NFL Picks Week 1: Kansas City Chiefs Will Run Past Buffalo Bills

The most important player on most NFL teams is the quarterback—and Matt Cassel is a good one—but the Kansas City Chiefs know that their bread is buttered with Jamaal Charles and a superb rushing attack.

And Charles will be the star of the show in the season opener against the Buffalo Bills.

Last season, Charles led the Chiefs to a surprise AFC West Division championship. He put up video-game numbers, averaging an NFL-best 6.4 yards per carry while finishing second in the league with 1,467 yards and adding five rushing touchdowns.  

As a team, the Chiefs led the NFL in rushing with over 164 yards per game.

The Bills, meanwhile, had the worst run defense in the NFL. They allowed nearly 170 yards per game on the ground in 2010, though they did make improvements to the defensive line to upgrade the run defense—rookie Marcell Dareus will be a big boost, literally and figuratively.

But all those changes will not be enough for the Bills to prevent Charles and the Chiefs from running all over them.

As Matt Williamson of ESPN.com wrote, the additions that the Bills made do not help against a running back like Charles.

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The Bills' defense was awful against the run last season, but I am betting that it improved with the drafting of Marcell Dareus and some other additions. I expect the run defense to be particularly stout up the middle, where Dareus, Kyle Williams and Nick Barnett play. However, the changes might not pay off big against the Chiefs because Jamaal Charles is such a great runner outside the tackles. (sic)

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The Bills will get better against the run this season, if for no other reason than it will be hard for them to be much worse, but those results will not be seen in Week 1.

The Chiefs will look to establish the run, especially early on, and use that to open up the passing game. Cassel will have an efficient game, similar to the kind of game that he played last season, but when all is said and done, the difference in this game will be the speed of Jamaal Charles.