Chiefs need to be concerned about Broncos rushing attack despite Peyton Manning

When playing the Denver Broncos you need to be concerned with ... the run? Indeed, that's one of my keys this week as the Kansas City Chiefs travel to Denver on Sunday. Peyton Manning is obviously a great quarterback and the Chiefs are concerned about him. There's no doubt Peyton will get his.

But I am entering this game very concerned about the Chiefs run defense, too. No team gets run on more up the middle than the Chiefs (via NFL stats). Add in the loss in the middle of the field with Derrick Johnson and on the line with Mike DeVito, who actually played more in the Chiefs subpackages in Week 1, and the Broncos are capable of gashing the Chiefs in the run game.

Kansas City will likely be in nickel and dime for much of the game so they have enough defensive backs on the field to stop Peyton Manning, which is priority No. 1. Those defenses leave the Chiefs susceptible to the run. Peyton is a smart guy and realizes this.

"Well, we always start with the idea of, ‘Hey, it's a lot easier on our defense if we stop the run, if we control the run,'" Chiefs defensive coordinator Bob Sutton said. "That's going to probably be true for all of football. Sometimes here in a game like this, you take some body blows because you're playing more coverage and that and you understand that. But I think in the end for all of us, we'd rather get it down to where we knew exactly what was going to happen. It's still going to be a big challenge with this guy, but it allows us to do more things, be it a little different play calling and all that type of thing. So we've got to do a good job of that, there's no question."

While we sit here awaiting Peyton, I would not be surprised if the Monday morning headline was about the Chiefs run defense.

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