The Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers are set to face off in Super Bowl LV, and it's a matchup seemingly everyone is excited for. It will be one of the greatest quarterbacks of all time vs. someone who is looking to take his place in NFL history, and then two defenses that have been playing extremely well as of late. The reason the Chiefs are slight favorites over the Buccaneers in sportsbooks, however, is because of Kansas City's explosive offensive attack -- something that Bucs head coach Bruce Arians is not looking forward to seeing on Super Sunday. These two teams faced off in Week 12, and Arians got a first-hand look at what the best offense in the NFL could do.
"I mean, you go back and you look at the game and what matchups you had," Arians said, via Pro Football Talk. "I'm not really excited playing Tyreek Hill and [Travis] Kelce and [Patrick] Mahomes. That's a formidable challenge, but our guys will be up for it."
In the 27-24 loss the Buccaneers suffered to the Chiefs earlier this season, Mahomes completed 37 of 49 passes for 462 yards and three touchdowns and Kelce caught eight passes for 82 yards. It was Hill who stole the show, however, as he had the best performance of his career -- recording 269 yards and three touchdowns through the air on 13 receptions. The Chiefs jumped out to a 17-0 lead in the first quarter, and never trailed.
You could make the argument that this Buccaneers defense has improved since then, and that this team has in general. That Week 12 loss they suffered to the Chiefs was actually the last time the Bucs lost a game. But what's frightening is that the Chiefs' stars have been playing some of their best ball as of late. In their divisional round matchup against the Cleveland Browns, Hill caught eight passes for 110 yards, and then exploded for 172 yards on nine catches in the conference championship game. His 172 receiving yards were the most in a playoff game in Chiefs history, and it marked his third straight postseason game with over 100 receiving yards. Hill and Kelce also became the first duo to have two games of 100-plus receiving yards in a single postseason.
Super Bowl LV will be advertised as Tom Brady vs. Mahomes, but the real matchup to watch will be the Chiefs offense vs. the Buccaneers defense.
