If You Lose to the Chiefs They Kick You Out of the League

I feel a paraphrase of the Al Bundy line is an appropriate title here. And it while it may not hold true for the NFL, it certainly does for the playoffs. Lose to the goddamn Chiefs, even on the road, and you might as well hang it up.

But then that would require a breakdown on all levels on par with the 2006 loss to the Raiders. But then at least that Raiders team had a halfway respectable defense. The Chiefs suck ass in every conceivable way. 24th in rushing, 28th in passing, 27th against the run, 24th against the pass. Suck, suck, suck, suck.

And their biggest offensive threat is serving the first week of a four-game suspension. Jamaal Charles is capable of good things, but it shouldn't be that daunting of a challenge to contain him. When the Steelers last saw Matt Cassel, they forced him to commit four turnovers in a rout of New England last year.

Bruce Arians will probably get a lot of use out of Rashard Mendenhall, but then he's comfortable doing that when the Steelers play creampuff teams. Pit them against a reputable opponent and he just wants to air it out to the extreme. I'd just be encouraged by less formulaic playcalling here, unless of course Mendenhall is just destroying them on every play, in which case more of the same is fine. Big Ben is typically reliable for bouncing back after he admits he's had a bad game. Plus, again, it's the Chiefs. Granted, they've hung around in a few games against respectable teams. They gave the Ravens a closer game than they should have Week 1 starting their back-up. They took Dallas to overtime. Still, you have to go in expecting a convincing win.

But then this is another game with Polamalu out of the lineup (unfortunately, there are rumors indicating he might miss the first Ravens game as well) it's back to the more vanilla defense, not that it didn't play mostly effectively last week against the Bengals. But really, it's gonna have to be the usual culprit - a bad turnover of special teams lapse - that Kansas City would need in high quantities to pull this game out.