lions, Las Vegas Raiders and the Washington Commanders, so Sunday embarks on a critical stretch for the Chiefs to take advantage.
The Lions are white hot, winning their last four games after getting stomped by the Green Bay Packers in their season opener, although their injury report is long.
“They’re playing good football, good solid defense, flying around,” head coach Andy Reid said. “Offense, they have been very effective, offensively point-wise and execution-wise. They haven’t had the self-inflicted wounds as much as some other teams, so you know that they’re not going backwards. We have got to make sure we take care of business, stay aggressive on both sides of the ball and special teams for that matter.”
The Chiefs are 2.5-point favorites, regardless, and that could be because Detroit has been beating up some lowly competition.
They took care of the Chicago Bears, handily, before narrowly escaping the Baltimore Ravens, whom the Chiefs would blow out the following week, and then defeated the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals, who put up a fight.
They have done it through high-flying offense. They are the number one scoring offense in the league, averaging 34.8 points per game.
Quarterback Jared Goff possesses the league’s highest completion percentage and has 12 touchdowns to just two interceptions.
They have two running backs over 300 yards, both averaging over 4.6 per carry and both have four touchdowns. While David Montgomery is their power back, Jahmyr Gibbs also has 22 catches on the season for 112 yards and a touchdown.
They have perhaps a top-five wide receiver, too. Amon-Ra St. Brown has caught 35 of his 41 targets for 407 yards and six touchdowns. And their tight end is not bad either. Sam LaPorta has hauled in 21 of his 27 targets for 269 yards and a touchdown.
“They’re special,” linebacker Nick Bolton said. “They have a great tight end (LaPorta), two good backs(Gibbs and Montgomery), their wide outs have some depth and they have a young guy (Isaac Tesla) as well that is kind of adding to the mix and their quarterback (Goff) is playing great – if I’m not mistaken, he might be the best in the league on competition percentage. It’s going to take everybody, all hands on deck up front and then in the back end mixing up some looks pre-snap and try to force a couple turnovers when we can, but it’s a great challenge for us.”
Defensively, they are banged up, but defensive end Aidan Hutchinson is as healthy as can be and already has five sacks on the season.
The path to victory for Kansas City is the trenches. Both the offensive and defensive lines have a tall task ahead of them.
Neutralize Aidan Hutchinson
Speaking of Hutchinson, the season opener is the only game in which the star pass rusher has not recorded a sack.
From left to right, the Chiefs’ offensive line reads Josh Simmons, Kingsley Suamataia, Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith and Jawaan Taylor, and they are coming into their own.
Over the past two games, they have graded out exceptionally well, but they have not faced this dominant of an edge rusher all season.
One thing that sticks out to offensive coordinator Matt Nagy is the relentless motor that Hutchinson and the rest of the Lions’ defensive line play with.
They’re tough,” Nagy said. “I look at these guys on tape, you see them on TV and the word that comes to mind is relentless. Their motor goes nonstop, and I think they work off of each other, that defense in general. I mean, they get one sack, and they’re looking to get that second sack.”
The Lions are second in the NFL in sacks recorded, but one possible way to neutralize that is a good running game. This allows players like Hutchinson not to pin his ears back and get after Mahomes play after play.
The Chiefs showed some chops for the first time this season last week against a talented Jacksonville Jaguars run defense. Kansas City ran for 158 yards on the ground as Kareem Hunt averaged 7 yards per carry and Isiah Pacheco went for 5.1 yards per clip.
“When we’re able to run the ball like that and then being able to play-action and do bootlegs and stuff like that off of the run game, it really just opens up the entire offense and I thought – all three of them (Kareem Hunt, Isiah Pacheco and Brashard Smith) ran really hard when they got the ball in their hands,” Mahomes said.
It’s just finding ways to put them in positions to succeed, and I thought the offensive line did a great job of – you can tell their chemistry because pass blocking is one thing, but run blocking is a lot of chemistry and trading off blocking, you can tell that stuff’s building with time and with more and more reps.”
If Kansas City can get into a rhythm and be unpredictable this week, they could put Hutchinson in a spin cycle, much like how they neutralized players like Nick Bosa and T.J. Watt in the past.
Chris Jones
Much has been made of Chris Jones and his effort level on the final play of the game in Jacksonville. With quarterback Trevor Lawrence falling twice with the game on the line, Jones was seen watching rather than pursuing.
It was not just that play, though. His stat lines read as one tackle and one quarterback hit, and that is it.
This week, before Thursday’s practice, Jones, a 10-year veteran, called it a teaching moment.
Given the scrutiny, you have to think Jones will play with his hair on fire against the Lions in what he calls a talented offensive line that is gelling.
“They’re battling a few injuries, but that group works really, really well together,” Jones said. “I think they have one of the better right tackles (right tackle Penei Sewell) in the game.”
Frank Ragnow, an All-Pro center, retired in the summer before the season and it was unknown how the offensive line would respond, especially after losing offensive coordinator Ben Johnson.
Through five games, the unit has come together, allowing Goff to be sacked only eight times. They lead an offense that seems to be moving the ball at will.
Jones, through five weeks, only has one sack and he grades out as the 76th-best interior defensive lineman in the NFL, according to PFF. His pressure rate is just above nine percent, which would be a career low by a decent margin.
Although Goff has not been sacked often, due to his offensive line and his ability to get the ball out quickly, Jones can disrupt a game in a way no one else on the Chiefs’ defensive line can.
The path to taking down Goff is up the middle and Jones can generate quick pressure inside. After a porous performance against the Jaguars, Jones appears focused on helping his team get to 3-3.
“I’ve been focused on the Lions since the game,” Jones said. “You can’t hold your head on one play or one game. It’s a week-in and week-out thing. You learn from it, you take notes, you take the good, you take the bad.”
52.5
Over the past two games, these two offenses have combined to average 34 points per game. With Vegas setting the over/under total at 52.5 points, this game could provide a lot of fireworks and perhaps much more than that total.
With as much talent as the Lions have on offense, it is easy to see why defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is so impressed.
“You see it, he’s got a lot of weapons, and the guy pulling the trigger out there is pretty good,” defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said. “He’s (Lions quarterback Jared Goff) really accurate, is top in a lot of different things. I flashed them up the other day. This is the number one scoring offense in the NFL …
Our thing, always our number one goal going into this thing, is to limit points allowed, and it’ll be the same focus with all the weapons that they have. We’re going to have to pick and choose who we quote-unquote try to take away and then some guys are going to have to do some heavy lifting on their own.”
Mahomes, meanwhile, has produced back-to-back stellar individual performances ever since wide receiver Xavier Worthy returned to the offense.
Against the Ravens, it was going 25-for-37 for 270 yards and four touchdowns. Going up against a top Jaguars defense, he went 29-for-41, with 318 passing yards and one touchdown, including 60 rushing yards and a rushing touchdown.
What was the difference between the two when it comes to the win-loss column? A back-breaking mistake.
When trying to make it a two-touchdown pass day, Mahomes did not see Jacksonville linebacker Devin Lloyd pop into coverage after showing blitz, resulting in a pick-six and a 14-point swing.
Mahomes sees the growth and how they are returning to form from their offensive glory days, but says they still need to execute in key moments to play winning football.
“We’re just not making winning football plays in certain moments, and if it goes down to the interception in the red zone, that I throw, it’s a 14-point swing,” Mahomes said. “I feel like we played better these last few weeks, but in this league, it’s going to come down to one-score games. That’s what Coach Reid preaches right when we start off training camp every single year, and it’s about who executes at a higher level, and we haven’t done that as a team throughout these first five, six weeks.”
Mahomes has only thrown two interceptions this year, but both were in the end zone and resulted in the team losing points and the opponent scoring six. If the offense plays as clean as it did against the Ravens, they may be able to put up a lot of points, similar to how the Ravens did against the Lions in Week 3.
All three phases
Yes, Mahomes did throw a pick-six last week, and that was the largest game-changing play of the game. That said, they averaged 7.6 yards per play, which was the sixth time a team had done that this season.
The defense also played relatively well, or at least good enough to squeak out a win in most cases. The Jaguars only scored three touchdowns and a field goal on four of their nine offensive drives.
What the Chiefs learned is that it is not enough for two phases to play well and it is definitely not enough if it is just the offense playing well. It is a three-phase game and their special teams contributed to the loss just as much as the pick-six and the defense allowing quarterback Trevor Lawrence to scramble or make key throws in clutch moments.
Whether it was holding penalties on good kick returns or kicker Harrison Butker placing a kickoff out of bounds, the Chiefs lost the field possession and situational football game by a wide margin against an opportunistic Jaguars team.
“I mean, obviously, the penalties hurt us and (it was) upsetting, but there were a lot of good things, too, at the same time,” special teams coordinator Dave Toub said. “Matt Araiza had a really good game punting. I thought Butker made all of his field goals, obviously, he had the one kick out of bounds that – I mean that was a mistake, he made a mistake. That’s where we are.”
With the reputation that special teams coordinator Dave Toub has, I expect the Chiefs to play a clean football game in that phase.
With each Chiefs loss, you can point to a specific and significant mistake that led to the loss, and sometimes more than one. Reid knows that if his team wants to get back to winning football, they need to clean up their act.
“That’s this league right now. There is so (much) parody,” Reid said. “That’s why I mentioned after the game the penalties, turnovers, and so on. You can’t have those; the games are too close. Too much competition – equal competition, so you have to take care of business there and it’s my responsibility to make sure that is done.”
Key injuries
Chiefs: Everyone has practiced in full this week, except for wide receiver Xavier Worthy (shoulder/ankle), who logged a fully participating one before being tagged with a “did not participate” practice on Thursday.
Lions: Cornerback Terrion Arnold (shoulder), linebacker Zach Cunningham (hamstring), offensive tackle Taylor Decker (shoulder), and safety Kerby Joseph (knee) have all not practiced yet this week. Safety Brian Branch (ankle) has been limited through two practices.
Key game details
Location: GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri
Date: Sunday, Oct. 12
Kickoff: 7:25 p.m. CT
TV/Streaming: NBC
Broadcasters: Cris Collinsworth and Mike Trico
Radio: 96.5 The Fan
Head Referee: Craig Wrolstad
Betting Line: Chiefs -2.5 | Moneyline: -135 | Over/Under: 52.5
Weather Forecast: Overcast with possible showers at times, low of 66°, winds around 10-15 mph, 40% chance of rain
