The big goal for the Kansas City Chiefs during their bye week should be to get healthy, but the Chiefs got an extra bonus on Thursday. There’s been a lot of conversation about the Denver Broncos being a genuine threat to Kansas City in the AFC West, but a good chunk of that threat went away on Thursday night during the Broncos' ugly 10-7 win over the Las Vegas Raiders. 

The Broncos offense was badly exposed in this one. The Raiders were able to pressure quarterback Bo Nix without blitzing, and Vegas defensive end Maxx Crosby spent most of the evening harassing Nix. Crosby constantly beat double teams from Denver’s beat-up offensive line, and that’s basically the same line the Chiefs defense will be lining up against a week from Sunday. 

The key will be keeping Nix from getting on a roll, and Raiders defensive coordinator Patrick Graham had a solid plan for doing that. He used Crosby as a chess piece and constantly moved him around, and Graham also changed looks constantly to keep Nix from escaping from the pocket and getting loose at the second level.

This is the sort of thing that Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo does incredibly well, and he’ll have plenty of weaknesses to exploit when he reviews the tape from this one. Denver’s offensive line had almost no coordination or consistency throughout the game, and it won’t take much pressure to get Nix off his game. 

As for the Chiefs offense, the Raiders gave them a pretty good blueprint there as well. They ran right at the dangerous Denver defense in the first quarter, and that tactic worked. Running back Ashton Jeanty gashed the Chiefs early and often, which set up the play-action passing game for quarterback Geno Smith. 

The Chiefs offense is far more sophisticated, and they have a lot more weapons. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes isn’t going to drop off the way Smith did and become a sitting duck in the pocket, and he’s going to present his own array of problems for the Denver defense to solve. 

One problem Kansas City will need to solve is how to deal with pressure. This didn’t go well against the Buffalo Bills, and it will undoubtedly be a major focus for the Chiefs during their bye week. 

The upshot of all this is that this isn’t a game that Chiefs fans should be afraid of in any way, shape or form. Keep Nix in the pocket and generate pressure, and bad Bo Nix will show up. That’s a winning formula for Mahomes and company, and this is an eminently winnable game for Kansas City.