Losing’s a different feeling for these Chiefs, but the reasons they lost aren’t all new
The Chiefs played their worst game in quite a while. We can debate the particulars, but the bidding starts 336 days ago with the loss in Nashville. That’s a long time, nearly a year since we’ve seen the Chiefs lose.
Which makes this a particularly interesting week to follow this team.
The Chiefs are cocky. They are fast. They are wildly successful, young, loud and in possession of enough ambition to talk not just about championships, but about a dynasty. They’ve earned sports’ loftiest goal, but achieving it will mean handling this foreign moment with the right balance of humility and productive frustration.
The Chiefs lost 40-32 at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday. They lost to the Raiders, an inferior team, but one that comprehensively outplayed the Chiefs for one afternoon.
How they handle this — particularly ahead of the Bills game next Monday, one of the most anticipated showdowns in the AFC this season — will have an outsized influence on whether they can achieve those high goals.
“We’ll get back in the lab,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “This is good. This is a good feeling going forward. Obviously we lost, and that’s a bad feeling. But to be this motivated, I haven’t felt this motivated in a very very long time. I know my teammates on all sides of the ball feel the exact same way.”
That’s how this needs to go, with one important clarification.
The feeling is new, because this is the Chiefs’ first loss in nearly a year. But the problems Mathieu and his teammates will work on in that lab aren’t new. The Chiefs have had problems. Usually, they’ve been covered up by Patrick Mahomes and an offense that in its best moments lights up the sky.
The Raiders beat the Chiefs down. We cannot be more clear about that. The Chiefs are the better team, but this result is no fluke. The Raiders won the line of scrimmage on offense and defense. They created pressure without blitzing, and they limited the Chiefs’ success downfield.
Cry about a few questionable calls if you want, but the Chiefs got what they deserved.
The Chiefs had the league’s best pass defense by some metrics. The secondary was absolutely shredded, at times simply getting beat, at other times getting confused. The defensive front did not create enough pressure against a quarterback who the world knows is great without pressure and a wilted flower with pressure.
Much of the Raiders’ plan, particularly with the run, seemed to be isolating the linebackers and forcing missed tackles. It worked.
So, yes. Credit the Raiders. They approached this game with both humility and hunger. If anything, the final score is closer than the teams played.
But the Chiefs have had many of these problems before. They were called for 10 penalties. That’s far too many, particularly a specific few that wiped away points. Andy Reid is right in saying the Chiefs haven’t had the horribly timed penalties this season, but they were called for 11 against the Chargers.
The Raiders’ running backs accounted for 143 yards rushing. The Chiefs haven’t stopped the run in years, and the way they gave up long passes looked a whole lot like 2018.
The Chiefs had a six-possession stretch in which they managed one field goal, four punts, and an interception. They achieved one first down in the first 22 minutes of the second half.
We’ve seen stretches of this offense struggling, too. We saw it against the Chargers, and again against the Patriots.
Perhaps not to this extreme, but still. Mahomes is a gift, and being surrounded by this much talent and coaching is almost literally unfair. But it only works when the group is locked in.
“We’ve kind of done it these last few weeks, obviously other than the Ravens game,” Mahomes said. “Where we didn’t execute at a high enough level to go out there and score like we’ve been known to score. It caught up with us today.
“We’ve gotta go back and really look at ourselves in the mirror, including me at quarterback, and really not rely on these crazy plays where I’m scrambling around and throwing these shots. Just execute this offense the way it’s called and the way it’s supposed to be ran. If we do that, we’ll be a hard team to stop.”
At the risk of pointing out the obvious, they are a hard team to stop. Mahomes knows this. So does everyone he works with.
But “hard team to stop” has never been the goal. They’ve made this clear, and they’ve achieved a thousand smaller successes that give them the right to dream big.
This is everybody. If you’ve followed the Chiefs for a long time, you might be used to simple explanations. Not to dig at old wounds here, but we’ve seen teams that could fairly put it on a kicker, or the defense, or a front office focused on all the wrong things.
This isn’t that. Mahomes is the star, but he hasn’t been perfect. He’s missed some throws, and missed on some decisions. The offensive line needs to be better. The run game isn’t helping. The defense has been better than many people have realized for a while now, but this was a disaster.
The Chiefs have won often enough and in memorable enough ways that at times it could feel inevitable. Mistakes don’t mean as much when the quarterback is a cheat code.
But that was never the best strategy. This team has enough talent and brains that it shouldn’t have to rely on magic this often. Magic should be an emergency plan.
Mathieu and Mahomes are saying all the right things. The motivation available from a loss can be powerful, and they know this isn’t good enough.
The process they take from here will largely define this season’s outcome.
This story was originally published October 11, 2020 at 5:31 PM.