Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Willie Gay may have given the Cincinnati Bengals the fuel they needed heading into the AFC Championship at Arrowhead Stadium with his latest comments.
Just three days from the game that determines who will represent the AFC in Super Bowl LVII, Gay was very blunt when answering a reporter’s question of what impresses him about the Bengals’ offense.
“Nothing,” Gay replied with a stern look.
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It’s a budding rivalry between these two powerhouses, and Gay’s comments certainly show that. He was on the field in last year’s AFC Championship where Joe Burrow and the Bengals came back to defeat the Chiefs and move on to the Super Bowl.
This Sunday, Round 2 is set on the same stage as last year in Kansas City.
While Gay doesn’t want to hype up his opponent, the numbers do speak for themselves when it comes to Cincinnati’s offense. They were seventh in the NFL this season with 26.1 points averaged per game and eighth in total yards per game at 360.5.
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A lot of those yards come from Burrow’s arm; the Bengals were fifth in the league with 265.0 passing yards per contest. But despite struggling to run the ball consistently in the regular season, the Bengals are getting 111.5 yards on the ground in two postseason games thus far.
Last week in the 27-10 win over the Buffalo Bills, the runs in the snowy conditions of Orchard Park were key to offensive success for the road team. Joe Mixon led the way with 105 yards on 20 carries with a touchdown while the team rushed for 172 yards to the Bills’ 64.
Gay knows the Bengals are going to try to establish the run, and as a middle linebacker, it’s his job to shut it down.
“Stop the run for sure. You know they’re going to try to do that to act like they can big-boy us. Front six, seven are definitely going to do our job to slow that down,” he said.
The Bengals were able to defeat the Chiefs in Cincinnati during the regular season, 27-24, after Samaje Perine – not Mixon – rushed for 106 yards on 21 yards as Burrow threw for 286 yards and two touchdowns while rushing for one as well.
The trash talk was already started, too, by Bengals players who were dubbing Kansas City’s home field “Burrowhead.” Burrow has never lost to the Chiefs in his young career, including that playoff matchup last season.
Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce recently addressed that on his “New Heights” podcast, saying, “Maybe we’re going to have to break it this week because a lot of Cincinnati Bengals fans are calling it ‘Burrowhead’ instead of Arrowhead. They’re throwing a lot of bulletin-board material out there.”
The same could be said about Gay’s “nothing” comment, but at the end of the day, the linebacker took a line from head coach Andy Reid.
“Like Coach Reid says, we don’t do no talking. We go handle business when it’s time to go,” Gay said.
The game at Arrowhead will kick off at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday.
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