The Kansas City Chiefs got punked by the Bills. We haven’t seen it this bad in years
By the end, Bills players stood on the sideline waving to the last Chiefs fans leaving. The statement came with unmistakable force.
This was supposed to be the NFL’s best game of the week, a rematch of last season’s AFC Championship Game and a test of superiority in the conference.
The Bills may or not be the AFC’s best team — the Chargers and Ravens can make their cases, too, and both beat the Chiefs — but the Chiefs are now closer to the bottom of the standings than the top. They are closer to missing the playoffs than being a serious contender for the championship.
The Bills beat the Chiefs 38-20 at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday night in a game marked by heavy rain, a weather delay and whatever the Bills wanted to do.
Afterward, Andy Reid and Tyrann Mathieu both used the word “embarrassing.”
“It’s a certain urgency you have to have when you play for the Kansas City Chiefs,” Mathieu said. “Everybody in this league, they want what we have. All the success we’ve had. Teams are chasing that, that glory. Each and every week.”
The game was pitched to a national audience as something like a character test, and the Chiefs failed in spectacular fashion.
This was the Chiefs’ worst regular-season loss in five years. They had an opportunity to win back some respect — claim some of that aura they had before the last Super Bowl — and they instead fell further.
The Chiefs are 2-3 and looking up at eight teams in the AFC standings, which means they are closer to last than first, which means the standings reflect reality.
“This is one we’re going to remember,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said.
Reporters aren’t allowed in the locker rooms after games these days, so these things come with some guesswork, but the Chiefs have not appeared this rocked by a regular-season loss in recent memory.
Reid talked about the penalties and the turnovers and the big plays given up and his receivers and quarterback not seeing the field in symphony. Mahomes talked about needing to re-evaluate his decisions and the work required to solve what he described as coverage they had not seen before.
Mathieu was asked about a couple long passes with Daniel Sorensen in coverage, plays that ended in big gains for the Bills and with Mathieu’s hands raised above his head in frustration.
He essentially doubled down on what he’d seemed to express on the field.
“I felt like we were in a fairly decent coverage, so you don’t expect anybody to be wide open,” Mathieu said. “I do that on good plays as well. But, yeah. Kind of embarrassing.”
This group is a mess. One bad day or half or drive can be seen as an aberration, especially for a team with the Chiefs’ recent track record of success. But by now the flashes of promise are the exception, buried under problems on both sides of the ball.
The defense is wrecked. They’re getting no pass rush — especially with Chris Jones injured — and the linebackers are so slow that I w i l l n o w t y p e l i k e t h i s. The secondary’s problems deserve more than just a few sentences, but at the moment the Chiefs’ defensive backs appear overmatched physically and lost emotionally.
Sorensen seems to show up in every opponent’s highlights, whether with a missed tackle in space, being outrun across the field on third down or beat deep for big plays. Maybe Mathieu should tighten it up a bit and not show so much frustration on the field, but the truth is he’s speaking for his teammates and coaches and fans.
But don’t let the defense’s struggles hide the fact that the offense just played one of its worst games since Mahomes became the Chiefs’ starting quarterback. Twenty points is never enough for this group, and they have now stacked up 11 turnovers in four games.
Even if you generously describe a few as flukes — one pass bounced off Tyreek Hill’s hands and ended in a pick-6 — there is enough sloppiness here to recognize a critical mass.
This is what it looks like when a former champion stumbles.
This is what it looks like when an aura fades.
The Chiefs have made a lot of highlights for themselves in beating up on the rest of the AFC, but they have now lost more games this season than they had in Mahomes’ previous 29 games as their starting quarterback. Their success has come with a confidence that often stretched the boundaries of arrogance, and a league full of piranhas wants part of the takedown.
The Chiefs can still be a good team. There’s enough talent in the room and time on the schedule for them to become a really good team.
But the dominant ceiling a lot of us saw a month ago is by now crumbled. The rest of this season will be about making the most of what’s left.
This story was originally published October 11, 2021 at 1:30 AM.