The Pittsburgh (1-3) Steelers host the Kansas City Chiefs (2-2) at 4 pm today with the home team favored by 6.5 to 7 points. It sounds fair, except when you consider the recent breakdown in the Steeler offense and the ability of the Chiefs to overcome the loss of QB Trent Green. Pittsburgh has lost its last three games (Jacksonville 9-0, Cincinnati 28-20 and San Diego 23-13), after winning its opener against Miami (28-17). The Chiefs lost their first two– to Cincinnati (10-23) and Denver (6-9)– and have recently beaten San Francisco (41-0) and Arizona (23-20).<\/p>\n
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Overall, the Chiefs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 defense and offense have outperformed the Steelers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 squads. And Damon Huard at QB for Kansas City has been far better than Pittsburgh\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Roethlisberger.<\/p>\n
The strongest part of this Steeler team\u00e2\u20ac\u201dthe defense\u00e2\u20ac\u201dwill be hampered this week due to injuries to the linebacking corps. Starting LB Joey Porter is out (hamstring) and backup LB James Harrison is already out! Huard, who has been completing over 70% of his passes for KC, should have time to continue making those plays.<\/p>\n
On offense, veteran Steeler guard Kendall Simmons is out with frostbite after having fallen asleep with a cooling device on his foot that was being used to treat a heel injury! Chris Kemoeatu, a second-year man, will replace Simmons today, making his first appearance ever in a regular-season game. Roethlisberger, who has not been playing well this season, may find himself under a substantial rush. Pittsburgh desperately needs their running game to get into gear today.<\/p>\n
My feeling is that the cards are in the Chiefs\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 favor. If Kansas City does win, Pittsburgh, at 1-4, is all but done for the season.<\/p>\n
Technorati Tags: Pittsburgh Steelers<\/a>, Kansas City Chiefs<\/a>, Damon Huard<\/a>, Trent Green<\/a>, Ben Roethlisberger <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Pittsburgh (1-3) Steelers host the Kansas City Chiefs (2-2) at 4 pm today with the home team favored by 6.5 to 7 points. It sounds fair, except when you consider the recent breakdown in the Steeler offense and the ability of the Chiefs to overcome the loss of QB Trent Green. Pittsburgh has lost […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[132],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nfl-handicapping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1239,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89\/revisions\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}