This week Kansas City faces the Chicago Bears, a team with a good defense and playing for pride. They defeated Denver in Denver, defeated the Minnesota Vikings in Minnesota.

Not a team to be discounted.

I think Kansas City will win, though.

I don't know for sure. I think I've identified the problem and determined the cure. But I may be wrong; even if I'm right, the coaches may not have come to the same conclusions.

In the three games Kansas City lost (all on the road), the opposing team keyed on Priest Holmes at the same time they scored touchdowns. That put the advantage of time into their hands, which meant they could play offense without worrying about turnovers, which is the only way KC's defense can stop someone.

When Priest Holmes isn't getting positive yardage, it puts KC in too many 3rd and longs, which makes our offense more predictable. Even though we have many passing weapons and Trent Green is an excellent QB, he is averaging 7 yards/attempt and close to a 60% completion rate. Those are excellent numbers, but they mean that you will fail to score a touchdown in nearly half of your possessions if you must depend solely on your quarterback. Sure, a QB can get hot, like Payton Manning did against the Bucs, but that is not a dependable circumstance.

KC is effective in passing in the 2-minute drill, though. So why don't we go to that all the time? Because it would give teams more footage to see how to stop us; because it would leave our defense on the field too long; because it simplifies our offense too much to use for an entire game...there are many reasons. However, if Priest Holmes is bottled up again at a crucial part of the game (like the 1st quarter against Minnesota or the 3rd quarter against Denver), we need to unleash it as a counter to letting the opposing defense tee off on our passing game.

Thus, the way that Kansas City needs to win is to key on their running game as we add pressure by scoring points. Easy to say, hard to do. We will be aided by having the Arrowhead crowd disrupting their offense, and should be possible. We will have two weeks of rest and gameplanning before the first playoff game, and if New England loses this weekend or in the playoffs, KC will have homefield advantage throughout. That will help considerably.

I think we need to attack the Bears this weekend, to see how it will work and to gain some momentum and confidence before the playoffs.