Kansas City, Mo. – Besides being some of the best pass-catchers in the NFL, what do Terrell Owens, Antonio Gates, Randy Moss and Santana Moss have in common? They’re also some of the luckiest. They got to play against Kansas City.
Working against a leaky secondary the Chiefs spent millions of dollars to upgrade, all of them went over 100 yards, and Gates unfurled the finest game of his career with 145 yards and three touchdowns.
But that was still short of the 171 yards Owens gained for Philadelphia and the 173 Santana Moss piled up for Washington.
Oakland coach Norv Turner points out correctly that the Chiefs have been confronted by some of the league’s most dangerous receivers.
So won’t Kerry Collins be slinging the ball all over Arrowhead Stadium in the Oakland Raiders’ AFC West rematch with Kansas City today?
“We’re just going to be the most balanced offense we can be,” said Collins, who has a career-high 91.3 quarterback rating and is much too smart to tip off the game plan. “Norv is going to throw the ball. He likes to throw the ball. But we feel the key to what we do is running the ball and being balanced.”
The Chiefs (4-3) got the best of the Raiders (3-4) 23-17 in Oakland on Sept. 18 when Sammy Knight broke up a pass in the end zone on fourth-and-6 from the Kansas City 10-yard line.
But since, the Raiders have won three of five while the Chiefs have gone 2-3. Collins, even though Randy Moss has been slowed by injury, has thrown 10 touchdowns and only two interceptions.
“We’ve gotten better since then,” Collins said. “We’ve continued to work hard and gotten better.”
The injury-prone Chiefs are having trouble figuring out whether they’re good, bad or somewhere in between. They followed their best effort of the year, a 30-20 win at Miami, with one of their worst, a 28-20 loss last week at San Diego.
Adding to their worries was a lengthy injury list that included starting cornerbacks Patrick Surtain and Eric Warfield and running back Priest Holmes, who went to California at midweek to get a second opinion on the head trauma that took him out of the Chargers game.
Larry Johnson is ready to step in for Holmes, if necessary.
