Raiders have chance to upset Chiefs after Kareem Hunt drama?
The Kansas City Chiefs can’t be in a good mental state.
On Friday, Pro Bowl running back Kareem Hunt was ushered out of the locker room and then Arrowhead Stadium after TMZ released a video of Hunt shoving and subsequently kicking a 19-year-old woman in Ohio back in February. The result was the Chiefs releasing Hunt with the NFL putting him on the Commissioner’s Exempt List.
On Sunday, Kansas City will have to shift its focus back to football as it comes off the bye week, taking on the Oakland Raiders at the Coliseum. For Oakland, the season has been a horror show from start to present, with a 2-9 record along with the trades of Khalil Mack and Amari Cooper.
Now, the Raiders are playing what amounts to their Super Bowl against an AFC West rival in the Chiefs, who are 9-2 and leading the conference race for home-field advantage.
Even with the Hunt situation, Kansas City is favored by a whopping 14 points, the largest spread for a road team this season. The Chiefs haven’t played the Raiders yet this year — the rematch at Arrowhead comes in Week 17 — but one can surmise that it’s a significant mismatch.
Still, it’s now fair to wonder how ready the Chiefs will be to play this game after dealing with the emotional rollercoaster they’ve dealt with over the past 36 hours. Will Kansas City be able to put the Hunt ugliness to the side and beat the Raiders as they should, or will the Chiefs fall flat, unable to separate off-field stress with on-field production.
Strictly in a football sense, Kansas City can’t afford to forget the task at hand. The Chiefs are 9-2 as mentioned above, but they are only leading the New England Patriots by a half-game (considering the tiebreaker) for home field, and are still only a game ahead of the Los Angeles Chargers in the West. With contests remaining against the Baltimore Ravens (home), Seattle Seahawks (road) and Chargers (Thurs. night, home), Kansas City can’t lose one of its two tilts with the Raiders.
Of course, all of that is logical thinking. All 53 players and the entire coaching staff on the Chiefs plan out to Oakland are human beings. Believing that they won’t be impacted by Hunt’s horrific behavior, the national spectacle that followed and his release are going to all weigh heavily.
The question — again, in a football sense — is how do the Chiefs respond as a unit to the distraction? Also worth asking, is Oakland good enough to beat a Kansas City with heads clearly elsewhere?
It’s impossible to say, but the game between the Raiders and Chiefs suddenly doesn’t feel like a sure-fire blowout anymore.
