Kansas City Chiefs lose 38-20 to Bills after delay: Insta-reaction from the beatdown
There is no hiding now. The Chiefs are now a mess. That is not a secret.
They deploy the NFL’s worst defense, and barring a drastic change will commit the moral sin of wasting a season of Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce playing together in their prime.
We’ve tried to do the intellectual thing. We’ve talked about injuries and miscommunications and blown coverages. We’ve talked about the pass rush forcing the back end to cover too long, and the back end not covering long enough for the pass rush.
Whatever. This is really bad. Like, really, really, REALLY bad.
It goes beyond Daniel Sorensen being unplayable, and beyond the impact Chris Jones will have when healthy.
The Chiefs lost 38-20 to the Buffalo Bills on Sunday night at Arrowhead Stadium in a high-profile rematch of last season’s AFC Championship Game. The stakes on this night were always high.
Win, and the Chiefs could have gone stiff upper lip and claimed a retention of AFC superiority despite losses to the Ravens and Chargers.
But the Chiefs lost, and lost convincingly — so convincingly, in fact, that looking up at eight teams in the AFC is suddenly the least of their concerns.
We are going to focus on the defense here, but don’t let anyone you love pretend that everything else is fine. This group is a mess right now. Their resolve is being challenged by a surprising conspiracy of mistakes and shoddy communication.
Mahomes threw two more interceptions, and it’s fair to point out that one hit Hill in the hands. It’s also fair to point out that the points they’re scoring isn’t nearly enough. On-field bickering comes from a competitive place, and that’s good, but repeated and heated exchanges like the Chiefs are having are a window into underlying problems.
It’s telling that the team’s two most trusted leaders — Mahomes and safety Tyrann Mathieu — are often busy being demonstrably disappointed in teammates. Players are often out of position on offense, defense and special teams.
On one punt return, the Chiefs had just 10 players on the field.
But now let’s focus on the defense. That group had previously shown itself to be bad. The Chiefs’ defense can now be fairly described as broken. The regression in defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s third season with relatively little roster turnover is a flashing red warning sign.
They are slow before the snap and after, with miscommunications affecting every level of the defense. On one snap, Bills running back Devin Singletary caught a short pass and was 15 yards or so into his sprint downfield before linebacker Anthony Hitchens turned around.
On another, Bills quarterback Josh Allen was running over the middle of the Chiefs’ defense like he was a high school quarterback playing a smaller school.
On another, Sorensen — and we mean no disrespect to his other bad plays here, but this is the one that most stood out — covered Bills tight end Dawson Knox downfield then just … appeared to lose interest?
Got lost?
Needed a smoke break?
History will remember this night as the moment Sorensen’s place as a starting safety became unexplainable. He’s missing tackles at a dizzying clip, is too slow to cover downfield, and has become a favorite target of opposing quarterbacks. If Mathieu’s body language is any indication, Sorensen’s teammates are losing patience.
But the coaches are putting him in situations he clearly can’t handle right now.
Sorensen is the symptom, not the disease.
Frank Clark is the league’s third-highest paid defender this season and his most endearing quality is that he’s pretty good at setting the edge against the run. Jarran Reed was supposed to be a force in the middle, but Chiefs fans don’t have a reason to know his name. 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 is one star (Mathieu), one promising young player (L’Jarius Sneed), one who everybody but the defensive coordinator believes should be playing more (Juan Thornhill) and a bunch of henchmen. The lack of depth is being amplified by Charvarius Ward’s injury at cornerback.
There is a version of revisionist history that says the Patrick Mahomes years have been easy, but that’s a lie. This group has faced tough moments before — the 2018 defense proved to be the only one capable of stopping Mahomes, that knee injury in 2019 looked gruesome, and last year’s Super Bowl left the Chiefs’ offensive line in crumbs.
This group has met challenges before. The record is not perfect, but it’s pretty good.
That said, this group has not given fans any reason to believe.
The schedule lets up a little with Washington next weekend and the Giants the day after Halloween. But the Chiefs also play the Titans, Packers, Raiders and Cowboys before Thanksgiving, which means if the defense stays anywhere close to this bad it’s entirely possible the Chiefs could have six losses before December.
Two weeks ago, assistant head coach Dave Toub said the Chiefs were at a crossroads. So what do we call this?
There’s still time to save the season.
But we’re nearly one-third of the way through the schedule now, and the defense looks worse every week.
This story was originally published October 10, 2021 at 11:36 PM.