How one play epitomized all that went wrong for the KC Chiefs in 34-31 loss to Bengals
If you wanted to count the ways the Chiefs’ eight-game winning streak was extinguished in a sobering and perhaps pivotal 34-31 loss on Sunday at Paul Brown Stadium in Cincinnati, you could put together a long list of reasons and/or excuses.
What if the Chiefs didn’t abruptly lose two offensive linemen to injury, one just before the game (Orlando Brown Jr.) and another (Lucas Niang) early into it?
What if Byron Pringle’s 89-yard kickoff return near the end of the first half hadn’t been called back for a holding penalty … or if a moment later Tyreek Hill had been able to hold on to a would-be 64-yard completion pried loose by Vonn Bell? Either way, the Chiefs could have led 35-17 at halftime and changed the dynamics of the rest of the game.
Or how would things have played out if officials hadn’t made a preposterous pass interference call on L’Jarius Sneed on third and 3 from the Cincinnati 21-yard line that propelled the Bengals to their first lead early in the fourth quarter?
And what might have happened if the Chiefs had simply allowed the Bengals to score after they secured first and goal at the 1-yard line at the 2-minute warning in a tie game and thus take their considerable chances on Patrick Mahomes working his magic in the late-game crucible?
For all of that, though, the most exasperating and substantial reason the Chiefs (11-5) lost both the game and their grasp on the top postseason seed in the AFC (the Titans also are 11-5 but hold the tiebreaker by virtue of their 27-3 win over the Chiefs) was one play in particular.
And it was a play that simultaneously symbolized how close they were to a fertile chance to extend their winning streak and how vulnerable they yet remain at anything less than their best despite their vast improvement since a 3-4 start.
Let’s rewind to the crucial crossroads:
In a game the Chiefs led 14-0, the Bengals and superb young quarterback Joe Burrow had cut it to 28-24 on a 69-yard pass to Ja’Marr Chase … who already had a 72-yard TD and clearly was the irresistible force of the day for the Bengals (10-6).
Then the Bengals took their first lead of the game on Burrow’s 5-yard pass to Tyler Boyd, with the Chiefs countering to tie it 31-31 on Harrison Butker’s 34-yard field goal with 6 minutes 1 second left.
The Bengals promptly moved to the Kansas City 41, but a holding penalty, a Chris Jones sack and an incompletion made it third and 27.
Third and 27.
To that point, Chase had 10 catches for 236 yards.
First, do no harm should have been the mantra, and that meant finding some way to smother or swarm or otherwise impede Chase.
Instead, the response verged on one definition of insanity: doing essentially the same thing over and over in coverage and expecting different results.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo came with the zero blitz … and left Chase alone with Charvarius Ward.
That was an island unfit for any one man on Sunday, as we saw much of the game.
And to some degree the 30-yard completion that set up the game-winning field goal was appropriate punishment for the curious miscalculation.
“That (play) hurt,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said after the game. “I’m pretty sure we all want that one back as far as the players, even Spags and the coaches as well.”
Or as a terse Reid put it: “It didn’t work out,” he said, adding that players and coaches all had a piece of the play.
The play also epitomized something else, though: either an unwillingness or inability to adjust in real time to the chaos that Chase and Burrow were unleashing on a Chiefs defense that played its worst game since the fiasco at Tennessee that had stood as a turning point of the season.
“I’m not going to cover that,” Reid said. “We obviously knew he was playing well.”
This loss doesn’t negate the turnaround the Chiefs have engineered, of course.
It just reiterates that the AFC continues to be a wacky race, one that fittingly will come down to the last week of the season when the Chiefs travel to Denver and the Titans play at the Texans and three other teams (Cincinnati, Buffalo and New England) lurk just a game behind. The tie-breaking process could be pushed to its limits.
But even with a bye and home-field advantage at stake, who ends up where in the postseason seeding is secondary to who’s playing the best. And the takeaway from Sunday for the Chiefs is that their surge has been short-circuited by an uncharacteristically bad day.
“If you’re having an off-day,” Mathieu said, players like Chase are “going to be the reason you get exposed.”
Caps should be tipped to the Bengals, to be sure, and we may have just witnessed chapter one of a compelling quarterbacking matchup ahead for years to come.
The Chiefs also lost this game for a lot of reasons of their own making, though, most of all that in a week when Mathieu said the theme had been all about “how to respond” to moments when things went awry they fell far short … especially when it came to trying to solve Chase.
That was on the field, yes, including a distressing return to poor tackling that we hadn’t seen in a long time.
But it also was strategically via Spagnuolo and his staff, who have done so much to reset this team but either misjudged what they were dealing with in their game plan coming in or simply weren’t nimble enough to pivot on Sunday.
“It just felt like today just wasn’t our day,” said Mathieu, noting that when they needed it most “we just couldn’t get off the field.”
In the ever-changing arc of the season, this game could prove to be another crossroads … one for the good if the Chiefs embrace it as a wakeup call and truly learn from it across the board and in the coaching rooms.
“Any loss feels like a letdown … like you’re going 10 steps back,” Mathieu said. “And we just can’t really let that affect us going forward.”
That might sound like a platitude.
But it’s also entirely true that the signature of this season so far has been the Chiefs ability to get better from what goes wrong.
And there sure was a lot of that on Sunday.
“You learn from it, as coaches and players,” Reid said. “That’s all you can do right now.”
This story was originally published January 2, 2022 at 5:54 PM with the headline "How one play epitomized all that went wrong for the KC Chiefs in 34-31 loss to Bengals."