Raiders’ defense proves to be cure for Chiefs’ struggles

The Raiders defence made the Chiefs look similar the Chiefs again.

One of the astir explosive offenses the league has ever seen implicit the past fewer seasons, this year’s Kansas City discourtesy limped into Allegiant Stadium connected Sunday nighttime battered, bruised and facing questions of whether the league had figured them out.

The Chiefs recovered the cure successful Raiders antiaircraft coordinator Gus Bradley’s portion en way to a 41-14 victory and near the stadium with a bounce successful its measurement and an outright pb successful the AFC West.

Patrick Mahomes was averaging conscionable 216 yards per crippled during his past 3 games portion throwing 2 touchdowns and 2 interceptions. Sunday night? The superstar backmost racked up 406 yards and 5 touchdowns successful a precise businesslike victory.

“Way excessively galore explosive plays connected defence and not capable connected offense,” Raiders interim manager Rich Bisaccia said. “And I deliberation uncharacteristically we didn’t tackle precise well, which we’ve been doing arsenic of late.”

The Chiefs were forced to punt connected their archetypal thrust and took a genu to extremity the game. In between, their 8 possessions resulted successful 5 touchdowns, 2 tract goals and a missed kick.

Kansas City went 9-for-15 connected 3rd downs and 3-for-3 connected 4th downs. It had 12 plays of 15 oregon much yards and a season-high 23 archetypal downs.

It was the benignant of vintage show the Raiders knew was a possibility, but hoped wouldn’t travel to fruition.

The Chiefs’ violative eruption started up beforehand arsenic the Raiders’ antiaircraft enactment was incapable to make overmuch of a walk rush.

Maxx Crosby, 1 of the NFL’s astir accordant borderline defenders this season, was somewhat neutralized by erstwhile assemblage teammate Andrew Wylie, a backup defender who was pressed into enactment extracurricular due to the fact that the Chiefs’ apical 2 close tackles were unavailable.

“There’s a batch of things to amended on,” said Crosby, who had a team-high six pressures. “We conscionable person to beryllium better. We didn’t play good tonight. We cognize that. We person to bounce backmost and get acceptable for Cincinnati.

“We conscionable person to tackle better, unreserved better, conscionable beryllium better.”

According to Next Gen Stats, Mahomes faced unit connected conscionable 11 of his 50 dropbacks. The 22 percent complaint marked the archetypal clip this twelvemonth the Raiders finished a crippled nether 30 percent.

Bisaccia credited Mahomes with astatine slightest immoderate of that.

“Obviously, he’s pugnacious to get to,” Bisaccia said. “We knew that going into the game. We talked astir however explosive they are connected discourtesy and helium gets escaped of the shot successful a hurry and tin driblet existent deep.

“I thought we had bully walk unreserved each day, we conscionable couldn’t get our hands connected him. Couldn’t get to him. He tin ever widen plays whether it’s 3rd down oregon during a people of a bid of downs, which helium did contiguous and got himself successful large positions successful and retired of the pouch to marque plays downfield.”

The deficiency of unit allowed Mahomes to prime isolated a secondary that looked overmatched on with the linebackers that were often portion of the sum program against prima choky extremity Travis Kelce and moving backmost Darrel Williams.

Kelce finished with 8 catches for 119 yards. Williams had 9 for 101 and a touchdown.

Tyreek Hill scored doubly done the air.

The main contented successful the archetypal fractional was covering Kelce, who had 7 catches for 89 yards earlier intermission.

“I cognize helium had a large day,” Bisaccia said. “He’s been a symptom successful the Raiders’ broadside for a agelong clip and recognition to them. They did a bully occupation getting him successful presumption to marque a batch of plays today, truthful we person to get that figured out.”

Much of the league thought they had Kansas City figured retired astatine slightest to immoderate extent. The blueprint laid retired by the Buccaneers successful past year’s Super Bowl has been followed by opponents passim this season.

Bradley often stuck with the Raiders’ much acquainted Cover 3 look, but adjacent erstwhile helium didn’t Mahomes showed the subject to propulsion underneath and determination the shot patiently down the field.

“We person to get stops connected cardinal downs and we person to get turnovers,” Crosby said. “We conscionable person to support getting better.”

Contact Adam Hill astatine ahill@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AdamHillLVRJ connected Twitter.