Chiefs had their ‘best’ practice of this sort in years. How much does it matter?
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chiefs staged best no-helmet practice in seven years, signaling urgent response
- Team remains 6-6, 1-6 in one-score games, needing late-game clutch plays
- Mahomes-led offense still produces yards and red-zone chances, needs finishes
The Chiefs were back on the field Wednesday for the first time since Thanksgiving — and thus practiced as a .500 football team in December for the first time in nearly a decade — and cornerback Trent McDuffie sensed a couple of things almost immediately.
The speed, first and foremost, during what can sometimes operate more like a glorified jog-through.
And the initial source of the speed: the scout team.
The Chiefs had been off for a few days, and practice unfolded like they had been itching to return for weeks. McDuffie noticed it. Charles Omenihu and Chris Jones, too. They worked without helmets, not uncommon for the first session of a week, but the scout team sprinted through drills with fresh legs.
It was a tone-setter, of sorts, and the defense responded to it.
“I mean, things were on point,” McDuffie told The Star. “The tempo was a little up. The timing of everything, it just felt right. It was a good day.”
A really good day, per his defensive coordinator. Steve Spagnuolo characterized it as the “best no-helmet practice that we’ve had here in seven years.”
Really.
What’s it all mean? Well, Spagnuolo would like it to represent a recognition of where things stand: The Chiefs are 6-6, sitting on the wrong side of the playoff line and will be navigating the final five weeks without much margin for error, if any at all. They have to get it going and get it going quickly, so wouldn’t it be ideal if they were displaying signs of urgency?
Well, that’s the irony.
If the Chiefs are going to make a late-season playoff push, it will demand something they have so rarely shown this year — yet the very something they evidently showed on the practice field to open the week.
A response.
There’s a fascinating relationship between a reason the Chiefs find themselves in this position for the first time since Patrick Mahomes left Lubbock, Texas, and the requirement to pull themselves out of it.
They haven’t responded well to adversity all year. And now they’re left with no other choice and no other path.
There’s a proverbial backs-against-the-wall-feeling inside their building, and while most of the conversation describes that as a new position for a team that has reached three straight Super Bowls, it isn’t. Not completely, anyway.
The Chiefs have played with their backs against the wall all year long. They did once more just a week ago, locked on a fourth-quarter seesaw with the Dallas Cowboys. And after taking a one-point lead in the fourth quarter, they allowed the Cowboys 171 yards of offense over the next 15 minutes.
That’s been a theme. It’s precisely why they’re here. The Chiefs have blown three fourth-quarter leads and failed to take advantage of a chance to overcome three others. They are 1-6 in one-score games.
The most tense of game-flow settings used to invoke their superpower — they could flip a switch better than anyone. But it has instead provided some unexplainable version of kryptonite.
And now? They have to unlock the exact attribute for which they seem to have lost the key.
“If you look at every game that we’ve lost this year,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said, “we’ve been right in it up until the end.
“But we haven’t made those plays.”
There are five NFL teams who rank in the top-10 in both points scored and points allowed. Four of them are tied for first place in their respective divisions.
One sits on the outside of the playoffs.
The Chiefs have spent the week telling us they’re close, and there are all sorts of metrics that support that. They still gain more yards per offensive drive than any team in the NFL, per FTN Fantasy data. They still reach the red zone more frequently than any team in the league.
But at some point, the characteristic that has carried an entire era of Chiefs football — and dominated a seven-year run in the AFC and NFL — is going to have to show up.
You know, or else.
“You can be close,” Mahomes said, “but you can’t be close for too long.”
The task? It gets harder, not easier. And that has nothing to do with the opponent and everything to do with the environment their own past fourth-quarter failures have created.
See, the Chiefs used to think nothing of pressure. If anything, it brought out their best. Mahomes has a winning record in games in which he trailed by double digits, the statistic most symbolic of the past six years.
They’ve succumbed to pressure this year, and the aftermath of those collapses leaves even more of it.
The Chiefs are good enough to blow teams out. They’ve done it. It’s why they have a better point differential than the Broncos, the team they trail by four wins in the AFC West standings.
The Chiefs’ point differential is 12 times better than the 9-3 Bears. Heck, their point differential is better than the 2024 Chiefs, who, if you’ll recall, went 15-2. When this year’s team is good, it’s really good.
The Chiefs can win by a wide margin. But the likelihood is they’ll run into late-game drama once more. The likelihood is they’ll be locked into it this weekend even, when the red-hot Houston Texans visit Kansas City.
Whatever the Chiefs have felt in those significant, late-game moments this season, it will only intensify. Their fourth-quarter margin for error was once a statement relegated to the result of a game. It could now determine their season.
They’ve run out of runway.
That used to summon exactly what they need now — exactly what they apparently showed for a day on the practice field.
A response.