The Chiefs are 13-3 and just beat the Broncos yet again. So why are we a bit concerned?
With a stiff-arming 27-24 win over Denver on Sunday, the Chiefs improved to 13-3 to keep hovering in contention for the coveted No. 1 seed in the AFC with a 15th straight victory over the Broncos.
Plenty to appreciate heading into the final week of the regular season.
Then again …
The very same Chiefs bungled another point-after touchdown attempt when holder Tommy Townsend lost his grip on the snap and had a Harrison Butker field-goal attempt blocked. They fumbled yet another punt, this one by Kadarius Toney, and lost more potential points when Patrick Mahomes was picked off in the end zone while forcing a play.
Plenty to fret about here down the stretch, too, as it happens.
What you see here is in the eye of the beholder, in other words, and you could also focus on exactly what it is you prefer to interpret from the incongruous images.
A win is a win is a win, you could say.
Or you could get in the fetal position worrying about how what the Chiefs mustered against a 4-12 Broncos team, with an interim head coach, will play in games against the best of the best.
But the context of this continuing pattern only really matters in terms of what it portends in the postseason — something we’ll only know in hindsight no matter how much you think you have clarity now.
The hunch here is that the Chiefs have the means to engage a more compelling gear in the postseason … with one caveat:
They can’t keep pretending their special teams play will just magically get better. It’s time for them to apply “first, do no harm” to that phase of the game, from immediately doing whatever is necessary to get more reliable holds for Butker to rethinking their philosophy on the risk-reward of punt returns with the No. 1 offense in the NFL.
Solve that, and you’ve got this:
As much as this team seems unable to bear prosperity against lesser foes and appears drawn to playing with fire and remains prone to some of the same issues over and over again, it’s never lost a playoff game before the AFC Championship Game in the Mahomes Era.
That suggests coach Andy Reid and Co. know something about pacing themselves late in the season and emerging in the postseason.
For that matter, it bears reiterating that two seasons ago the Chiefs became the first NFL team to win six straight games by six points or fewer (and then make it seven) in a late-season run that included three narrow victories against teams with a combined record of 14-34.
That team went on to make a return to the Super Bowl … albeit one in which it was thrashed 31-9 by Tampa Bay.
After playing host to four straight AFC Championship Games, of course, the bar isn’t just getting back to the Super Bowl.
It’s about winning it again, lest the Chiefs squander another year of their dynastic ambitions with the transformational Mahomes at the helm.
Toward that end, of course you’d rather go into the playoffs overrunning everyone. But the last and only NFL team to go unscathed through an entire season was the 1972 Miami Dolphins.
This isn’t about being perfect, in other words, but navigating the ebb and flow of the season to peak at the right time … which isn’t so much the end of the regular season as in the playoffs themselves.
“You’d like to be in rhythm,” Reid said. “I’m not overly concerned about it. I think when that time comes, we’ve got to do it. We’ll be there, ready to go.
“So I think you have to respect what the guys are doing right now. … So you evaluate who we’re playing and how we’re going about our business against those teams and winning games.”
Certainly not seamlessly, and hardly by enough to let fans exhale.
Not when special teams gaffes left the Chiefs vulnerable once more.
And not when Mahomes misfired on six straight passes to open the second half. That shrouded his day even as he threw for 328 yards and three touchdowns and went over 5,000 yards for the season.
He was so off-rhythm at times that it only seemed logical that he was out of sync because he was compensating for a hit that left him limping in the first half. Mahomes, who wouldn’t be apt to invoking an injury as an excuse, instead said he simply lost his mechanics.
“There’s some plays that he’d definitely like to have back, but that’s how picky we are, right?” Reid said. “You start nitpicking these things. As he does.”
For his part, Reid at least publicly was projecting Alfred E. Neuman mode: What, me worry?
As Reid tried to sum up the day, he paused for about three seconds before calling it “a good game,” but “up and down a bit,” with “some lulls offensively.” The defense, he noted, had four sacks and a pivotal interception by L’Jarius Sneed.
Somewhat incorrectly, though, he initially said special teams “were working pretty good there” with the exception of the blocked field goal.
Asked later about Toney’s fumble and Townsend’s troubles on holds (which isn’t the first time that’s come up), Reid said it was a good lesson for Toney to remember to keep the ball in his outside arm and simply said Townsend’s handling of the snap “ended up being not so good.”
When Reid downplays matters like that, it bears mention that he’s speaking to the team as much as he is to fans and isn’t one to call out players publicly.
For that matter, he’s not one to give away how he plans to fix problems.
“We have stuff that we need to work on” was about as strong and direct as it got on Sunday.
That and “you can’t have the mistakes once you get in the playoffs.”
Whether they’re capable of purging that element of their game will be the signature on this paradoxical portrait. And how much of the conflicting way we see this team now is about nitpicking, and how much is about defining potentially fatal flaws.
