Thinking back about the game, you have to love the combined effort of the offense and defense. The offense cruised early with great play calling and even better execution. With respect to the latter, Brown slowing down to give James the time to make the key block and James making a perfect block were just excellent.
Then, after the unfortunate Ben interception that gave the Dolphins a glimmer of hope toward the end of the half and some energy on offense, the defense came up with big plays on three Miami drives. Even absent the big defensive plays, the defense stopped the Miami running game and held the Miami passing game to a lot of short passes and few yards after catch.
I also liked that, although we did slow our offense after the big lead, we still played somewhat aggressively on offense and defense. Special teams were not good, but were not terrible either.
Finally, the best aspect of this game in my mind was the number of different players with key contributions: Ben, Bell, Brown, James, Shazier, Harrison, Dupree, Pouncey, DeCastro. This does not even include the defensive line. When a team has that many players making key contributions, it is difficult to beat them and will also make it more difficult for the next opponent to game plan. For example, if you are KC reviewing film from this game, how do you decide who to stop on offense or who to avoid on defense.
This weekend in KC will be a tougher challenge, but if we can play even 80% as well as today and assuming Ben is fine, we have a great chance of winning.
