The Kansas City Chiefs knew that Jackie Battle had a good day yesterday. That much was obvious. But when Football Outsiders’ Vince Verhel crunched the numbers and analyzed the metrics for Sunday’s games, Battle’s performance made him took note. In fact, he called it one of his three big surprises of the day.
Verhel writes, “Battle had 118 rushing yards in his first four seasons in Kansas City; he had 119 rushing yards against Indianapolis. In pure rushing value, he was actually the top running back in all of football. Twelve of his 19 runs gained 4 yards or more, including seven first downs and four runs of at least 10 yards. He had five runs with fewer than 10 yards needed for a first down and converted four of those opportunities. The fifth was a 2-yard gain on second-and-5.”
The Chiefs could definitely use an encore performance coming up in the schedule with so many significant divisional competitions coming up and other games against the Patriots, Packers, Steelers and more. It’s going to be a long stretch coming up for KC, but hopefully Battle has shown that the Chiefs are better off in their backfield than they realized.