Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs lose (again), Andy Reid leaves hospital, Josh Gordon arrives
Well, so, the Chiefs have a lot going on here.
Andy Reid spent time this weekend in a hospital with an illness the Chiefs have not described. Dave Toub took the post-game news conference. Coordinators Steve Spagnuolo and Eric Bieniemy split media time on Monday.
Honestly, I’m assuming Reid did at least some film review and prep for the Eagles this weekend from the hospital.
The most important thing here is Reid’s health. He’s 63 years old, a lead decision-maker in a billion-dollar business and the handler of constant and unrelenting stress. He spent part of training camp walking with a cane. He does a good job of playing that down, but it’s a real thing.
The Chiefs have been vague about why Reid went to the hospital. Really, I don’t care. The thing that matters is how he’s feeling (first), and the chances of something like this happening again (second). The answers will come in time, whether the Chiefs say more or not. Reid was expected to resume the normal grind of his job by Tuesday morning, which would include running practice and meetings, game-planning for the Eagles and talking to reporters on Wednesday.
There’s also a bit of personnel news. The Chiefs signed receiver Josh Gordon to their practice squad, with the expectation of elevating him to their active roster once he’s ready physically and with his understanding of the playbook.
Through three games, Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill have commanded 50% of the offense’s targets, 50% of the catches, 59% of the yards and four of the Chiefs’ nine receiving touchdowns.
That’s pretty top-heavy, even if we can agree that whether Kelce or Hill is the No. 2 pass-catcher there are 31 teams that would make that trade.
The Chiefs offered JuJu Smith-Schuster a deal in free agency, so their desire to add more weapons for superstar quarterback Patrick Mahomes is nothing new.
Gordon is … interesting. He made 87 catches for a league-high 1,646 yards in 2013, his second season in the league. In the seven years since, he’s totaled 110 catches for 1,801 yards. He missed all of 2015 and 2016 for violating the league’s substance-abuse policy. He last played a total of 11 games for New England and Seattle in 2019, finishing with 27 catches and 426 yards.
Gordon was recently reinstated by the league and presumably had his choice of a number of new teams. His agents told Adam Schefter that Gordon chose Kansas City in part because he thinks he can make it a long-term stop. Gordon has been suspended six times, including five for substance abuse.
He’s 30, so it’s unclear where he’s at physically. Reid’s offense is famously difficult for receivers to grasp quickly, but Reid’s also pliable enough to give it to Gordon in pieces.
The Chiefs are in some chaos right now. They have more losses than wins for the first time since 2015. The defense looks disjointed. The offense is pressing. The coach was sick enough for an ambulance. A new receiver is walking through the door.
We’ll go through some of what the Chiefs are going through and how they can come out better for it on the other side below.
I don’t have certainty about how this will go, and I don’t believe you should trust anyone who says they do. But I do know that the line Toub said the other day about this being a crossroads is truer now than when he said it.
This week’s reading recommendations is Peter Sagal on White Sox broadcaster Jason Benetti and the eating recommendation is the lamb roll at Chai Shai.
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This is me taking this question to a place you may or may not be intending, but 100% I feel like the world is a very different place than it was one, two, three, fill-in-the-blank years ago.
We don’t need to go down the rabbit hole to acknowledge that America has never felt so divided politically and culturally in most of our lifetimes. There is a tendency to assume the worst in strangers instead of hoping for the best. There is a tendency to look for things to be mad about, or to feel offended.
There is also a tendency to look for ways to make others mad, and to offend someone.
For a while that seemed mostly isolated to politics, and that still feels where it’s most intense. But after the COVID pause, with fans back in stadiums, it sure seems to have spilled into our little playground escape world.
Now, look. There is always a danger in being a prisoner of the moment, and these things are impossible to quantify. I don’t know that I’ll ever again hear the kind of screams at a stadium that I heard walking out of the Lin Elliott game, and that was a generation ago. There will always been political and cultural conflict.
But I do think you’re onto something here, Rachel.
Part of the beauty of sports has always been the feeling of community. It’s sort of like a public beach — you have rich people and poor coming together to enjoy the same thing. The best part of the Border War has always been that it’s the one time you could have Kansas Citians who disagree with each other on every important issue imaginable on the same side as people they otherwise agree with.
To be sure, I think there’s still a lot of that around.
I’m still trying to figure out a way to get my kids to a Chiefs game with my work life, but we’ve been to several Royals games this year and the vibes have always been positive.
I do think sports still represent a bit of a reprieve from the outside world. But sports have never been immune to outside forces. They exist in the world. They’re a reflection of it.
Right now, that’s often intense.
Mahomes hasn’t been great. Not by his standards, anyway.
It’s OK to say that.
He’s the best player in the world, so the rules are different for him. Good isn’t enough. Talent like his comes with responsibility.
The interception against the Ravens was inexplicable. It was a terrible idea poorly executed, a play Mahomes called “dumb” and one of the worst of his career.
The one against the Chargers was different. It was third and 8, score tied, under 2 minutes left. He was trying to use good protection from his line to turn good coverage from the Chargers into a big play. He rolled right, like he loves to do, and looked at Kelce — like he loves to do.
Mahomes and Kelce have a wild knack for seeing the chaos of an extended play the same way. Here, they saw it differently. Kelce wanted to go to the middle of the field and Mahomes expected him to go toward the sideline. The ball had too much air for the space Mahomes was targeting, and even if Kelce did what Mahomes expected, it would have been a difficult catch.
Here’s what happened:
My guess is that the coaches are not going to be furious. The risk-reward calculus was not in the Chiefs’ favor at that point, but it ended up being sort of like a third-and-long arm punt and the Chargers scored the touchdown. If Mahomes was being too aggressive, that’s a forgivable mistake.
I absolutely agree with the idea that the Chiefs have grown used to these defining moments going their way. Here’s I put it in the game column:
They look like a wildly talented group that has come to believe its talent will carry the day without covering for the basics required to be successful at the sport’s highest level.
They’ve had flashes of this for a while now, but it’s always been covered by their ability to win the plays that matter — Harrison Butker in L.A., Tyreek on fourth down in Miami, Kelce in the fourth quarter in Las Vegas, Henne on fourth down in the division round, on and on we can go.
Mahomes grew frustrated with it. That was the whole purpose behind the 20-0 thing. He wanted the focus to be on putting in the grunt work to perform consistently. But it’s one thing to say those words when the team is winning, and even the Super Bowl loss could be blamed on an offensive line that appeared to be fixed.
It’s another one to say those words when you’re 1-2, last place in the AFC West, and you’ve lost two games in a row because the details haven’t been handled.
You’re asking if this a long-term problem or a coincidental anomaly, and here’s how I would answer:
The fixes are in that room. All NFL teams are flawed, but the Chiefs have enough strengths to accomplish their goals. So while I wouldn’t say this is an anomaly — that insinuates simple bad luck, and I believe it’s more than that — this doesn’t have to be a long-term problem if the Chiefs take care of what needs to be done.
But they have to put in the work.
Mahomes’ unicorn stuff needs to be the icing on the cake, not the actual cake.
Reasonable minds can see this one differently.
But let’s watch it before going in:
I wanted to post the video because what I saw live was different than what I saw going through the game again later. Watching live, I saw what you saw, Forrest. I saw an unnecessary no-look that was just a tick off-target and bounced off a guy’s shoulder pads for an interception*.
* GREAT play by Chargers defensive back Asante Samuel Jr., who’s a really good player.
But watching again, I think Mahomes no-looked it to make sure the linebacker covering Demarcus Robinson wouldn’t get his hands in the air to deflect the pass. If anything, it appears that Kemp may have been fooled by the no-look because he seemed to react a bit slowly.
Now: Would that have been different if the pass was ahead of him, instead of behind? Sure, probably. Would it have been different if there was a bit more touch on the pass, and less velocity? Maybe.
But we’re also talking about a pass that hit a wide-open receiver in his body.
That simply has to be caught.
If you want to split up the blame, fine, but I’m going no less than an 80-20 split where Kemp has the bigger number.
Going into Monday night, there had been 47 NFL games and 21 that were decided by seven points or fewer.
Last season, it was 122 out of 256 games decided by a touchdown or less.
The Chiefs don’t get to be immune from that just because they employ Patrick Mahomes. The margins between winning and losing in the NFL are really small. They always have been, and the league’s business interests demand that they stay that way.
The Chiefs are a few plays away from being 3-0, and a few plays away from being 0-3. That’s life.
A year ago, they were a few plays away from losing at least six games they won. Staying on the right side of the razor’s edge is about more than luck, though, and that’s something we need to keep emphasized.
The Chiefs would have beaten the Chargers without the turnovers. Or with better communication and organization in the red zone, particularly on the three touchdowns where the receivers were just so dang open that I feel like we should watch them again here:
What is that, four yards of separation for Keenan Allen? And with zero defenders looking at him?
Seven yards? Maybe more?
That one’s not exactly threading the needle, either.
Linebacker Anthony Hitchens talked about this after the game, but especially on the first two, the Chiefs just weren’t organized. The Chargers did some late substituting and Hitchens felt like the Chiefs weren’t given enough time to counter and get a play-call in. You can see before the snap that there’s a lot of conversation and moving bodies.
The result of those plays sure indicates that the defense wasn’t ready.
The third touchdown is just a good receiver beating man coverage. Williams takes a step toward the inside, Baker bites, and Herbert has more than enough space to get the ball in before the sideline.
We can talk about the fourth-down pass-interference call and a bad bounce off Kemp’s shoulder pads that turned a likely seven points into an interception. We can talk about how the turnovers will stop.
My point here is that if you go back and study the games I think you’ll see that more often than not the team that “gets the breaks” is also the one that earned them.
It’s the old Arnold Palmer line: “It’s a funny thing: The more I practice the luckier I get.”
They lost two in a row, and four of six.
For me, the worst it got was a 19-13 loss to the Colts, then a loss at the end to the Texans (really bad turnover in that one, too), and then Mahomes’ injury in the next game at Denver.
The Chiefs were 6-4 after a loss at Tennessee, toward the bottom of the top 10 in most power rankings, and this sounds weird but is true: There were people around the league, and even in Kansas City, wondering if the Raiders would win the division.
So, sure. Saying that Mahomes has never been in last place before is both true and a bit of a gimmick we can use to emphasize the drama. I don’t know anyone who expects the Chiefs to finish 6-11 or whatever.
Teams in September aren’t what they are in January, and that can be especially true for a group like this that can be more “let’s taper up to our playoff best” and less “scratch and claw to sneak into the playoffs.”
The Chiefs have a Hall of Fame coach and the best quarterback in the league. That’s a pretty good place to start, even before you get to the grown-man leadership that exists on both sides of the ball.
This is why I say the answers are in the room.
But they have to do it. Because we’re seeing some of the same mistakes repeated, and promises about specific areas of improvement not upheld.
This group is on the other side of the fault line.
For years, a revolving cast of coaches and quarterbacks would talk about how hard it was to win NFL games. And they were right. The wrong mistake at the wrong time and the whole thing was doomed.
The Chiefs still do that now, but the difference is that it’s understood that the heaviest lift is the opponent’s. The opponent has to play well, force or luck into some mistakes by the Chiefs, and still make the plays at the end.
That’s a heck of an advantage for the Chiefs, but the problem arises when a group stops using its cheat-code powers as a difference-maker and starts using them to wipe out unnecessary mistakes.
We’ve been writing about this for a while now, including the game at the Chargers last year that the Chiefs absolutely stole.
The Chiefs aren’t doing anything bad here. They’re humans, and they’re showing human nature. It’s simply unnatural to have a Ferrari quarterback but mind-twist yourself into working and detailing like you have a Ford Focus.
But the Chiefs have unnatural goals. This is what they signed up for.
I think you mean more like a 2013 Alex Smith game plan, because Mahomes was the quarterback in 2018 and even in 2017 Alex played with what he described as some “(buck) it” — he led the league in adjusted yards per pass attempt and was statistically the league’s most effective deep passer.
But I digress.
Mahomes isn’t playing up to the standard he’s set for himself. I do believe that. He’s getting impatient at times and forcing things that shouldn’t be forced.
But without charting everything, this does not look like a conservative game plan thing to me. All three opponents have played the Chiefs similarly — two and sometimes three defensive backs deep, keeping receivers (especially Tyreek Hill) in front of them, looking to string out drives in hopes that the Chiefs get impatient or make a mistake.
The Chiefs have the answers to that. We can all scoff at the run, but Clyde Edwards-Helaire did have 100 yards on 17 carries Sunday, and it’s the best the offensive line has looked in moving the line of scrimmage.
They also have the league’s best pass-catching tight end and enough receiving talent to hurt a defense that’s focused on doubling two guys.
The Chiefs should have had 17 points, minimum, on those first three drives. Instead it was zero. The Chiefs should have been playing from ahead and finished with somewhere around 35 or 40 points. Instead, they had to chase to get to 24 and they erased their own margins for error.
There can be a fine line between “do what you do” and “don’t try to put a square peg through a round hole,” but for me, forcing the ball deep against coverage designed specifically to take away the deep ball is asking for plays like the second interception.
The Chiefs can make it all look so easy, and that’s a tantalizing thing, but when defenses force them to work a little harder they need to counter with patience, consistency and crispness.
If not, this is all they’re going to see.
The Chiefs were desperate for a left tackle and they get a one-year look at Brown before having to commit real money for him. For me, that’s well worth the draft capital they gave up, which did not include a first-round pick and equates to about a mid-second round pick.
With Edwards-Helaire … I’m fully on Team Don’t Spend On RBs. I thought they should have drafted defense there, or perhaps a receiver, but I also thought it was easy to see what the Chiefs liked so much about Edwards-Helaire. I thought he could be, in effect, this No. 3 pass-catching option that people are so hung up on. I understand that he’s a poor blocker, but I would’ve expected more snaps where he could negate a blitzer by turning into a receiver.
The Clark thing is more complicated than the narratives allow. After the 2018 playoff loss, the Chiefs were desperate for defense, and more specifically desperate for the kind of players that football people call “dogs.” They needed some aggression, some attitude, some strength, and I’m not sure how to fully make sense of the truth about Clark:
The Chiefs would not have won the Super Bowl without him, and he is now perhaps the most underperforming player in the league.
The Chiefs were desperate to win, and they did it, with Clark playing a central role in their playoff run.
They are now focused on long-term stability and remaining a consistent Super Bowl winner, with Clark eating 13.7% of the salary cap and starting the year off with hamstring problems.
That’s a complicated legacy, you guys.
But, anyway, if we go from 30,000 feet here I actually like the strategy of using first-round picks to “buy” the certainty of veterans. I don’t think it’s something you want to do every year, but the Chiefs are (they hope) going to be at the end of the first round every year. And if the right opportunity comes to fill a specific need, I can get behind that logic.
Here’s another way of asking the same question …
I think we’re getting caught up in the moment right now. That’s part of the fun about sports, so I’m not criticizing here. And maybe history will show I’m being slow on the panic train.
But the Chiefs have won more games than anyone in the league the last three seasons. They are the only team to play in each of the last three conference championship games, and the only team to play in two of the last three Super Bowls.
They have flaws. Some of that is because all teams have flaws. Some is because their investments haven’t turned out, particularly in the defensive front seven.
But I also spend a lot of time thinking about the fact that there are a lot of other teams around the league that would trade problems with the Chiefs.
They’re sloppy right now. That’s a concern, obviously, but sloppy can be fixed. Especially by a group that’s shown itself able to execute in the past. Other problems — lack of talent, coach in over his head, bad quarterback, bad locker room, etc. — can be harder to correct.
For me the most concerning part of all of this is that a lot of the problems are things the Chiefs have spent time and energy attempting to fix already.
If you’re going to bang the alarm, that’s the reason to do it, and maybe we’ll get there.
I’m just not quite ready to do that after three games with a team that has this track record of success.
We don’t do this often, but I’m going to play the GIFs from above on the Chargers’ first two touchdowns again.
Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo offered some insight here, which basically backed up what Hitchens said. Part of the problem was what the Chiefs believed was a late substitution that did not give them adequate time to counter.
Spags said he should have made a simpler play-call on this one …
… and that the confusion led to a missed rotation on this one. Spags didn’t say this directly, but I believe he was saying that the look the Chargers gave should‘ve turned Sneed from a blitzer to a cover man.
Speaking of Sneed, you’re asking about this play:
It’s basically a rub route. Sneed plays the first part of it cleanly, and then … it just looks like he lost a little bit of spatial awareness between ball and man there. My assumption is that Sneed saw something on tape that told him Allen was going to flatten the route toward the goal-line pylon, but when Allen turned it up again, the collision happened.
I guess I keep saying this, but I believe the answers are in the room. I have a hard time believing that the defense just stinks now. These are good coaches and their focus is on the right thing.
They’re getting beat right now, but for a lot of reasons it’s harder than ever to play defense in the NFL right now. The Chiefs aren’t going to be perfect. Maybe their ceiling is a defense that ranks somewhere between ninth and 16th.
That should be enough to win a lot of games.
The Chiefs are at the top of that arc. Maybe a little to the right, since they’ve already won everything.
Andy Reid’s health is worth monitoring here, too, because there can be fewer bigger “distractions” — that’s obviously not the right word here, but I’m trying to play within the rules — than a beloved and respected head coach’s well-being.
The challenge for the Chiefs is enormous. They are working to be the exception to the rule of parity. Mahomes is a great place to start, but in the last three decades of the NFL we’ve seen Brady and Belichick do it and … who else?
Let’s put the Royals at about the second “t” in “better.” Is that specific enough?
I do think they’re going to win soon. Some of these young pitchers won’t make it, but they have enough to believe that some will, and that’s a good place to start.
The progress of the farm system in the last year or two … a scout who works for a National League club told me last week he’s never seen anything like it. Bobby Witt Jr. is winning minor-league player of the year awards, and Nick Pratto and MJ Melendez aren’t far behind. And there’s another wave behind them that was in High-A Quad Cities this summer.
There’s a lot that can go wrong, and the division is loaded, but that’s a pretty good base for long-term optimism.
One of the things the Royals have going for them long-term is versatility. Most of their core can play multiple positions, which means one bad injury or slow development doesn’t blow the whole thing up or necessitate a trade.
I’m going to keep saying this: I’d see what Bobby Witt Jr. looks like in center field.
He’s got all the physical tools needed for the position, and if he could pull it off — not like Michael A. Taylor, who is amazing, but if he grades out as generally above average — it would answer a lot of questions and open up some more possibilities.
I’d want to be as sure as possible on Witt Jr., because Taylor is a terrific defender and the Royals have dang good reasons to emphasize defense with their center fielders.
The Royals have $46 million committed to five players, and with options and arbitration Baseball Reference estimates an $85.5 million payroll with the in-house players. There’s always some level of flexibility there, but we don’t know what the Royals want their payroll to look like.
But either way, there’s always the possibility of a trade and/or mid-tier free-agent signing to fill things out and provide cover for young players.
How much time you got, buddy?
Maybe the best way to think about this is that sports are like a romantic relationship, or any vice you can think of.
Even the best marriages have rocky times, right? You can’t find someone who’s been married 50 years and hasn’t been in a disagreement. There are also marriages that end disastrously.
Think about alcohol. There are people who drink regularly, but in moderation, and never have a problem. There are also lives that have been ruined by alcohol.
I’m not being flippant here. I’m being real. There are people who let sports ruin their lives. They get angry, they get in arguments, into fights. The stress is uncontrollable and unnecessary. Sports can ruin our perspective.
There are also people for whom sports are a central part of not just their personal identity but how they achieve happiness. It’s a way to build new friendships, and to repair old ones. It’s a way to bond with our kids, and to teach them some really important lessons about life. For a lot of us, our best memories are often with sports in the background.
Look, I’m well aware that I’ve taken a question that was meant rhetorically and turned it into some sort of after-school special here, but this stuff is important and it’s real and it’s worth remembering.
You’ve heard me say that without pain there is no joy, so if you love the Chiefs you should be disappointed right now. You should be frustrated. Andy Reid and other football people have a saying for times like this: “It’s supposed to hurt.”
But I do think it’s important for the rest of us to remember that our livelihood and self-worth are not tied to the results of the teams we root for.
It’s more fun when they win. But it’s healthier when we remember how much that matters.
Joe is a writing hero of mine. That is not hyperbole.
He started at The Star when I was in high school, and especially in those formative years I can’t tell you how many times something he wrote made me feel something — often awe. I still think the column he wrote on Rulon Gardner beating the unbeatable Russian in the 2000 Olympics is one of the great feats of deadline writing in modern sports journalism history*.
* The link is long since dead, but click here and scroll down a bit for the full column. The guts to try something off the wall like that combined with the precision to pull it off is just absurd.
Here’s a story I’m not sure I’ve told anyone. Joe leaving The Star for Sports Illustrated created the opening for the job I have now. This is going to sound like false humility, but I promise it’s true: I did not consider myself a worthy candidate until I made a (bad) joke about it to my boss about it and he actually said something like, “Hey, yeah, I want to talk to you about the job.”
But I still didn’t think I could really do the job until the end of a long conversation with Joe one night when he said, “I really think you’re ready for this. You can do it. You just have to decide whether you want to.”
In some ways that’s all I needed to hear: a guy who knows me and did the job as well as anyone telling me I could do it.
Joe is such a beautiful writer — and the juxtaposition of Jason Whitlock doing it his own way all those years left a mark — that there became this impression that he didn’t call people out when they needed it. But that’s just not supported by facts, though it’s also true that the Chiefs and Royals gave him plenty of material for criticism in those days.
The best compliment I can give a sportswriter is that they changed what I thought was possible with the medium, and Joe is on a short list — Sally Jenkins, Gregg Doyel, David Halberstam, Rick Reilly for a time, Bill Simmons for a time, several others — who stretch (or stretched) my mind in the best ways.
I’ve been luckier than I deserve in a lot of ways, but the one that’s hitting me at the moment is this thought about how many people helped me along the way.
Mike Vaccaro was irresponsibly nice to me, to the point that when I would tell him Hey, this is great, I appreciate it so much, but I also know you’re a busy man and I don’t want to be taking up all your time with this, his response was: Look kid, stop it with that, the only way I’m going to stop helping you is if you don’t stop apologizing for asking.
If I tried to list all the people who’ve taken personal time to help me it would be the longest list in the history of this timesuck, and if you’ve read this timesuck for long, I have two things:
1. Thank you!
2. You know I don’t say that lightly.
But, yes. Joe is very much on that list. Go read The Baseball 100. And The Soul of Baseball. And, for real: that Rulon Gardner column.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for the way you guys treat me. Does that sound weird? I don’t care. You guys are the best. You’ve been supportive, helpful, friendly, insightful and forgiving over the years. Thank you thank you thank you.
This story was originally published September 28, 2021 at 5:00 AM.