It's always a big deal when the Chiefs and the Raiders play, but this week is even more important than most. With a little luck from Buffalo and Detroit (both of them owe us one in my opinion), the Chiefs could enter the last week of the season at Denver with a chance to win the AFC West. But it all begins Saturday, and taking care of the Raiders at the friendly confines of Arrowhead.
This is the last home game of the year for the Chiefs, and hopefully Arrowhead will be packed full of very loud Raider Haters. The Chiefs are, of course, coming off their huge upset of the Packers, and the Raiders are coming off blowing a 27-14 lead with five minutes left in the game against the Detroit Lions (hopefully the Lions go on to sweep the AFC West this weekend). In other words, these two teams' collective confidence is pointing in opposite directions. Especially if Oakland remembers what happened to them the last time they played the Chiefs.
28-0 was the final score. Both Kyle Boller and recently acquired Carson Palmer threw three interceptions and both threw one's returned for touchdowns. The Chiefs were clawing their way back into AFC West contention, and met the Raiders at precisely the right time to see an inefficient offense. We injured Darren McFadden, who has yet to see the field since, and Carson Palmer wasn't familiar with the playbook or his wide receivers. "Oh man, I knew like about 15 plays and we ran the same 15 plays over and over again," Palmer said. "I was told I was not going to play. I didn't know the offense, I also hadn't been training and working out. So it was a complete shock to me at halftime when he told me, 'Hey, you know we're going to get you in, in the third quarter.'"
This week, the Chiefs won't be so lucky with their turnovers. Although Palmer hasn't come in and shook the world in Oakland, he has been able to stretch the field and, although probably not worth a first and second round pick, been a much better option than the original backup, Kyle Boller.
When asked about how different Palmer will look this week than when the Chiefs saw him earlier this season, Tamba Hali responded: "I guess it’s been about maybe five or six weeks so he’s probably acquainted with that offense and has got his timing down with the wide receivers. It will be a little different, he’s still a good quarterback, he’s still able to execute.”
"... this Raider team, they are in the same situation we are, they need to win like we need to win and they’ll be ready to go," HC Romeo Crennel said in his press conference. Crennel knows this game won't be the same as the last meeting. "As the game went along you could tell that [Palmer] wasn’t on with his receivers and there was some nuances about the offense that were different and he had to get used to them. As I look at him now it looks like he is used to them, he knows the receivers, he knows the runners, he knows the system and I thought last week he did a really good job of getting the ball to the playmakers, by what Detroit was giving him and probably should have won the game even though they didn’t but he had a chance."
And there is reason to respect Carson Palmer's playing ability. He is coming off one of his best games if not his best game in Oakland, completing 80% of his passes for 367 yards and a TD against Detroit. But the Raiders are also coming off a three game losing streak in which Palmer has thrown more INTs than TDs.
The Chiefs starting QB, Kyle Orton, is also coming off a good performance, and looks to improve his play given an extra week of practice with his receivers and an extra week for his finger to thoroughly heal. As Crennel said about Orton's performance last week in his first start: "The thing that I knew about him was I knew he was a pro quarterback and has played in games in the NFL before and has a good arm and so those things we knew about him but we didn’t know how it was going to play out on game day and it played out very well but you just don’t know sometimes.”
Hopefully the Chiefs can have a repeat performance against the Raiders and sweep Oakland much like they swept us last year.
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