What’s missing from this year’s Kansas City Chiefs? Here’s one theory
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chiefs lack clear postseason incentive after years of successive championship goals
- Mahomes-era roster has logged extra playoff load, accruing wear across seven seasons
- Physical toll from 21 playoff games since 2018 may explain late-season declines
It was an early July morning in St. Joseph, and Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes leaned into his first huddle of training camp on the back fields at Missouri Western State.
Before he relayed the play-call — and this is from the recollection of his head coach — Mahomes uttered a phrase that has become something of a trademark.
“Let’s go be great,” he said.
It was 2022, and this was the storyline then, if you’ll recall: How would the Chiefs respond to the most disappointing loss of Mahomes’ career, an AFC Championship Game collapse against the Bengals?
Turns out, that was the easy part. The loss made for a convenient rallying cry during the offseason, the fuel the Chiefs would use in a 14-3 season that they capped with a Super Bowl.
A year later, they dangled a different carrot throughout the summer and training camp — the opportunity to become the first team to repeat as Super Bowl champions in two decades. They eventually did that, too.
Another year later, they found yet a different incentive — Kansas City could be the NFL’s first ever three-peat champion. That was pretty enticing, and they went 15-2 in the regular season (15-1 with the starters) before falling just one win short.
And this year, the carrot is, well, what exactly?
Is that part of what’s missing?
The Chiefs are 6-7, a losing record in December for a quarterback who had never owned a losing record past the month of October. There are a dozen reasons why they’re here — or at least seven fourth-quarter failures why — and I’ve offered plenty of data points to delve into them.
This reason is a bit more, well, theoretical in nature.
Are they just plain out of juice?
The Chiefs have participated in 21 playoff games since Mahomes took over the starting role in 2018. That’s 20 more than the AFC West-West leading Broncos. That’s 17 more than the current second-place Chargers. Think of that — the core of the Chiefs’ roster has played a full extra season’s worth of games over the last seven years than every other team in their division.
There’s a physical toll to that.
But what about the mental grind?
It’s mentally taxing to attempt to tell yourself that, say, a September date with the New York Giants is the biggest game simply because it’s the next game. When you’ve played in 21 playoff games and five Super Bowls, your mind knows better.
That’s where the motivational tricks offer assistance. You use the edge from an AFC Championship Game disappointment. Or you use the chance to repeat. Or the chance to three-peat.
This year’s team has played all year as though it’s missing a comparable edge.
Perhaps there’s an easy explanation for it: They are missing a comparable edge.
The Mahomes “let’s go be great” phrase returned in 2022 with an intentionality to it. He wasn’t talking about the plays you or I might consider great— the plays that show up on highlight reels. He was making a point about the importance of “winning the details on every snap,” as he put it. It was about winning in the margins.
Isn’t that what the Chiefs lack now?
This isn’t a question of effort — though we certainly had that question after Week 1 in Brazil, so noticeable that Mahomes lowered his shoulder into a defender to try to spark something. After the game, head coach Andy Reid made a rare move: He questioned whether his team gave it everything they had. It was one week into the season, and they looked tired.
How significant does that lackluster showing against the Chargers appear now? How different would the Chiefs’ playoff circumstances be if they’d shown up with more fire and won that game? I’ll answer that one myself: The Chiefs would have a chance to pull even in standings this week, with the Chargers with a head-to-head win Sunday, and they’d own the tiebreaker and an easier final three-game slate, too.
Their playoff fate would be entirely within their control.
It’s just one of their seven losses, but it provides a microcosm of the larger point. The Chiefs played like they had a game to waste, because history told them there would be bigger games waiting.
They’ve lost six games since that trip to Brazil, and while they don’t evoke the same questions of effort — they gave everything they had Sunday against the Texans — they do follow a trend of a frustration.
They don’t win in the margins.
They lose because of them.
Isn’t that what’s most surprising about this group? Yes, it’s an aging core, with tight end Travis Kelce and defensive tackle Chris Jones playing into their 30s and Kelce his later 30s, but the Chiefs aren’t losing because of their age.
They’re losing in spite of it.
The age — or experience, we can call it — should give them an advantage with the details. Instead, the Chiefs have glossed over the small points that made them, well, go be great.
A year ago, they won with field goal blocks, fourth-down defensive stops driven by play recognition and two-minute drill successes.
This year, you can directly point to penalties as a significant correlation with their losses. You can point to drops. You can point to missed field goals.
You can, in other words, point to a collection of self-inflicted and small-detail mistakes.
That covers a wide variety of blunders, sure, but they all fit into a bucket indicative of a team that believes there will always be another play, another game, another chance. And now they’re just about out of them.
It’s crazy to say, but I’m still not convinced the past couple of Chiefs were even better than this one. But those teams sweated the small stuff. They won in the margins. They played every fourth quarter like it mattered.
None of that describes this team. And now KC sits 6-7, needing to win four straight games and have the “football gods,” as special teams coordinator Dave Toub phrased it, smile on them.
As part of a regular team meeting Thursday morning, Reid’s message was succinct.
“Let’s go to work,” Reid said, per defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo.
Later in the afternoon, in a news conference with local media, Chris Jones talked about the opportunity to do something historic.
Maybe that’s something they can cling to now. In this realm, you’ll take whatever you can get. So maybe that’s it.
But now? Maybe it’s too late.