Chiefs lose 40-32 to Las Vegas Raiders: Insta-reaction from a streak-snapping defeat
We’ve seen this game before. Not exactly this game. The details of any particular football game cannot be replicated. You don’t often see an offensive guard called for a questionable holding penalty, and then two snaps later rip both knees on one play.
But in broad strokes, yes, 100 percent, we’ve seen this game:
Explosive but inconsistent Chiefs offense, the occasional Mahomes jaw-dropper, and too many mistakes and too much sloppiness for a group of this caliber.
It’s been quite a while since the Chiefs’ defense was as bad as it was in a 40-32 loss to the Raiders at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday. That’s relatively new.
But those generalities have been here. The Chiefs have played under level, without enough energy, inferior teams leading or staying closer than they should. Mahomes can usually play Superman. Those are fun moments, too. But waiting for Superman is not the strategy of champions.
Superman showed up against the Chargers. The Patriots played with Brian Hoyer at quarterback. That’s not sustainable.
Let’s be real here. Any criticisms of the Chiefs right now are, by definition, high-level criticisms. This was the team’s first loss in 336 days. They will win again, though the rescheduled Bills game next Monday takes on a different context.
The Chiefs (finally) received some bad breaks, particularly early, and who knows how different this game might’ve been with some 50-50 calls and plays going the other way?
But those are all distractions from the point we’ve made before. Winning is hard. The Chiefs make it look easy sometimes, but it’s not. The margins for error are smaller than Mahomes makes them look.
There was some (justified) curiosity of whether the Patriots unlocked a strategy to beat the Chiefs: create pressure up front without blitzing, drop enough defenders to take away the highlights, and take your chances with everything else.
The Raiders deployed pieces of this with something else entirely. They overwhelmed a Chiefs defense that appeared alternatively slow and confused. The Chiefs lost the line of scrimmage on both sides, and they lost it badly.
If you did not know the backgrounds of either team, you would have thought the Raiders were the much better team. This particular outcome was not a fluke.
The Chiefs done got beat.
Without Mahomes bailing them out, the problems will be more obvious. The protection has been horrible. Mahomes has made himself rather blitz-proof by knowing where the holes will be, but a quarterback is rather helpless when three pass rushers create pressure and eight are left defending receivers.
They also need to be able to run the ball better than this, particularly against personnel groups focused on the pass.
Defensively, this was a train wreck. The Chiefs did not produce nearly enough pressure up front, missed way too many tackles near the line of scrimmage, and blew way too many coverages deep. The Raiders are building something interesting, and Henry Ruggs is going to be a problem in this division for a long time. But it shouldn’t be like this.
Again: we can be realistic here. This is one loss, and the NFL is full of teams that would trade problems, and throw in draft picks.
But this group has been clear about its goals. They expect to be great, not just good. They expect Super Bowls, not just this past February’s party in Miami.
They’ve earned those high standards. Which means they’ve earned being judged accordingly. This wasn’t good enough. The Chiefs know that. The next challenge is a big one, too.
Keleche Osemele’s knee injuries are a bigger deal than will be made in many places right now.
He’d provided a physical and nasty presence that the offensive line really needed. Laurent Duvernay-Tardif is a very good athlete, and good in the screen games that Andy Reid loves. But Osemele is tougher at point of contact, and more likely to push the line of scrimmage.
There’s no way to quantify this, but it seemed like some of that was rubbing off.
Mike Remmers is an adequate depth piece. He’ll do ... fine. He’ll earn the occasional penalty (which we saw against the Raiders) and he’ll give up the occasional pressure (saw that too, actually). But he won’t be the turnstile that Cam Erving become at left tackle last year.
Offensive line play is difficult to measure, and that’s doubly true when trying to figure out how much an injured player is missing. But the Chiefs’ offensive line is not as good right now as it was at kickoff.
This story was originally published October 11, 2020 at 3:37 PM.