Here’s key reason why Chiefs need Mahomes to play on Saturday

Quick, what’s the difference between Kansas City (13-1), Las Vegas (2-12), New England (3-11) and the New York Giants (2-12)? Well, among that quartet — the NFL’s only four clubs that haven’t scored more than 30 points in a game this season — the Chiefs have Patrick Mahomes. Or at least they thought they did.

Kansas City received encouraging news on Tuesday. Just 48 hours after limping off the field with a high-ankle sprain last week in Cleveland, Mahomes was a full participant at Chiefs practice.

“The reason you play this game is to push to play,” Mahomes said as the Chiefs began early preparations to host the Texans (9-5) on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, NBC). “So, I’ll get to work at practice and try to push it to see where I can get to. But at the end of the day, I’m not going to put our team in a bad position. So, if I feel like I can play and go out there and win a football game, I’ll play.

“I’ll push myself to be in the best place possible over these next couple of days and we’ll be able to make a decision then.”

That decision is even more important when weighing the painfully close prospect of securing the only first-round bye in the AFC playoffs. If Mahomes can play through the injury and outscore the Texans on Saturday, then somehow help the Chiefs beat the Steelers four days later – the Chiefs would nail down homefield advantage, clinching the conference’s best record and homefield advantage throughout the playoffs.

That’s critical considering that if the Chiefs can find a way to win the next two games, their regular-season finale in Denver becomes meaningless. In other words, Mahomes could rest his ankle for three weeks entering their divisional-round playoff in Kansas City. Head coach Andy Reid needed only six words to summarize the situation.

“If he can go, he’ll go.”

If he goes, the Chiefs don’t need Mahomes to produce a lot of scoring drives. According to John Breech, Kansas City is the first team since the 1925 Frankford Yellow Jackets to reach 13 wins in a season without scoring 31-or-more points in a game. And Steve Spagnuolo’s unit enters Saturday ranked fifth in both total defense (306.9 yards per game) and scoring defense (18.5 points per game).

For more information on the Chiefs and Texans, visit the Kansas City and Houston team pages at ProFootballPost.com.