Sunday's AFC Championship is true heavyweight clash, featuring the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs and the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens.
Reigning NFL and Super Bowl MVP Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes is playing as well as ever in the postseason. He is the first quarterback ever with no sacks and no turnovers in three consecutive playoff starts. That streak began in last season's Super Bowl against the Philadelphia Eagles, who led the league in sacks, and has continued against the Miami Dolphins and Buffalo Bills this postseason. Zooming out even further to last postseason, Mahomes has 10 passing touchdowns and no interceptions in his last five playoff games.
However, Mahomes and Kansas City will be missing one of the crucial components to that success in 2023 First-Team All-Pro left guard Joe Thuney. He injured a pectoral muscle late in the Chief's AFC Divisional Round win at the Buffalo Bills last week, and Kansas City ruled him out this week. That injury is massive. Thuney had the best Pro Football Focus pass-blocking grade among guards this season (83.4) while allowing only three sacks and 29 pressures while playing in all 17 regular season games.
In Kansas City's two postseason games, he has been nearly perfect, allowing no quarterback pressures and no sacks. Thuney has been the rock for the Chiefs offensive line:
- 30 straight games without a holding penalty, including playoffs (1,844 snaps in span)
- 17 straight games without a false start (including playoffs)
- 10 straight games without allowing a sack (including playoffs)
His absence will be felt up front against the NFL's number one defense. The 2023 Ravens are the first team in NFL history to lead and/or co-lead the league in scoring defense (16.5 points per game allowed), sacks (60) and takeaways (31, tied for the most in the NFL with the New York Giants) all in the same season.
Baltimore's sacks leader this season is Pro Bowl and Second-Team All-Pro defensive tackle Justin Madubuike, whose 13.0 sacks paced the Ravens in the regular season while ranking ninth-most in the entire league as well as the most among interior defensive linemen in 2023. If Thuney were healthy, he would be matched up directly across from Madubuike for most of Sunday afternoon.
Instead, that responsibility will likely fall to fifth-year veteran NIck Allegretti. He was a seventh-round pick of the Chiefs in 2019 out of Illinois, so he has been around for both of the Chiefs' Super Bowl wins. Allegretti also started in Kansas City's 31-9 Super Bowl LV loss against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers that concluded the 2020 season, a game in which he allowed a postseason career-high six quarterback pressures. Mahomes was pressured on a career-high 55.4% of his dropbacks that day. That game was Allegretti's third and final playoff start for the Chiefs because the very next offseason Kansas City went out and signed Thuney away from the New England Patriots in a free agency on a five-year, $80 million contract.
This season, Allegretti has played only 93 offensive snaps, allowing just one pressure. His only start of 2023 was the Chiefs' meaningless Week 18 regular season finale at the Los Angeles Chargers, a game in which Mahomes and many Kansas City starters sat out. Since the start of the 2022 season, Allegretti has allowed one sack and eight quarterbacks pressures in 253 offensive snaps.
It would behoove Mahomes and the Chiefs to design a majority of their passing plays to get the ball out of their quarterback's right hand quickly if they want to earn a return trip to the Super Bowl.
