"The good thing is that it's the Denver Broncos. Our guys understand what that means and we haven't had a problem getting them ready to go this week."
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Todd Haley talked with Mitch Holthus on the Hy-Vee Chiefs Insider on KCChiefs.com this week. The words above would indicate that the players do understand what this means. As fans, the Broncos might be more hated than the Oakland Raiders so it's a big game from our perspective.
Haley apparently hasn't had a motivation problem this week he says because the players understand what's at stake this week for the future of the division coming off of a loss to the Oakland Raiders.
"Good teams in this league are able to rebound from difficult, painful losses," Haley said. "We've shown the ability to do that after the Houston game. This one stung probably even a little more because we felt like we had taken some steps and could prevent some things like that happening but you're going to lose it he NFL, hopefully less than more, but we have to bounce back."
As I've said before, the Chiefs usually do a pretty good job against teams that are one-dimensional. The numbers say the Broncos offense is indeed one-dimensional with the passing game.
"Each and every week we go into these games and we have to make teams one-dimensional which means stop the run and from there you just have to play 11-man disciplined defense and part of that is transitioning from a run play to what becomes a pass play and that's what good defenses do and that's what we're trying to do so this is a good test."
Stopping the run is important but the numbers say it won't be critical factor this week The Broncos are 29th in rushing attempts in 32nd in yards. They want to pass the ball. There's not much more to it than that.
I could see the Chiefs going with an attack similar to the one they used against Peyton Manning which was few blitzes and just sitting back in coverage waiting for the opposing quarterback to make a mistake.