How second-half bungling against Bengals shaped Chiefs’ offseason, reset bigger picture

As Tampa Bay was midway through dismantling the Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV by seizing a 21-6 lead at halftime, Chiefs general manager Brett Veach already had a certain clarity about what was going awry ... and what the most urgent offseason priority would be: rebuilding a ravaged offensive line.

A year later, as the Chiefs led the Bengals 21-10 at halftime of the AFC Championship Game, Veach liked their chances of playing in a third straight Super Bowl.

But even if he hadn’t assumed victory, he couldn’t have forecast how what had been an 18-point lead could unravel into a 27-24 overtime loss. And how that defeat would domino into sweeping and profound offseason changes this time around in the wake of a loss that remains in their craw entering the 2022 season.

“From the top down in the organization, I think we still have a bad taste in our mouth from the AFC Championship Game … (and have) a sense of knowing that to finally put that game behind us you have to get back on the field,” Veach told The Star, adding that part of the “beauty of sports” is the strange twists and unknowns that go into every outcome.

“You hate to be on the wrong side of it, I mean. But I’m sure the (49ers after collapsing in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl LIV) would have said … ‘what happened?’

“It flips sometimes … It’s sometimes unexplainable. Sometimes there’s a series of events that typically never happen. … But that’s the beauty of the game. And that’s why you can never take any of these seasons for granted, games for granted, opportunities for granted.”

The precious and fleeting nature of those opportunities, even relatively early in the Patrick Mahomes Era, is why the Chiefs did the best forensics work they could, analyzed the autopsy and proceeded boldly.

If they did it right, and we think they did, they both extended the promising window implied by the presence of Mahomes and rejuvenated their immediate prospects.

It’s not just that they will feature nine or more new starters when they open the season Sept. 11 at Arizona.

It’s also how they arrived at that: by parting ways with two of their most high-profile and seemingly indispensable players, safety Tyrann Mathieu and receiver Tyreek Hill, working to become dramatically younger overall, quicker on defense and presumably more versatile on offense.

All while becoming more financially flexible, as best exemplified by the trade of Hill for five draft picks when his contractual demands became untenable in a grand scheme that included needing to fill other vital needs.

It remains to be seen how quickly this might coalesce with a defense that could call frequently on a half-dozen rookies and a passing game hinging greatly on the performance of largely veteran-but-new-to KC receivers.

For that matter, the Chiefs have a thorny schedule and figure to be challenged just to win a geometrically improved AFC West — much less play in a fifth straight conference title game and earn a berth in a third Super Bowl in four years.

But wherever they’re headed will be informed by the second half of the Cincinnati game, which was, in fact, their second bungled second half against the Bengals in a matter of weeks after otherwise not losing since Oct 24.

If it all comes together going forward, which their contemporary track record under Veach and coach Andy Reid suggests is likely, it will be in the context of addressing their immediate past:

How they could have gone from amassing 311 yards in the first half to just 83 in the second half and overtime … and how they sabotaged themselves with bizarre offensive sequences at the end of each half, including failing to score on two plays from the 1-yard-line with a chance to virtually KO the Bengals by halftime … and their inability to sack quarterback Joe Burrow, who was taken down nine times the previous week and seven in the Super Bowl, more than once.

Beyond the tangible changes the collapse provoked, no doubt it all has weighed plenty on the Chiefs, from Reid automatically taking the blame for putting Mahomes in bad positions to defensive tackle Chris Jones months later immediately bringing up the motivation of letting Burrow out of his grasp when he was asked a broader question about last season to, of course, Mahomes himself.

True to typical form, particularly in the postseason, Mahomes had been virtually unstoppable in the first half against the Bengals only to become stunningly off-kilter after halftime. He threw two interceptions, including one that ended the Chiefs overtime drive and set up the Bengals game-winning kick, and he was sacked twice late in regulation with the Chiefs on the verge of scoring a late go-ahead touchdown.

After the game, he would say “I put that (loss) on myself.” And he seems to have lived to purge that about ever since.

Asked a few weeks ago how Mahomes had responded, Reid hurried to say “phenomenal” and that Mahomes is “leading the charge.”

Asked about his own sense of motivation in the aftermath of the game, Mahomes put it this way:

“You have to be motivated, especially how we lost the game,” he said. “You think going into half, even after not scoring at the end of the half, you think you have all the momentum, and they haven’t stopped you. And to not play the way you wanted to play in the second half, it motivates you. …

“It’s one thing when you lose and you play a great game you end up losing anyways. But when you feel like you didn’t execute and play at your highest level, and that helped cause the loss, I think that gives you the motivation to come in and kind of prove to everybody we’re still the team in the AFC and that we can go out there and still win.”

To some degree, resolving that day and pushing off from it also is a matter of sheer scheming, part of the ever-changing games within the games of the NFL and thus also part of the ebb-and-flow of last season for the Chiefs. But at least to hear the Chiefs tell it, that loss was less about being confounded by anything Cincinnati did than self-inflicted trouble.

“I mean, they didn’t change much of what they did in the first half to the second,” Mahomes said. “But I think we just didn’t execute at a high enough level. When teams play that kind of drop eight/man coverage, if you’re not executing and getting those completions and going down there and making those big chunk gains, they’re going to stay in it.

“And I thought the first half, we did that. In the second half, we didn’t, and they just stayed in that same coverage.”

Change of coverages or not, the Bengals smothered the Chiefs’ offense after halftime while exposing their defensive vulnerabilities.

So … were they just better than the Chiefs overall? Better strategy and adjustments? Simply a bad matchup for the Chiefs? A bad day? Quirks of fate? Some combination of all of the above?

Reid added another dimension for consideration as he pondered the question sitting in his Missouri Western dorm room during training camp in St. Joseph.

The longer he spoke, the more he seemed to point to a collective lost sense of urgency after halftime.

“We didn’t do very well the second half, and that starts with me,” he said. “And I’ve got to feel a definite responsibility for that, which I do. And I’ve talked to enough guys and listened to enough guys after the game that all stood up and said, ‘I should have done this better and this better and this better.’ …

“I know (Mahomes at the time) mentioned being conservative or whatever. Whatever it is, I’m not going to get into that here, but I have a pretty good feel what went on. We’ll learn from it and get better.”

Asked what he’d learned and whether it was about something mental or physical, Reid said “they go together.” Then he turned toward a “certain attitude, certain edge that you’ve got to maintain.”

He added, “You’ve got to be able to say, ‘I’m wrong, I was wrong, to do that.’ And not hide it. Not mask it. We’ve kind of done that.”

Reid didn’t elaborate more specifically.

But it might be surmised that reiterating the need for that edge and attitude animated a particularly fierce training camp.

Just as the need to atone for and amend that shattering second half spurred an offseason of great change in pursuit of elements suddenly found wanting or simply missing altogether.

Because what Mahomes said after the game about “anything less than” winning the Super Bowl being below the standard remains true for the Chiefs.

It’s just that now they have to demonstrate that anew after the epic cave-in.

Somewhat like the loss to Tampa Bay the year before, it has all the appearances of ultimately galvanizing them for the season ahead. But this also was a far more ambitious production.

And its success can’t really be measured until the Chiefs stand at the same crossroads again and either do or don’t dictate the “series of events that typically never happen” that they couldn’t last time around.

The Star’s Jesse Newell contributed to this column.