‘This is a game we should’ve won’: The KC Chiefs are right, and have a lot to clean up
The noise hit like a wave, hard to describe except to say the ears throbbed and ushers cupped their palms over their temples. No chants, really, just screaming. And why not?
The people here saw what has sometimes seemed impossible — their Ravens made mistakes (big mistakes!) and gave up big plays (*big* plays!) and still beat the Chiefs 36-35 Sunday night.
The Chiefs have lost before, of course, and they will lose again. But did you think they’d lose on a night when the defense scored on a pick-six, Travis Kelce barreled to an all-time touchdown and the Chiefs got receiving TDs from Demarcus Robinson and Byron Pringle?
“This is a game we should have won,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said.
They didn’t, and we can point the blame any number of directions.
The Chiefs made it into field-goal range with 86 seconds left, which made it an awful time for Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s first fumble as a professional.
“Man up,” Kelce said. “Man up. That’s not just Clyde, that’s everybody in the building, everybody in the locker room.”
The Chiefs led by 11 with 3:14 left in the third quarter, taking over at midfield with the chance to bury a proud opponent. That drive ended with perhaps the worst play of Mahomes’ career — a bad idea executed poorly — where he threw a desperation third-down pass that had no chance of success and became his first interception of the season.
“The interception was not only dumb in the sense that it was a bad throw, not even close to the receiver, but it was dumb at that point in the game,” Mahomes said.
Mathieu is both right and wrong with that first quote. He has every reason to believe they should have won this game, because the Chiefs have made themselves the league’s best team over the last three years by winning games exactly like this.
But also? If we can be honest? No team should expect to beat a good opponent playing for its season — the Ravens took an awful loss to the Raiders in their opener — with all these mistakes.
That it ended on a fumble by a guy who never fumbles is almost poetic.
“They’re real about this,” Reid said. “They know. This isn’t something they don’t know. I think it’s obvious what took place in this game. We’ve got to get better at it.”
Mathieu had the line of the night — “Every now and then you need an ass-whupping.”
He was talking more about the lopsided play at the line of scrimmage than the score, but he also could have been describing the Chiefs more generally.
They have and will continue to win more than their share of 50-50 games.
Mahomes is the league’s ultimate cheat code, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that even with all the mistakes and deficiencies the Chiefs still forced their way into position for the game-winner.
Heck, they were in such good position that the strategy was beginning to turn from trying to score to trying to score with no time on the clock.
The truth is the Chiefs led by 11 at the start of the fourth quarter, and lost. The game film will show a steady stream of miscommunications and missed tackles on defense, and highlights broken up by missed opportunities on offense.
This is all good enough for success. The Chiefs can be sloppy and still make the playoffs. They can even be less than their best and have a chance at the Super Bowl.
But those are standards for different times, for lesser teams that have not had the success of this group.
The process is long and much more about the Chiefs presenting the best version of themselves in January than it is about any outcome in September.
But the Chiefs will also find this one informative. This is two weeks in a row the defense has been exposed against the run, this time with some putrid tackling amplifying the issues.
They have yet to force an opponent to kick a red-zone field goal after finishing last in the league in that category in 2020, and spending the offseason committed to improving.
Their offensive line is OK, but we’re still at least weeks away from the front office’s vision being confirmed. The Chiefs’ offense scored four touchdowns and was in position to kick a game-winning field goal — so let’s stop short of claiming the Ravens discovered some secret here — but the plan was interesting.
The Ravens switched away from their typical blitz-heavy approach, instead parking a safety above Hill and often doubling Kelce. They had some success here, with Hill receiving no deep targets, and they were able to get some pressure even without blitzing.
At least in theory the Chiefs should be able to beat this type of strategy with intermediate passes, the occasional deep shot to a secondary receiver and a more efficient run game.
But that’s all easier said than done.
At this point, we’re probably into the weeds. The Chiefs have every reason to believe they can beat any game plan from any NFL opponent.
But they also need to make sure they don’t beat themselves.
This story was originally published September 20, 2021 at 12:30 AM.