Chiefs 35, Raiders 31: Insta-reaction from a heart-pounding victory in Las Vegas!
The Chiefs are playing a different game than everyone else.
If they played normal football, and were beholden to rules that have been set and agreed upon for years, they would have lost to the Raiders and probably by a lot in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
They would have been too overmatched defensively, and a normal offense with even a merely great quarterback could not have mustered enough for the 35-31 win that history will record.
But Mahomes changes the rules.
How many of you Chiefs fans watching were actually, honestly, and sincerely hoping your favorite team would give up the go-ahead touchdown in the final minutes?
And how crazy does that sound?
But you did, and it was smart, because the defense role played like it was 2018 and the offense did too, so you know that when Mahomes gets the ball with 103 seconds and one timeout to cover 75 yards the only drama is to see how long it takes and who scores the touchdown.
The answers turned out to be seven plays and 75 seconds and Travis Kelce left wide open in the end zone because Mahomes pulled the defender up on a threat of scrambling.
Honestly, the defender was probably losing either way.
The Raiders played better than the Chiefs, and still lost, at home. Do you have any idea how frustrating that must be?
That’s a rhetorical question for most of you, because you’re Chiefs fans, so of course you have an excellent idea how frustrating that must be.
The Chiefs have flaws. Significant flaws, some of which were exposed by the Raiders, and we’ll get to that soon.
The defense has to be better. The Chiefs have spent far too much money and way too many draft picks on pass rushers to be this ineffective. The coverage has to be better, and the tackling was awful. Too many penalties. Demarcus Robinson will consider the tape of this game a horror film.
But the Chiefs won anyway, and they won because Mahomes bends the rules to his favor.
Because it’s not enough just to play better than the Chiefs. You must play better than the Chiefs, and still make the biggest plays, and still hope the rhythm of the game doesn’t blow away from you.
The Raiders are good, too. And getting better. That’s a playoff team on the rise. Jon Gruden has turned Derek Carr into a productive NFL quarterback, in part by surrounding him with talent. The defense is tough, aggressive, fast. There’s a lot to like here.
The Chiefs should have played better. They were set up in all the right ways. The bye week. The Raiders’ problems with COVID-19 this week. The motivation of their only loss.
The Chiefs will need to be better next week, too, against the Bucs. And again and again as the schedule toughens the rest of the regular season and then into the playoffs.
Again: we’ll talk about the problems. We’ll talk a lot about those.
But for now, in this moment, it doesn’t hurt to remember that the Chiefs have the NFL’s cheat code. Mahomes can win games for them simply because he’s better than everyone else.
This was one of those games. We’ve seen it before. We’ll see it many more times.
This story was originally published November 22, 2020 at 10:44 PM.