Kansas City is heavily favored as Falcons visit
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas City Chiefs have reached the precipice of the No. 1 seed for the AFC playoffs and a coveted first-round bye with a nine-game winning streak that includes some heavy hitters with Super Bowl aspirations of their own.
So while records alone suggest the Chiefs (13-1) finally get a breather to finish off the regular season by hosting the Atlanta Falcons (4-10) today and the Los Angeles Chargers (5-9) next weekend, both Kansas City coach Andy Reid and Atlanta counterpart Raheem Morris are in agreement their meeting could be tighter than outsiders expect. As of Saturday afternoon, Las Vegas oddmakers had the Chiefs listed as 10 1/2-point favorites.
“We have to maximize ourselves against a team that’s playing hard,” Reid said. “These games they’ve lost, over half of them have been in the fourth quarter. They’re taking teams right to the end there.”
Besides, the Chiefs, who had to rally in the second half this past February to beat the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, tend to play everyone down to the wire. They’re the first team in NFL history to win six straight one-score games, blowing big leads in some of them, rallying in others and going toe to toe in the rest.
The Falcons have generally been on the short end of such games.
They lost by a point to the Dallas Cowboys and the Detroit Lions early in the season and by a field goal to the Chargers earlier this month. All told, seven of their 10 losses have been by a single possession, and the remaining three came against division leaders in the NFC: the Green Bay Packers in the North, the Seattle Seahawks in the West and the New Orleans Saints in their own South.
“Our games are exciting. Our games are fun to watch,” said Morris, who took over as interim coach when Dan Quinn was fired in the wake of an 0-5 start to his sixth season with the Falcons. “Haven’t gotten the results that we wanted in all of them, but these guys really go out there and they fight their butts off.”
Atlanta is coming off a 31-27 home loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, who trailed by 17 points twice and were shut out until the second half.
“Yes, we made some mistakes from a coaches’ standpoint and a players’ standpoint, but I don’t think anybody is pointing fingers at each other,” Morris said. “I don’t think you’d point blame. Last week, we talked about that a little bit. We talked about blaming (quarterback) Matt Ryan and some of those type of things. We just don’t do that as a team. We go in each week and try to figure out what’s necessary to do to try to get a win. I think the guys really do a nice job of resetting.”
The Chiefs would like to become the first back-to-back Super Bowl winners since the New England Patriots in the 2003 and 2004 seasons. Entering the postseason as a No. 1 seed would certainly help that cause, and the easiest way to get there is a win against Atlanta, though there are scenarios — some more complex than others — in which other teams’ outcomes today would make it happen for Kansas City
“It’s a lot of pressure. A lot of different teams are trying to get that No. 1 seed,” Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “We have a pretty good football team coming in here, an offense that’s pretty explosive. That’s all I’m focused on, the Falcons, and how we can beat the Chargers.”