My old college football head coach used to always walk in on Fridays before the game with a list of keys to winning the matchup the following day. While lots of things would change week-to-week, one was always near the top of the list.

Takeaways.

Oftentimes, whoever wins the turnover battle wins the football game. I read a statistic somewhere that backs this up. In the National Football League during the 2016 season, teams that won the turnover battle won the football game nearly 80% of the time.

It’s important.

Yes, I know it is imperative every week. But this week more than ever, I believe turnovers will be the difference in winning the ball game for the Packers.

Green Bay (7-1) travels to take on the Kansas City Chiefs (4-4) this weekend at Arrowhead Stadium. I will be there. I can’t wait.

The Chiefs haven’t been at their best to start the season – we all know that. The preseason favorites to win the Super Bowl just snuck by the Giants on Monday night to get back to .500 on the year.

A large part of the team’s struggles? Turnovers.

Kansas City has a league-leading 19 turnovers through eight games. On top of that, the squad has allowed 43 points off the turnovers and only scored 10 points off its own defensive takeaways. Former MVP Patrick Mahomes has thrown 10 interceptions.

Despite the turnovers, I’m hesitant to buy into the narrative that the Chiefs won’t turn it around at some point. It would not shock me to see the Super Bowl Chiefs show up on Sunday instead of the struggling version that we’ve seen so far.

If that does happen, we might need the Packers offense to get back to its 2020 version.

And we’ll need the Packers defense to force some turnovers.

The Packers are tied for third in defensive takeaways with 14 so far this season. It’s been a much-improved defensive unit, despite all the injuries.

After a massive 24-21 victory over the Cardinals on Thursday, the Packers will need to dig deep again in order to pull out another victory over a good team for the second straight week.

It’s all about the takeaways.

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Gunnar Davis is a lifelong Packers fan and a recent graduate of Simpson College, where he was a 3-year letterwinner on the offensive line and graduated with a degree in multimedia communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @Gunnar57Davis.

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