With awakened offense in romp over Raiders, KC Chiefs are peaking at the perfect time
Ten games into the 2019 season, you may recall, the Chiefs suffered an excruciating 35-32 loss at Tennessee that left them 6-4 and called into serious question whether the revamped defense remained their Achilles’ heel.
You know what happened next: The defense morphed into an asset in nine straight wins and the franchise’s first Super Bowl in 50 years.
Less alarming but still halting to a degree, at this time a year ago they were in the middle of a seven-game streak of wins by six points or fewer (inside a 10-game overall winning streak) that left some fretting they weren’t winning by enough (!) or the right way. Then, presto, on to their second straight Super Bowl berth —albeit ending in misery.
Every season is its own unique story, of course, full of its own distinct dynamics and ebb and flow and ups and downs.
But maybe we should have realized all along that that recent past could well be prologue under a future Pro Football Hall of Fame coach surrounded by much the same trusted cast highlighted by the transformational Patrick Mahomes.
Since even if they’ve gotten where they have now by a more circuitous and at-times unsettling route than we anticipated, and even if there are some asterisks to be attached to the moment and X-factors ahead, the Chiefs stand 9-4 after clobbering the Raiders 48-9 on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
In the process, they barged back onto anyone’s list of Super Bowl contenders as a team that suddenly looks quite complete.
“There’s a feeling of we’re coming together and figuring each other out and learning how to play complementary football,” Mahomes said after completing 20 of 24 passes for 258 yards and two touchdowns. “But every team’s different, every season’s different; you’re going to face challenges and adversity together.
“We faced a lot of adversity early in the year (that) people hadn’t seen, and people kind of threw us down and acted like we were done. But you’re seeing now that we have the guys to do it. If we come together as a team and take it day by day, we can go out there and do what we want to do.”
Certainly, that was what they did on Sunday with the most lopsided victory over the Raiders (6-7) in the history of the rivalry, a win made all the more memorable considering the Raiders’ ill-conceived decision to derisively convene on the Chiefs’ logo at midfield before the game.
“I guess the success we had today was warranted,” said a smiling Josh Gordon, who scored his first touchdown as a Chief.
More seriously, though, the victory also was underscored by a different sort of motivational point: the absence of cornerback L’Jarius Sneed, whose brother was stabbed and killed on Friday in his hometown of Minden, Louisiana.
He was “on everyone’s minds,” said Mike Hughes, who replaced Sneed in the starting lineup and set the tone by returning a fumble for a touchdown on the first play from scrimmage, reflecting what Tyrann Mathieu called starting the game with “some L’Jarius energy.”
The result was an outcome that has to have the Chiefs on everyone’s minds again now as they move back to “who we thought we could be,” Mathieu said.
With six wins in a row, they appear once more on trajectory toward a deep postseason run. So much so they surely are sending a shudder through the rest of the fickle AFC, at least as they head to Los Angeles to play the Chargers on Thursday in the most pivotal game of the rest of the regular season.
Because after mostly merely finding ways to salvage wins or being buoyed by the defense, they served notice on Sunday of emerging as the well-rounded, complementary team they must be to reach a third straight Super Bowl.
And all it seemed to take was the offense not sabotaging itself with the uncharacteristic dropped passes, penalties and turnovers that have made it appear a shadow of itself much of the season.
“I’ve been saying with the defense playing the way that they’re playing, if the offense can play like we’ve been known to do we’re going to be a tough team to beat,” Mahomes said.
Indeed, the hints of this surge have been there for weeks even if they were dulled by anxieties about the sputtering of a previously remarkably high-octane offense with Mahomes at the helm.
Never mind that the defense was bristling to keep them not just afloat but on course. And forget that by any logic the offense conceptualized by Reid, one of the great offensive minds in NFL history, and animated by Mahomes was highly likely to find itself once it became more adjusted to an entirely new offensive line and stopped a truly bizarre spree of dropped passes.
(Which didn’t happen once on Sunday, incidentally, though some might have figured Travis Kelce could have caught an early pass on which he appeared to be interfered with.)
Because we’ve been spoiled by the last few seasons, including the Chiefs at one point winning 25 of 26 games started by Mahomes, it was almost as if winning some other way than via a breathtaking performance by Mahomes somehow didn’t even count.
Or as if narrow wins built on defense over the Giants (4-9) or Green Bay without Aaron Rodgers were meaningless.
But it turns out that was the start of a paramount defensive rebirth. Since giving up 203 points in their first seven games (coincidentally again with a loss at Tennessee both the low point and apparent springboard), the Chiefs have given up a total of 65 since.
That sustained the Chiefs while Mahomes and the offense worked to get back their groove or swagger or whatever you want to call it.
But the Chiefs can’t be complacent or stay static now. They’ll either get better or get worse from here.
And the game against the Chargers (8-5), who beat the Chiefs at Arrowhead in Week 3, will be a great gauge of how much of this reset is here for the duration or fool’s gold predicated on two swampings of the Raiders (41-14 last month in Las Vegas).
That’s still a matter of conjecture.
But the track record of Andy Reid and his staff, its harmony with the resourceful front office and the nucleus intact from back-to-back Super Bowl berths is part of the DNA of this team that can’t be dismissed.
And like those last two teams, this one is peaking when it matters most ... and giving us ample reason to think it’s who this team really is.
This story was originally published December 12, 2021 at 5:44 PM with the headline "With awakened offense in romp over Raiders, KC Chiefs are peaking at the perfect time."