Mellinger Minutes: Everything you wanted to know about the Chiefs’ Super Bowl loss
Patrick Mahomes said something funny after the Super Bowl, but he definitely did not mean to be funny.
“When we joined together, we knew it wasn’t going always be successful, we knew we weren’t going to be able to win a thousand championships in a row,” Mahomes said.
Now, again. He definitely did not mean to be funny.
But the line made me chuckle anyway, because I could sort of picture a Chiefs fan thinking, Well, yeah, not a thousand IN A ROW.
The last year or so of the Chiefs presented a pretty convincing case that anything was possible. They had been down 10 points midway through the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl last year, and ended up winning by 11.
They trailed by 24 in the second quarter of a playoff game last year, and ended up with the lead by halftime and a 20-point win in the end.
They have scored every way imaginable, with short passes turned into long gains, left tackles catching touchdowns, underhanded touchdown passes, and this Ferrari Right stuff that honestly nobody even knew was legal.
Watching the Chiefs gave this sort of unspoken feeling that, sure, yes, the man is correct — nobody’s winning a thousand of these things ... buuutttt, maybe we should wait to see the Chiefs lose before we say that for sure?
Any lie of invincibility was shattered by the Bucs, of course, with the only possible outcome that could have shocked me and many others — the Chiefs getting blown out.
Because we had seen Mahomes make 53 starts with the Chiefs before Sunday, and we had seen his team win 44 of them, and of the nine losses none came by more than one score. The Chiefs averaged 32 points in those starts, including 34 points in the playoffs. They had never not scored a touchdown.
The shocking thing isn’t that the Chiefs lost, and in some ways isn’t even that the offense struggled. It’s that as early as the third quarter you were left wondering, My goodness, Mahomes and the Chiefs don’t even have a chance.
I’ll tell you a secret. Sports writers often have two files going during a game — one for the team they cover winning, and one for a loss.
Mahomes has made my mind work in really strange ways. I have sat in press boxes with the Chiefs down two scores in the second half and not even bothered to start a Chiefs Lose file. In last year’s Super Bowl, I had one open, with a few paragraphs written, but my attention never veered far from the other.
On Sunday, I never started a Chiefs Win file.
They just didn’t have it.
This is a weird way to think about things, but in terms of both emotion and productive energy I believe this was a “better” way to lose than if the Chiefs paid homage to their sorry pre-Mahomes playoff past.
Nobody has to carry the burden of one missed play that cost them, but the film will tell a damning story nonetheless — if the Chiefs don’t get their protection fixed on offense, and their ability to pressure fixed on defense, then they’re going to be like a lot of other teams.
This group’s goal has always been Super Bowls, plural, and there is enough talent on that roster that if this thing ends with just one Super Bowl everyone involved will feel regret.
There are problems to fix, and we’ll explore those below. The Chiefs need to get healthier and better across the offensive line. They need to get better or younger at WR2, more pass rush, probably a linebacker, and could use some secondary depth.
This is all made more difficult by picking 31st in the draft, and with a salary cap tightened by COVID-19 and (justified) big contracts.
The Chiefs missed an opportunity against the Bucs, and it’s never coming back. They lost to a team they had beaten before, largely because that team made far better adjustments. No matter what happens going forward, that game will represent pain.
But that’s also gone now. There’s nothing to be done about it. Perfection does not exist in football, never has, so the important thing now is make sure the Chiefs are as strong as possible for the next opportunity.
This week’s eating recommendation is the cheeseburger at Smash-N-Nash and the reading recommendation is Jeff Passan on Giants outfielder Drew Robinson’s remarkable second act.
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We’re starting positive, because the negative will come hot and heavy soon.
It’s worth remembering how different the Chiefs’ stature is now. They are at the level the franchise executives pretended to be on for so long. They are league royalty, one of the NFL’s premier organizations, with the fair expectation that they will be successful for years to come in a league designed against consistent success.
“We knew it wasn’t going to always be successful,” Mahomes said postgame. “We knew we weren’t going to be able to win a thousand championships in a row.”
There have been times, of course, that Mahomes and this group have given the impression that they would win a thousand championships in a row. Tyreek Hill somewhat famously predicted the Chiefs would win seven Super Bowls.
The 2020 Chiefs are a hard group to inventory. They went 16-2 when the starters played, and the two losses came against teams the Chiefs beat on the road.
They were the league’s best team from start to finish, but were so thoroughly outplayed in the Super Bowl that legitimate questions must be asked about the immediate future.
This is not a perfect team. They are flawed. We talked about that throughout the season — the interior of the offensive line, an inconsistent pass rush, injuries to the offensive line, and more.
But there is no such thing as a perfect football team, and the Chiefs had always been able to cover those weaknesses with strengths. They had an answer for every question on the test.
They could help the line with screen passes, or quick passes, or moving the pocket left or right. They didn’t pressure as often as they would like, but they seemed to do it at the most important times.
More than anything else, they always had Mahomes to tilt the scales in their favor. Two or three or nine times a game he seems to turn what should be a terrible play into a remarkable one.
That didn’t happen in the Super Bowl, for reasons we’ll get into below, but for now let’s just agree to not pretend those plays weren’t there. This was the most obvious, one of the best incomplete passes you’ll ever see.
Truly absurd. It’s a throw Mahomes would only attempt on fourth down, and on Monday he said that all he saw was a red jersey to throw to. Somehow, it should have been a touchdown. Unreal.
Anyway, the Chiefs lost this game for a dozen reasons, probably more. They deserved to lose, deserved to be blown out.
But this isn’t the 2008 Cardinals or the 2016 Falcons or the 2006 Bears. The Chiefs remain in solid standing.
If you could choose just one team — considering roster, contracts, coaches, front office, everything — over the short- or long-term future you would pick the Chiefs.
This is an opportunity that is gone forever. But even with what looks like a loaded AFC, you would bet they will have more opportunities soon.
No question.
He is the game’s best player, throwing to the game’s best pair of pass catchers, with one of the game’s best coaches. That is en enviable place to begin.
The Chiefs just completed their second-best season in 50 years. That is an objective fact, even if it’s muddied in the meantime by the disappointment of getting kicked in the face.
There are times that this group has sold us a lie, that they are the exception of the NFL rule of games being decided on a razor’s edge. They came through so consistently in the big moments and had answers for every problem.
When that’s all we see, we can lose touch with reality. But what we’ve seen — even in games the Chiefs eventually win — is that this group is untouchable when right but also a bit like a race car in that one mechanical failure can gum up the whole operation.
Against the Bucs they had at least two mechanical failures: the inability to protect, and too many missed plays downfield.
We all tend to look at games through the lens of the team we follow, and there is no question that the Chiefs could’ve made better adjustments, but Bucs defensive coordinator Todd Bowles deserves an enormous amount of credit.
The Bucs were able to do something that no other team had accomplished in 53 tries against Mahomes. They did something that had begun to feel impossible. Because it’s not just that the Chiefs never scored a touchdown, it’s that the Bucs defense was so overwhelming that by early in the third quarter you had a hard time imagining how the Chiefs could ever score a touchdown.
That’s completely normal, by the way. The Super Bowl champion Bucs lost to the Saints 38-3 in November. Seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady threw three interceptions in his last game, and completed 18 of 33 passes for 199 yards the game before that.
The Chiefs have been so consistently excellent that a whiff is the anomaly. They have broken the NFL’s rules of parity. They have taught us to expect the impossible. They lost this Super Bowl, but would any of us bet they won’t have the chance for more?
OK, I told you we’d start off positive because the real talk would come hot and heavy. Here comes the real talk.
Woof. I’m with you, Ben.
It is hard for me to be too critical of any coaching decision done with aggression and the motivation to give Patrick Mahomes another chance. I believe that when a team is gifted with this personnel, they should do everything possible to highlight their considerable strengths.
That said, I after the first timeout I turned to Vahe and said something like, Really?
And after the second one — the third-and-2 you’re mentioning here — I was in a bit of disbelief.
For a lot of reasons.
The Chiefs had not moved the ball all half. Scoring with one or no timeouts in that situation would’ve required throwing deep or toward the sidelines or both, and the Chiefs had shown no ability to do that.
The Chiefs were set to get the ball at the start of the second half. They have smart coaches, with talented players, and should have the confidence to address what needs addressing at halftime and close the lead early in the third quarter.
The Bucs employ Tom Brady, the greatest clutch performer in league history. Back in Week 12, the Chiefs beat the Bucs by converting a fourth down late in a situation many coaches would have punted. Asked about the decision afterward, Reid said, “I learned a long time ago you don’t give Tom Brady another shot. That’s why he’s the GOAT, right?”
The Bucs ran up the middle on first down. They had just one timeout remaining. They were, by all accounts, content running out the clock and going to halftime up 14-6.
Instead, the Chiefs put extra pressure on a defense that had not shown it was worth the truth, in hopes of giving an offense that had not shown it could attack downfield the burden of attacking downfield, all while risking more shots for a quarterback the head coach said he learned long ago to not give extra shots.
On the list of reasons the Chiefs lost, this is pretty far down the list.
On the list of objectively questionable decisions, this is pretty far up.
I think I know where you’re coming from, but I don’t agree. This group went 16-2 with the starters playing, and like we said earlier beat the two teams it lost to.
They were pretty good against the Ravens. They were up 17 in the fourth quarter against the Bucs in Week 12. They beat the Saints with a paper bag offensive line.
Their best game of the season was probably the AFC Championship against the Bills, which at the tie could’ve been seen as the right time to start playing their best.
So, the problem isn’t that they didn’t peak. The problem is that they bottomed out at the worst possible moment.
All last week I was saying that the only outcome that would surprise me would be a Bucs blowout win, which of course is what we got.
The shock is in so many of the safeguards the Chiefs have built up failing them in the biggest game. They made no obvious adjustments. They never made the plays that put pressure on the other side. They appeared unraveled emotionally at times, and overwhelmed physically often.
If all you knew was what happened in that game you would think the Chiefs were frauds. You would wonder how they made it that far.
We know more than that game, of course, which is why that outcome is the exception and not a reasonable expectation.
One of the Chiefs’ most remarkable traits has been their consistency. They were judged the league’s most consistent team by various advanced metrics, and you can also see that in their scores.
If they never quite played up to the general public’s platonic ideal of a football team, they also never displayed vulnerability to football’s randomness like normal teams.
That the bottom came in sport’s biggest game is the most shocking outcome of a Chiefs game since Mahomes arrived.
If you figure it out, holler at your boy.
There are theories we can explore, the most obvious being that the Chiefs carried their second choice at left tackle, their third choice at left guard, a center who’d been benched, their second choice at right guard, and their third choice at right tackle against one of the best defensive fronts in the sport.
That was an awful matchup from the beginning, and one we said would need to be exploited for the Bucs to win.
I could not have imagined them exploiting it this thoroughly: the Bucs pressured Mahomes on 31 of 56 drop backs despite blitzing just seven times, according to Pro Football Focus.
The Chiefs pressured Brady on just four of 30 drop backs.
If we’re diagnosing why the Chiefs played so terribly, that’s a pretty good place to begin. I (don’t really) hate to quote last week’s podcast, but I told you this:
“If the Chiefs pressure Brady more than the Bucs pressure Mahomes, to me at least, this game is a wrap. But if it’s the other way around, that’s the Bucs’ path to victory.”
The difference between the Week 12 game and the Super Bowl is all anyone needs to know about the importance of coaching adjustments, too.
The Chiefs have one of the league’s best coaching staffs, and they obviously played this game at least than full strength across the line.
But Bruce Arians, Byron Leftwich, and especially Todd Bowles beat the bejesus out of Andy Reid, Eric Bieniemy and Steve Spagnuolo.
That was a destruction.
Exactly. So much of the Chiefs’ success is that there is no singular path to beat them. If you play deep like the Texans and Bills, they can beat you short. If you blitz like the Ravens, they will throw to the spots you vacate.
Creating pressure with four pass rushers is football’s ultimate cheat code, but even then, the 49ers did that in last year’s Super Bowl and got Wasp’d.
I’ll go back through the game a few times, but my suspicion is the Chiefs saw a wicked combination of guys getting beat one-on-one (and sometimes even when doubling) with some missed assignments.
My assumption is the Bucs planned on blitzing more, and planned on needing to adjust once the Chiefs beat them with short and intermediate routes. But they never had to bother because the pressure got to Mahomes so quickly, and Lavonte David did a remarkable job covering Travis Kelce.
That’s as surprising an outcome to a Chiefs game as I can remember. More than the loss to the Raiders, more even than the blown playoff lead to Tennessee.
I simply could not imagine the Chiefs getting blown out, because we have such a long track record now of them being able to figure out secondary solutions in real time.
They never even came close against the Bucs.
That’s a failure by the Chiefs, obviously, and I know my audience enough to know you guys don’t care about this but the bigger story is what a massive accomplishment this was by the Bucs and their coaches.
Remarkable stuff, even with the Chiefs’ injuries across the offensive line.
You guys know where I stand on complaints about officiating. And you know I’m going to say one more time here that the Chiefs did not play well enough to have any credible complaint about the officiating.
But I’m including this here for two reasons.
The first is that most fan bases in the NFL believe the Chiefs get all the calls.
The second is that if — IF — the NFL had interest to rig the officiating for one side or the other don’t you think they’d have chosen the Chiefs?
What profit is in the Bucs winning that wouldn’t be in the Chiefs winning?
Wouldn’t the better story line — the thing that would drive more interest — be at least the illusion of a credible challenge to Brady’s throne?
Why would the NFL want Brady to put further distance between himself and anyone else?
It doesn’t make sense.
But there I go again not believing conspiracy theories, and believing the Chiefs did far more damage to themselves than the refs ever could.
This may or may not be changing the question, but given the choice I would rather have Mahomes behind the league’s best protection than the league’s best run blockers.
I understand the argument for the other side, and the truth is either one would probably make the Chiefs unstoppable. With Mahomes and a dominant run game the Chiefs could have three fern bushes lined up at receiver and score a ton of points.
But I believe one of Veach’s front office’s greatest strengths is that they view every decision through the prism of what’s best for Mahomes.
And what’s best for Mahomes is to continue to build on what he can do in the passing game. That’s why even with Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce I believe the Chiefs should look at receiver early in the draft.
Mahomes is effective against pressure, so he can negate some mistakes by average protection. But passes are so much more efficient than runs, and anything that encourages the Chiefs to run the ball more is by definition encouraging the Chiefs to throw the ball less.
Keep your strengths your strengths, is what I’m saying.
Especially as long as Mahomes is being coached by Reid, and they have all these screens.
Yes. Absolutely. Got into this a bit in a column on Monday, and I hope you read it. There is a trap here that’s easy to fall into, to believe that this is as simple as injured players healing.
It is not that simple.
The Chiefs’ broad strategy across the line has been to invest at tackle, and try to make it work with moving parts on the inside.
Some of that is logistics — reliable tackles are hard to find, so when you get one, you have to pay the man.
But the Chiefs are in a sort of sudden emergency here with their tackles. Fisher’s injury generally carries a 10-12 month recovery, which would wipe out most if not all of the 2021 season.
The Chiefs have not clarified the extent of Mitchell Schwartz’s injury, but it’s obviously serious to keep him out since Week 6, and with Schwartz approaching his 32nd birthday with a bad back the Chiefs have to think about the future there, too.
The truth is there is not a single spot on the line that we know is locked down for the 2021 opener with an above average performer.
This will require a bit of a high wire walk by the front office, of remaking offensive line without a lot of cap space, and with needs at receiver, edge rush, and linebacker.
All things equal, I’d probably want the Chiefs to draft edge rush first, line second, and fill out the rest, but there is no particular right or wrong answer here.
Honestly, I’m not sure I couldn’t find 10 throws by Mahomes that are better than anything anyone else has done.
Maybe I’m just too close to this thing, because I don’t want to dismiss any of the other incredible quarterbacks. Aaron Rodgers is a wizard. Josh Allen does some stuff athletically that’s just different. Russell Wilson is ridiculous, particularly when throwing deep. Kyler Murray looks like a video game brought to life. Justin Herbert. Matt Stafford. On and on.
Mahomes isn’t the only one.
But, yeah. I’m not sure anyone else is making that Spider-Man throw, and just because, let’s run it again.
The Chiefs weren’t empty all the time. Geoff Schwartz was the first I saw to point this out, but there were plays where the back would chip if the rush came from the edge, but become a receiver if a stunt went inside. They had a few snaps of max protect, and helped the line with chips.
But the broader point is sound about the Chiefs pushing the throttle of aggression. Bringing on another tight end can be a good idea, but it also means one fewer pass catcher for the Bucs to cover.
It could give your quarterback an extra half-second, but it also could give the Bucs defensive backs less to worry about.
The Chiefs have been consistent in leaning toward aggression with these decisions, and it’s hard to fault them for that. Keep your strengths your strengths, right?
So I don’t fault them for the general plan.
The problem was no obvious adjustment.
Look, no sport in the world encourages strong instant reactions like football, and I understand what you’re talking about here.
But Andy Reid will be 63 next month, not 83. He’s younger than David Culley, who the Texans just hired. He’s younger than Pete Carroll, Bill Belichick, and Bruce Arians.
Reid isn’t going to be completing any Ironmans this offseason, but he’s in fine coaching shape, and in broad strokes is noticeably invigorated by coaching this group.
Reid loves what he does. He’s energized by it. He loves every part of the job, sometimes joking that what he loves most about coaching is that he gets older and the players stay the same age.
Notably, I believe he has waited his entire coaching life to have something like a Mahomes, and now that he has one — 1 of 1 in the series — you’re going to need construction equipment to get it out of his hands.
Not at all, and not just because you should fan however you want to fan.
You guys, let’s repeat an objective fact: the Chiefs just completed their second best season in 50 years.
I understand that recent history includes the Seahawks, who won a Super Bowl with a 25-year-old quarterback, talked about a dynasty, lost the Super Bowl the next year and haven’t been past the divisional round since.
Aaron Rodgers won at 27, and 10 years later has watched every Super Bowl since from the couch. I get all that, and there are no guarantees.
But I also think this team just went 16-2 in competitive games, and beat the two teams it lost to. I believe that Mahomes’ talent had us all downplaying the remarkable achievement of making the Super Bowl with what was basically the second-string offensive line.
I believe that smart coaches did not suddenly turn dumb in the Super Bowl, and that good players did not suddenly become bad.
The Chiefs are the favorite to win next year’s Super Bowl, and while that and $7.99 plus tax will get you a block of Velveeta* but it does speak to the team retaining a solid foundation going forward.
*If the CEO of Velveeta is a fan of the time suck, please, sir or madame, just know that it’s really hard for even loyal fans like me to justify that price. You have a terrific product, one that’s the centerpiece of many happy memories. But that’s some uptown prices when all I want to do is melt it with some Rotel and party.
The Chiefs will never get that opportunity back, and Mahomes’ theoretical challenge for Brady may very well be dead before it begins.
But this group’s story together is still closer to the start than the end.
Yeah, they didn’t show this on the broadcast but Mathieu went WAY out of his way to get into Brady’s face and he wasn’t wishing Brady a good day.
There was a bit of scrum — no punches, nothing like that — and it was a thing. Brady got loose, then ran over to Mathieu and he wasn’t wishing Mathieu a good day, either. That’s when it became more of a thing.
You may have seen where Brady apologized to Mathieu over text, according to ESPN. In the moment, I can sort of maybe see how the officials would have judged Mathieu started the confrontation. But like we say, Brady escalated it and, besides, the reasonable thing there for the officials is to just let it go.
It was also irrelevant for the game, as it just meant the Bucs kicked off from the 50 and the Chiefs had a touchback.
I believe Tom Brady is the answer to the question about what happens to a very good quarterback who gets every break imaginable.
I’m not trying out a hot take here, and I’ve buried this toward the bottom in hopes you’ll believe me on that point. I truly believe this.
I believe he was drafted by the NFL’s best organization and the best coach in NFL history. I believe he won his first Super Bowl with no pressure by throwing for 145 yards, and then won two more in the next three seasons with the league’s best defense.
I believe at some point all the success lifted Brady’s confidence and even his abilities, and his 2007 MVP season is one of the most transformative in modern NFL history.
I believe the Patriots were lucky with the Tuck Rule, lucky to play Jake Delhomme in Super Bowl XXXVIII, and lucky to play so many years in the league’s worst division. I believe they were lucky Pete Carroll called a pass, lucky the Falcons choked, lucky to win the coin flip at Arrowhead and then play Jared Goff in the Super Bowl.
I believe there are a billion holes in everything I’ve said, and that it is beyond argument that Brady is the most successful football player in the history of the planet.
I also believe that good players and teams make their own luck, so I don’t want you to think I’m calling the guy a fraud or anything.
I just have this nagging belief that if he and Peyton Manning switched places that Manning would have done better on those Patriots teams, and that Brady would not have done as well with the Colts.
But I also recognize that Brady would be tied for the most Super Bowl wins of any quarterback in league history if you only counted the Super Bowls he won after his 37th birthday.
He’s fake. None of this can be real.
You know if you’d have told me this earlier I could’ve spent the day at the beach. Thanks for nothing.
This week I’m particularly grateful for a night in a press box with Vahe, Blair, and so many other friends. It’s the first time I’ve covered a game with Blair and Vahe since last year’s Super Bowl. They are two of the best journalists I know, and might be the best two humans I know.
This story was originally published February 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.