It's all eyes on Patrick Mahomes and his sprained ankle in Week 16 as the Kansas City Chiefs play their second of three games in an 11-day span while fighting to secure the number one seed in the AFC. Mahomes is expected to suit up despite the injury. The Chiefs are slight home favorites on Saturday, with the Houston Texans coming to town having clinched the AFC South.
Mahomes will have his work cut out for him. The Texans are one of six teams holding opponents under 200 passing yards per game and have a top-10 run defense that has allowed only seven touchdowns on the ground. Worse for a hobbled quarterback, Houston has the third-highest pressure rate and the second-most sacks in the league (45). Mahomes has used his legs to great effect this season, and one of the Texans' few vulnerabilities is the quarterback scramble. But high ankle sprains tend to limit one's willingness to take off running.
Still, this season's Chiefs have rendered statistical analysis nearly pointless, stringing together 13 wins in ways that have strained credulity to the breaking point. Blocked field goals, doinked ones that go in, overtime miracles and every other manner of improbable endings have come to pass this year, with only one of them resulting in a Kansas City loss.
The defense has performed admirably in the face of an injured and underwhelming offense, holding opponents to the third-fewest rushing yards per game and capping quarterbacks at around 215 yards passing. But they don't have gaudy turnover numbers or eye-popping sack rates. They haven't scored touchdowns. Like the offense, they do just enough every week to hang on until the magic takes over.
Given Houston quarterback C.J. Stroud's troubles on the road, "enough" might be all that's needed. The second-year passer is diminished when he travels, taking statistical hits in every category, including a 10-plus point dip in his passer rating. The Chiefs generate most of their pressure off the blitz, and the Texans are in the bottom five in both pressure allowed and sack rate when defending blitzes, so the young quarterback could be more unsettled than usual.
Kansas City has shown it needs only a tiny crack to slip through to the win column this season, and Stroud's mistakes could be it. Should the Chiefs be forced to start backup Carson Wentz, it's anybody's guess whether the breaks keep coming. But from what we've seen, there's no sense betting against them.
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