Chiefs will face an underrated challenge in Week 7 and it has nothing to do with the Raiders
The Chiefs will play a rare noon start time on Sunday.
When the Kansas City Chiefs host the Las Vegas Raiders on Sunday, it will be during a rare start time of noon CT.
Before Patrick Mahomes took over as the Chiefs’ starting quarterback, noon kickoffs were much more common in Kansas City. Over the last eight years, the overwhelming majority of Chiefs games have been either in primetime or in the late afternoon slate.
As a result, they haven’t always been at their sharpest during early starts. K.C. did manage to go 5-0 in noon matchups in 2024, but three of those wins were last-second nail-biters. Although it beat the Cleveland Browns 21-7, the performance from the offense wasn’t exactly inspiring. The only noon game the Chiefs won convincingly was on Christmas Day over the Pittsburgh Steelers 29-10.
Patrick Mahomes wants better execution vs. Raiders than in previous noon starts
While speaking to the media on Wednesday, Mahomes outlined what the Chiefs can do to make sure they play better this week than they have in previous noon games.
“I think it’s something we could be better at,” Mahomes said. “We haven’t got that noon game this year, but I think last year we kind of came out flat in some of those games. We have to have the mentality of getting your work done at night and making sure you get a good night’s rest, preparing yourself maybe a little bit more during the week, so you don’t have to get that last minute study, kind of like cramming for an exam. You want to prepare yourself throughout the week so that when you wake up in the morning, you’re fresh, you’re ready to go, you get to the stadium, and you get out there and start the right way, and [aren’t] flat and have to dig yourself out of a hole.”
The Chiefs barely edged out the Raiders at home during a 2:00 CT start last season, and they lost to Las Vegas at home in 2023 in a matchup that started at noon. Sunday’s contest will be the first of four games that K.C. currently has scheduled to kickoff at noon. The next isn’t until Week 12 against the Indianapolis Colts, which could get flexed if Indianapolis continues its winning ways.
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