The Chiefs beat the Chargers with less than their best, but what now?
At this point, the Chiefs have to feel like they can be down 23 points and seven starters, 3 minutes left in the fourth quarter, and still win because Patrick Mahomes fires some no-look 72-yard pass to Tyreek Hill and Harrison Butker hits from 82.
No major sports league in the world prides itself on parity more than the NFL. That means teams have to win in the margins. No team is better equipped for those margins than the Chiefs:
Unicorn quarterback. Receiver as fast as a lightning bolt. Future Hall of Fame tight end. Strong, steady coaches. A growing track record of erasing mistakes and struggles, a group with enough versatility to bust through most game plans, and enough success now to feel like anything is possible.
That’s basically what we saw in the Chiefs’ 23-20 overtime win over the Chargers on Sunday.
But this group knows better. The goals are unapologetically high, to not just win another Super Bowl but then another one after that and another into perpetuity, the operation improving along the way. This wasn’t improvement. They’ll need to be better. We’ll come back to this thought in a minute.
Mahomes was bad early, then indescribable late. Tyreek Hill provided the platform for a throw perhaps no other quarterback could make, and Mahomes made it. The defense held firm enough. Harrison Butker is some sort of place kicking cyborg, created in a lab, every movement on the field rehearsed, every hair on his head off the field in place.
The talk of a dynasty is premature and (just being honest) disrespectful to the difficulty of creating one. But by now this is a formidable powerhouse in no small part because they are far more than disparate parts. They are friends and teammates who believe the time of their professional lives is right now, and have found a way to succeed when their brother has fallen.
It’s a heck of a thing, and makes improbable moments like this possible.
Mahomes missed both reads and throws, especially early. His counting stats were good — 302 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions — but he also threw more incompletions than any other game in his career. The Chiefs’ offense looked ... pedestrian.
There were many reasons for this. The Chargers pass rush whupped the Chiefs’ line, often without the benefit of a blitz, which meant the receivers had neither the time nor space to get open.
Downfield blocking was soft. Protections missed. Passes dropped. On the other side, whoa, so many missed tackles. What looked like some blown assignments. The Chargers used more than 10 minutes of the fourth quarter on a single drive, which should never happen against a championship defense.
In the end, the problems didn’t matter, because the Chiefs had a solution for each of them. Often, that solution was Mahomes.
He and Hill connected on the weekly miracle, this time when Mahomes faked a handoff, rolled right with his eyes firmly downfield and chucked it over the defense. Hill made a terrific catch — his talents are often shorthanded to highlight speed, but his hands and ability to track passes in the air are elite — and rolled into the end zone for a 54-yard touchdown.
With the pressure constant and the receivers blanketed, Mahomes also led the Chiefs in rushing, with 54 yards on six scrambles that included four first downs — including 21 yards on 3rd and 20 in the last minute of regulation.
The Chargers presented the Chiefs with all sorts of questions, in other words, and the Chiefs basically just answered Mahomes over and over until they had it right.
Viewed in one particular way, this is impressive. The NFL requires its best teams to win on less than their best days. The Chiefs did that in unforgettable form last year, erasing double digit deficits in all three playoff games.
One more point that should not be missed: this was a losing effort on offense for the 2018 Chiefs, or even the early 2019 Chiefs. The defense simply was not equipped to hold up like this, impromptu rookie quarterback opponent or not.
These are not backhanded compliments. Winning ugly is a skill for champions.
But there’s a lot to correct here.
The Chiefs have some missing pieces right now, but it’s unclear if how much of the uneven performance can be explained by the suspension list and injury report. Mike Pennel will help against the run, and we saw moments that the absence of cornerbacks Bashaud Breeland and Charvarius Ward showed up, but again: the defense was fine.
The rest of the league is desperate for a way to take the Chiefs down, and a working theory goes something like this: beat them up at the line of scrimmage, force Mahomes to throw quickly, eliminate big plays, win turnovers, and be deliberate.
The Chargers are better equipped to do some of this naturally — Joey Bosa leads a tremendous pass rush, and even without Derwin James the Chargers have enough in the secondary to cover — but others will have their own twists.
The Chiefs’ primary challenge right now is to have the plans and execution strong enough that they don’t need Mahomes bailing them out in the margins.
That means protections need to be clean. Releases and routes need to be crisp. Clyde Edwards-Helaire needs to be consistently effective enough to keep linebackers on the field and defensive backs closer to the line of scrimmage.
Mahomes has a part in this, too. For all his brilliance he does have stretches of ineffectiveness. Those stretches are often covered by overwhelming highlights, but they also are part of why the Chiefs get behind.
These are all fixable issues. High-level critiques, appropriate for teams chasing greatness.
Mahomes could be in the beginning stage of the best career of any quarterback in history. He can, has, and will continue to win games the Chiefs would lose with a merely great player at the position.
But the Chiefs are too talented and too experienced to be relying on that regularly. Comebacks are nice, but they also mean you were getting beat most of the game. The Chiefs are too good to be in that position consistently.
By the end of the season, this win will be looked at in one of two very different ways.
Perhaps we’ll see it like the loss to the Rams in 2018, the most obvious sign that the defense wasn’t good enough for a Super Bowl.
Or, perhaps we’ll see it like the win over the Chargers last year in Mexico City, when the offense struggled but the defense shined, the moment two groups that had become viewed so separately worked together.
The Chiefs won this game. That’s the most important thing. But they’ll need to beat better opponents for this season to be a success. Mahomes can’t do it all.
Not every week, anyway.
This story was originally published September 20, 2020 at 9:06 PM.