Kansas City Chiefs at Las Vegas Raiders: 3 things to watch in Week 11

Kansas City Chiefs at Las Vegas Raiders: 3 things to watch in Week 11

Andy Reid’s record coming off a bye is superb, can the Raiders change that?

One of the truisms in the NFL is that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is always at his best coming off a bye week. The offensive genius supposedly benefits from the additional time to study his opponent’s weaknesses and devise a game plan to take full advantage. While not quite as devious as Bill Belichick, the numbers seem to back up the claim of Reid taking advantage of his extra study time.

Including the postseason, Reid is 24-5 coming off a bye week in his 22-year career as a head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles and Chiefs. Three of those losses have come in his seven years with KC so that speaks to how dominant his Eagles teams were, at least in the regular season.

If we cared enough we could parse through the years and see if some of that is beating up on poor opponents or if he is taking down good teams but the simple fact is Reid’s teams win much more often than they lose after a bye week. The Raiders have been on the wrong end of a few of those defeats in recent years and they will need to be at their best to reverse the trend on Sunday night.

Sweeping a division opponent is hard enough and that is made all the more difficult considering how explosive the Chiefs can be on both sides of the ball. We can tell from the tone of the press conferences this week that the Chiefs respect, and maybe even fear, the Raiders after their win earlier in the year and regardless of the result it’s great to see the rivalry heat up a bit.