Tennessee Titans vs Kansas City Chiefs - Previewing the 2020 AFC Championship Game

X-factors

Titans – Jonnu Smith and Jayon Brown

I don’t want to call Jonnu Smith deceptively fast, because he is just flat-out fast. Outside of rookie receiver A.J. Brown, he is the most explosive weapon in the passing game for them. If I was the Chiefs and I needed to prepare for this game, I would commit a lot of my bodies to slow down Derrick Henry and then keep everything in front of me when they want to take those deep shots off play-action, so hitting my dynamic young tight end on crossers of bootlegs or maybe slipping into the flats after faking the split zone could be a great way to gain yards after the catch. We have also seen him boost the offense on screen plays or simply line up in the backfield and taking handoffs.

Defensively, this really is an X-factor, because we don’t even know if Jayon Brown will be available on Sunday. I mentioned the third-year man in one of my latest articles as a highly underrated player and he could be a crucial piece for the Titans once again. While Rashaan Evans has stepped up even more in the absence of his running mate, Brown is better in coverage. Not only will he be put in situations where the ball could be thrown right behind him if he flows too much with the run, but he also needs to carry Kelce down the field on seam routes against two-high shells and if Tennessee brings one of those safeties down, he needs to limit the space between him and the guy in the deep middle.

Chiefs – Mecole Hardman and Chris Jones

On the Chiefs side, I am looking at the guy who I thought gave the team some life after falling down 24-0 against the Texans last weekend. Not only is Hardman big for them in terms of determining field position in the return game, he can be a coverage-killer if the Titans allow him to be. Whether that is taking advantage of safeties having to come down to take away those intermediate completions and him running past them on deeper routes across the field – as I mentioned before – but also if they do decide to keep a safety over the top Tyreek Hill at all times, like we have seen a couple of times in the playoffs now, he could feast on the open space created by that. Of course, he can also be a spark on jet sweeps and screen plays for them.

I usually don’t like using what I think of as star players as X-factors, but in this spot, Chris Jones could be a huge difference-maker. We don’t know for sure about his status for Sunday yet since he was a surprise scratch last week as well, but if he plays he could be the Chiefs most important defensive player on the field. In the last game against the Titans, Jones had a strip-sack on their first possession of the game, as he beat up a double-team. He is an elite pass rusher when healthy and could be the reason Tannehill doesn’t get rid of the ball on those deep play-action passes, but it is also his ability to penetrate in the run game and force Henry to change directions a couple of times.