Browns Playoff: 3 Kansas City Chief players to game plan for

Travis Kelce

Cleveland’s own (well Westlake’s own), Travis Kelce is going to be a pain in the butt to stop. He’s already one of the all-time greats alongside former Chief Tony Gonzales and Rob Gronkowski (many’s pick for the greatest of all time at the position) and he has five straight seasons of 1,000 yards, and seven straight seasons of at least 800 yards to his name. He’s easily Mahomes favorite target and will need to be double-teamed for most of the game.

The saving grace, the Chiefs as a unit, aren’t anything the Browns haven’t seen offensively. As far as points-per-game goes, the Chiefs are right there with the Titans, Raiders, Colts, and Ravens. All teams the Browns have faced. In theory, the Browns can meat the Chiefs point-for-point.

They have Kelce and Mahomes, and even Tyreek Hill, but after that they’re vulnerable. Of the team’s 14 wins, nine of them were close. Of the Browns’ 12 wins (counting playoffs), 10 were close. Neither team puts the other away and that means that this is going to be a shoot out.

The Browns don’t need to stop Kelce but limit what he can do. Take away anything deep and keep him and Hill in front of the secondary. The Chiefs don’t give up many sacks, so part of the hope would be to prolong the play by doubling up Kelce and Hill. That way the Browns could have an outside chance of sacking Mahomes. That’s going to be much harder without Olivier Vernon being on IR and Myles Garrett nowhere close to where he was back in the fall. He’s only mustered three sacks in eight games.

If the Chiefs beat you anywhere else, that’s part of the baggage the Browns have to deal with. They’re not good enough defensively to deal with this team, so the hope is that you cut off Kelce by making it impossible to throw to him and force Mahomes to use other weapons. It’s not a sound strategy but then again, what is against this offense?