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The Chiefs are winning games with their defense by allowing fewer than 12 points per contest over the past four. Earlier this season, it looked as if it would be years before the Chiefs would be competitive on defense; but if this keeps up, every game they play the rest of the way is winnable. It is troublesome that the offense has one game in the past five with more than 20 points; one bad day for the defense could blow up all the Chiefs' plans if that continues. -- Adam Teicher

Led by Chris Jones, the Chiefs piled up five sacks in their Week 11 win over Cowboys. It was a nice change of pace for the Kansas City defense, which entered the day with just 14 sacks in its first 10 games. Jones is the unquestioned star of the unit, but Steve Spagnuolo now has a collection of seasoned pass rushers to do his bidding. In Jones, Jarran Reed, Melvin Ingram and Frank Clark, the Chiefs now deploy four players in their front seven who have registered a 10-sack season in their respective careers. If they can continue to cook up pressure on the quarterback, good things will continue to happen.

They come off their bye as the team in the AFC that nobody wants to play. The defense is getting things turned around. They have a big division game with Denver this week.

Winners of four straight, they better hit ground (still) running coming off bye week. Its AFC West lead just one game, Kansas City could just about make a sixth consecutive division title a reality by sweeping through the next three games -- all against divisional foes, the first two (Denver, Las Vegas) at Arrowhead Stadium.

Problem area: Defensive sub packages. A month ago, we could have simply put the entire defense here, but the Chiefs have made an impressive turnaround in the three games preceding their bye. Defensive questions remain, however, particularly with their nickel or dime packages and when safety Daniel Sorensen is on the field. Sorensen's playing time has dropped from the first half of the season (he played more than 90 percent of the defensive snaps in Weeks 1-5 and has played about 50 percent in the past two games), but we should expect opposing offenses to continue to try to exploit the Chiefs' pass defense when he's on the field.