STAR NFL PREVIEW Sun: Kansas City Chiefs @ Buffalo Bills

Here we go again and with these two teams sitting at one and two in the AFC Playoff seedings it may not be the last time we see these two teams facing each other this season, writes ANDY RICHMOND.

In the regular season it’s been the Bills that have held the whip hand but when crunch time really comes in the post-season the Chiefs have been the team to hold all the aces winning the last three. The non-division rivals have met twice in three of the previous four seasons. They’ve split their past eight overall, including playoffs, since 2017, when Sean McDermott took over as coach of the Bills. Including playoffs, the Chiefs have won four straight at Buffalo including the last meeting a 27-24 win for the Chiefs in the AFC Divisional Playoffs part of the run that saw Kansas City through to their second successive Super Bowl victory and at 9-0 (4-0 on the road) they are very on the right trajectory for an unprecedented three-peat.

As much as the other main preview today was about the quarterbacks, the narrative around that particular position is even stronger in this contest. Patrick Mahomes vs. Josh Allen. Allen is 3-1 against Mahomes during the regular season during their careers, but Mahomes holds the edge in the playoffs 3-0. In their seven meetings, Mahomes holds a 4-3 edge and has 2,024 yards passing, with 15 touchdowns, five interceptions, plus 219 yards rushing with a TD and lost fumble. Allen has combined for 1,801 yards passing with 16 touchdowns and three interceptions, along with 393 yards rushing and four TDs with a lost fumble.

Limiting the production of the two QBs will be one of the main keys to winning this game for either side. Can the Chiefs contain Allen even though he’ll be operating with a group of receivers that have been depleted by injuries? Likewise can the Bills continue to limit Mahomes and the Chiefs offence which is far from the dynamic one that was a feature of previous Chiefs teams. The Bills have held the Chiefs to 20.8 points per game in four regular-season meetings since 2020. Taking the ball away and keeping Mahomes off the field are certainly ways that the Bills can once again beat the Chiefs in the regular season at least. The Bills have 12 straight games with at least one takeaway, the second-longest active streak in the NFL after the Lions (13).

Despite not winning some of their games in a convincing manner, the Chiefs are still unbeaten. They escaped their first defeat of the season last week in the dying seconds of the game when they blocked a Denver field goal as time expired to maintain their unbeaten start to the season. The Chiefs are tied with the 2003 and ’13 teams for the best start in franchise history and if they were to win in Buffalo they would equal their longest regular winning streak of 10, set in 2015 and matched in 2020. Going back to last season they have won 15 straight, the longest streak in the NFL since the Packers won 19 in a row in 2010-11. The record is 21 set by the Patriots in 2003-04.

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Despite both of these teams placing more emphasis on their running games and having better defences than past seasons, they rank 2nd and 3rd in the league in pass rate over expectation during the last four weeks. That thought is particularly pertinent when applied to the Chiefs as prior to the Denver game they had scored 26-plus points in four straight games. Mahomes will face a Bills defence that will be first and foremost trying to limit any big plays and by running a zone defence they have been successful in that area so far allowing just the fifth-fewest 20-plus yard completions (22). Mahomes has had to deal with several different adaptations of the Chiefs offence this year and one that has had to cope with plenty of injuries to some key pieces. Rashee Rice and Isiah Pacheco were the main pieces of their offence at the beginning of the year, but both have been out for several weeks now, although Pacheco is slated to return soon. Mahomes struggled in some games and situations but he always appears to find a way to win and remains one of the NFL’s great competitors even if his stats this year don’t fully reflect his contribution to the Chiefs offence.

With Pacheco due to return soon there should be at least one more week as the feature RB for Kareem Hunt who has been a major part of the control offence that the Chiefs are running. Hunt has seen 20-plus touches in each of his past four games and with the Bills willing to concede rushing yardage in exchange for restricting the passing game, especially deep threats then he’s likely to be the workhorse RB again here. He’s not the most efficient of backs but they trust him in the role to pick up blitzes, not drop passes on dump-offs, and not fumble the football. All in all, Hunt is a safe if unexciting option pair of hands out of the backfield.

With their run game being no more than functional. Mahomes will have been pleased to see the arrival of WR DeAndre Hopkins in exchange for a conditional fifth-round pick from Tennessee. He has 14 catches for 171 yards and two touchdowns in his first three games for the Chiefs; by comparison, he had 15 catches for 173 yards and one TD in six games with the Titans and has exceeded expectations and taken the pressure off Mahomes and his trusty TE Travis Kelce who he was having to target at an insane rate. After a tough matchup last week against the Broncos and their excellent cover corner Patrick Surtain, Hopkins will get an easier matchup this week against a mainly zone coverage defence and with Mahomes providing the ammunition against a defence that blitzes at the second-lowest rate in the NFL.

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It’s impossible to talk about the Chiefs offence without mentioning TE Travis Kelce who has 76 touchdown receptions, tied with Hall of Famer Tony Gonzalez for the Chiefs TE record, he also has 11,827 yards receiving and needs just 15 yards to pass Antonio Gates for the third most by a TE in NFL history, he surely gets those against the Bills on Sunday. With Hopkins drawing coverage teams aren’t able to concentrate solely on Kelce as they were doing a few weeks ago before Hopkins arrival. Kelce has now seen double-digit targets in three straight games. He is averaging 10.7 targets per game over his past six games. Over that span, Kelce is third in the NFL among all players in targets per game and leads the league in catches per game (8.7). He’s always been very active in this contest and he has double-digit targets in each of the past three games these teams have played in the regular season. In the seven games these teams have played under the current rivalry, Kelce has scored 8 touchdowns with at least 5 receptions in every game. The Bills have surrendered the NFL’s sixth-most catches (55) to tight ends and with Bufaflo expected to force the Chiefs into position that will oblige them to advance in a methodical manner Kelce should see plenty of targets again.

As with the Kansas City offence under Mahomes it’s Josh Allen (pictured below) and his all-round skill set that make the Bills offence what it is and they are playing very well this year scoring 30-plus points in seven of their ten games. As an offence they are using multiple players at the skill positions and it’s hard to identify, apart from Allen an “alpha player” on the Bills offence. Allen has faced Chiefs DC Steve Spagnuolo’s unit on seven occasions, averaging 259 passing yards with a 16:4 TD-to-INT ratio, 48.0 per-game rushing yards, and three additional rushing scores.

Allen along with the Ravens Lamar Jackson is one of the best dual-threat QBs in the NFL and that pair are joined together in a Star Sports Boost in the Weekly Specials section. Both are in games where they could be forced to use their scrambling ability and the boosted 6-1 (from 5-1) on both Allen and Jackson to score a TD looks worth a second glance.

Allen is running less this year but in games against the Chiefs, he and his counterpart Mahomes have been known to up their rushing output in an effort to get things done. With the state of the Buffalo pass catchers, Allen could be used as a runner again this week although the Chiefs have been hard to run on this season but Allen has run a lot in these matchups. He has rushed for 32 or more yards in all seven matchups with Steve Spagnuolo’s defence and he has double-digit rushing attempts in each of the past five matchups. Allen will be operating with a reduced receiving corps as WR Keon Coleman and TE Dalton Kincaid already ruled out for this game.

Considering those injuries it would make sense for the Bills to lean into their ground game a little more, however, the fact that they face a Chiefs run defence that is ranked 3rd in the NFL complicates matters a little. James Cook and Ray Davis are running the ball well right now but the Chiefs are so solid up front that the running game is likely to take a hit in efficiency.

The Chiefs tend to run their pass defence on a man coverage basis which will make downfield and perimeter passing difficult for Allen and the Bills therefore under those circumstances it’s not hard to see Buffalo using an intermediate passing strategy which figures to get the ball in the receivers hands on the move so that they can add yards after the catch. In that situation it’s likely to be WR Khalil Shakir and TE Dawson Knox that will see the most usage although utilising Cook and/or Davis out of the backfield on the passing game could also be a strategy that the Bills use. Cook in particular had a huge receiving game 5/83/1 against the Chiefs in the regular season game last year. Shakir secured 6-of-9 targets for 58 yards on Sunday and he ranks fourth in the NFL in receiving yards from the slot (414) and third in receptions (36). Slot receivers have accounted for 52.8% of the receptions allowed by Kansas City to wide receivers, the second-highest share in the league and those sorts of numbers mean that he should have an expanded role against the Chiefs on Sunday.

If the preceding Steelers/Ravens game was a matchup of classic proportions this one is worthy of the description of epic and we could be in for another classic between these two old foes. With a 1.5 spread that favours the Bills, Mahomes and the Chiefs are a rare underdog, Mahomes is 10-3 in his career as an underdog. At 9-0, the Chiefs keep finding a way to win but they are always in tight games. Of their nine wins, seven have been one-possession games, and the other two were both within one score early in the 4th quarter. The question is can the Bills with a slightly depleted offence find the quality to separate themselves sufficiently from the Chiefs. The spread and the fact that this game is the 15-2 market leader in the Star Sports Closest Game Market suggests not. Two strong defences are most likely to force both offences into methodical, clock eating drives where it will be vital to not turn the ball over and score touchdowns rather than settle for field goals. The Chiefs will rely on a mixture of Mahomes, Hunt, Kelce, and Hopkins to be successful while the Bills will hoping that Allen can at least work some magic and maintain his regular season record against Mahomes and then worry about the post-season down the line. This could well be just part one of the Chiefs/Bills story this season.

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