Big plays on defense helped Chiefs hold off the Dolphins. So where did that come from?
Before Sunday afternoon’s game in Miami, the Chiefs had recorded just one sack in their previous three outings. in beating the Dolphins 33-27, they racked up four.
The Kansas City franchise last recorded a safety in 2016. Chris Jones ended that drought with one of those sacks of Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa in the third quarter.
Tagovailoa hadn’t thrown an interception yet in this, his rookie season. Chiefs safety Tyrann Mathieu came up with his season-leading sixth pick in the second quarter.
On a day of big plays, the KC defense turned in its share and was a key building block in a victory that clinched an AFC West title for the fifth straight year and improved the Chiefs’ record to 12-1 for the first time in team history.
The defense helped the Chiefs overcome a 10-0 deficit and take a 30-10 lead into the fourth quarter. The final points in that run came as Jones roared toward Tagovailoa on a twist that opened the path for a safety. If Jones hadn’t gotten there, two other Chiefs would have gotten the sack.
But Mathieu, who snared his pick when Rashad Fenton broke up a pass, instead focused on the Chiefs’ inability to close out the contest.
“In the end it’s all about the end result,” Mathieu said. “It’s about whether we won or lost. I felt like defensively we kind of let the team down in a way, giving up 17 points in the fourth quarter.
“Any time we have we have the opportunity to close the coffin on teams, we have to do that. We’re coming to January football and lot of those (playoff) games are going to come down whether we finish the games defensively.”
Chiefs coach Andy Reid and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes didn’t share Mathieu’s assessment, at least not all of it.
“The pressure on the quarterback was good — the defensive line did some nice things,” Reid said. “Until the fourth quarter, we had a pretty good thing going.”
Mahomes passed for 393 yards, the sixth-most productive game of his career. But he also threw three interceptions, matching a career high. Two of his picks came in the first quarter on deflected passes. On the Chiefs’ early possession that didn’t end in an interception, he took a 30-yard sack.
The defense was quickly back on the field.
“It’s 80 degrees outside and I’m putting the defense back on the field over and over again and they’re finding ways to get stops and keeping us in the game so the offense could get going,” Mahomes said.
The final figures: The Dolphins finished with 367 total yards but netted 178 in the fourth quarter. The Chiefs’ defense was tiring at that point, but with a 33-24 lead, Mathieu, Jones and their defensive teammates still kept Miami out of the end zone on its final gasp, forcing a field goal.
That meant the Chiefs only had to recover an onside kick to end the game, which they did.
In the end, the Dolphins’ yardage and point totals amounted to roughly what the Chiefs had allowed, on average, in their previous four games. But on Sunday the defense added some big plays to the mix.
This story was originally published December 13, 2020 at 4:55 PM.