The New England Patriots know that anything less than an "A" performance probably won't be good enough to leave Arrowhead Stadium with an upset win over the Kansas City Chiefs.
The undefeated Chiefs are the defending Super Bowl champions and coming off an impressive Monday night win over another top AFC contender in the Baltimore Ravens.
Kansas City's offense is off to a red-hot start as well. The Chiefs are scoring 30.3 points per game and superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes has thrown for 898 yards with nine touchdowns and zero interceptions.
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This Week 4 matchup is going to be an enormous test for the Patriots pass defense. Veteran safety Devin McCourty emphasized Wednesday that New England's famous "Do Your Job" mantra will need to be on full display Sunday afternoon.
"It's a huge challenge to go against this offense. They do a lot of things really well," McCourty said in a video press conference. "They have speed everywhere -- you know the guys. Obviously, with the speed everywhere they still have one of the best tight ends in football in (Travis) Kelce. They're just tough to go against. They found a perfect match of having skill guys and speed, and a quarterback who can keep plays alive, but also smart and keeps his eyes down field and throw some deep routes and is very accurate when he does it.
"They're going to give us a lot of different issues that we'll have to rise up and play -- like we always talk about here, this is a classic 'Do Your Job' game. Everyone has a task, everyone is going to have a guy (to cover), everyone is going to have to do something. We're not going to be able to say, put three guys on Kelce, two guys on (Tyreek) Hill, we don't have enough guys for that. Each guy who's going to take the field for us Sunday on defense is going to have to show up and do their job at a high level."
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The Patriots have played one elite quarterback so far this season in Seahawks star Russell Wilson, and he carved up New England's pass defense in a 35-30 Week 2 victory for Seattle.
Wilson completed 21 of 28 passes for 288 yards with five touchdowns and one interception. Three of those touchdown passes were 21 yards or longer, highlighted by a perfectly thrown 54-yard strike to wide receiver D.K. Metcalf.
Mahomes, like Wilson, can make every throw from the pocket, and when he escapes the pass rush he's still deadly accurate on the run.
The Patriots did fairly well slowing down Mahomes in Week 14 last season when he threw for 283 yards with one touchdown and one interception in a 23-16 Chiefs win at Gillette Stadium.
If New England's defense is able to give a similar performance on Sunday afternoon, Bill Belichick's team should have a chance to pull off the win in the fourth quarter.