The Kansas City Chiefs’ peak offense is still quite good. Can we see it more often?
Patrick Mahomes walked to the post-game lectern, more eagerly than weeks previous, ready to unfold a 48-9 Chiefs thrashing of the Raiders.
So eager, in fact, that he arrived a bit too soon.
Coach Andy Reid is the man at the front of that line, and he had not yet delivered his remarks after the game. Informed of that, Mahomes stuck around on stage anyway. Just for a moment. He wanted to play a joke on his coach, and when Reid walked into the room and spotted his quarterback already there, he quite literally stopped in his tracks.
“I’ll leave,” Reid said, and after a laugh, he added, “That’s as good as I’ve felt all day.”
For the better part of a month now, even as the Chiefs have won six straight games, the post-game chats have taken on a gloomy tone. To be frank, the Chiefs have won despite the output from the offense, and the play-caller and quarterback have absorbed the brunt of the questions for it.
A tense environment, at long last, turned loose again.
You know, like it used to be.
You know, like the Chiefs expected it to be again this year.
After weeks of sputtering along offensively, the Chiefs had a breakout game — the kind of day that reminds you why this team finished the past two seasons playing on its final Sunday.
We initially wondered when the Chiefs could get back to those offensive powerhouses, and as Thanksgiving came and went, we began instead to wonder if the Chiefs would get there at all, or at least more than a mirage in Las Vegas.
They can.
And their peak, as it turns out, is still quite good — if only they’d climb there more than every once in awhile.
Mahomes threw only four incompletions Sunday and totaled his best quarterback rating and completion percentage of the season. This comes seven days after the worst quarterback rating of his career. As it turns out, it helps when his receivers catch the football. (When is the last post-game we didn’t mention dropped passes?)
“Things worked. Everybody was clicking,” Reid said. “They were disappointed after the last game that they weren’t as sharp as we needed to be.”
“There’s just such a small margin there — if we catch the balls last week, we might have the same type of thing happen here. But we didn’t.”
Mahomes has thrown 30 passes this season that have been dropped, more than every other quarterback in football, per Next Gen Stats. The Chiefs caught everything that hit their hands against the Raiders, who returned no resistance. The Chiefs marched downfield with relative ease, a path so frustratingly difficult for months. They scored touchdowns on four straight possessions and scored in some manner on seven straight.
Not by happenstance. Not merely because of the opponent (though that helps). The Chiefs got more people involved, which was part of the game plan. Mecole Hardman caught a 44-yard ball down the left sideline after seeing just nine snaps a week earlier. Josh Gordon had his first touchdown of the season.
Mahomes completed four passes of at least 20 yards, a trait indicative of his MVP-like seasons but absent for extended stretches in 2021. He even treated us to a how did he just do that moment, a throw across his body that somehow gravity pulled down in time for it to land in Tyreek Hill’s arms before two defenders arrived to him.
Remember when these things were hardly worth mentioning because of their frequency?
This is still who the Chiefs can be, and if they want to play in a third straight Super Bowl, it’s who they’ll have to be.
More than just against the Raiders.
“We have to prove we can drive the length of the field week in and week out,” Mahomes said. “I’m excited for that opportunity.”
This story was originally published December 12, 2021 at 5:47 PM.