2022 AFC Championship Preview: Cincinnati Bengals v Kansas City Chiefs

Is it Arrowhead or Burrowhead? The battle lines have been drawn and the bulletin board material came out of the Queen City right after dusting off Buffalo. This has irked the Kansas City squad along with the national media reminding them Burrow’s Bengals are 3-0 against Mahomes and company. This includes the 2021 AFC Championship Game when they pulled off a shocker. What about this time??

The season began pundits along with The Chancellor of Football swearing the Chiefs were coming back to the pack losing Tyreek Hill. It hasn’t had the affect we anticipated but may today with Travis Kelce banged up and Patrick Mahomes nursing a bum ankle. Hill was used as a deep burner but often would come in motion and catch a “sprint right option” 5 yarder for key 1st downs.

The game will turn with the Chiefs young CBs L’Jarius Sneed & rookie Jaylen Watson trying to take on the likes of Ja’Marr Chase, Tee Higgins and Tyler Boyd. The trio has combined for 217 rec. 2,837 yards 21TDs and each are able to take over a game. Chase caught 7 for 97 in the last matchup and had 6 rec. for 54 yards and 1TD.

We have to see if Mahomes ankle is ready to go. If he still feels the affects of the high ankle sprain and we assume he will, has to rely on the physical running of Isiah Pacheco and Jerick McKinnon on sweeps and screens.

One of the issues is Patrick Mahomes does most of his damage when he is moving out of the pocket. Most of his playoff touchdowns have come when he has bought time and adlibbed beyond the designed play. Removing that from his game really brings the running game into focus.

Once we look at the running game the Bengals have shows of late and its hard to imagine Joe Mixon (1,205 yds / 13TDs) and Samaje Perine to be outdone in that department.

While Mahomes has had a great season in 2022 this seems a bit much and we have the Bengals making it 4 in a row tonight 34-21.

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you at the Super Bowl!

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