Kansas City Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes was bleh again. Until the moment he wasn’t
The scream was primal and the punch went hard. The star quarterback head-butted his left tackle in celebration. He jumped. Screamed again. Punched again, his gold necklace reflecting the bright lights.
Patrick Mahomes is an emotional player, always has been, with the kind of pregame celebration made for hype montages. The party he threw spilled a different truth — he hasn’t been able to rage like that often.
“I kind of let that out, that frustration,” Mahomes said. “We made it happen.”
The Chiefs beat the Packers 13-7 at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, a game that even a week ago looked like one of the season’s most anticipated that turned into tape that both sides would prefer to burn.
The Packers stunk, the Chiefs did enough to beat a team that stunk, and in Kansas City a new question emerges:
Can one last play — the one that iced the game, the one that more than any other this season looked like the quarterback who won MVP and then won the Super Bowl and then went back — be the entry ramp to Mahomes getting his mojo back?
The play required an assassin’s nerve: third and 10, the game in the balance, and the easy call would be to run the ball. The Packers had no timeouts left and a punt would’ve required them to go something like 90 yards for a touchdown in just over a minute.
Honestly, a run or safe screen there would have been easy to endorse, especially with how much the Chiefs have struggled this season, and particularly this night.
Chiefs coach Andy Reid chose the opposite — Mahomes in the shotgun, looking for Tyreek Hill on the right side. Packers cornerback Chandon Sullivan had Hill covered well enough that Mahomes would’ve been forgiven a moment of panic, his three step drop turning into 15 steps sprinting to his right to give Hill another chance to break free.
He did, essentially curling around and finding open air with a clean throwing lane. The Chiefs converted the first down, then went to victory formation, the team that used to do stuff like this all the time icing a critical win with one more dance.
“I feel like we’re close,” Mahomes said. “I’m saying you can see drives here and there where we’re that team that everybody knows and loves. But you’ve got to be able to consistently do that throughout every single drive in the game.”
The Chiefs have not been good this season. Mediocre would be more accurate, and even that might be generous. They are currently owners of the least impressive two-game win streak in memory — three points over the awful and injured Giants last week, six points over the Rodgers-less Packers who self-destructed and missed two field goals.
The world saw more evidence of the gap between what this group expected to be and what it is. Mahomes was unimpressive for at least the fourth consecutive game, this time completing just 20 of 37 passes for 166 yards, the lowest total of any of his 62 career full games (including playoffs).
A fuller analysis with film would be helpful, but on first glance we saw open receivers ignored, deep passes forced and a few big shots that just weren’t accurate. At least a time or two he could have run for chunks and instead threw incomplete.
The problems are stacking, instead of diminishing, and the Chiefs have too many good players and too many smart coaches for this to continue. We’ve heard all the explanations, including this silliness where we pretend teams have never played two deep safeties before or that it’s some impossible riddle to solve.
One of Reid’s favorite sayings is true on this — they all have a piece of it.
Reid isn’t making enough calls that get enough guys open. Receivers aren’t winning their routes enough, and they’re dropping too many of the balls that come their way. The Chiefs offered a mid-game microcosm of their struggles that was a little too on the nose:
On first down, Mahomes ignored an easy 15 or so yards to a wide open Kelce to force a deep throw to Mecole Hardman, who was double covered.
On second down, Kelce dropped what would have been a first down.
On third down, the pass went incomplete as Hill slipped.
Punt (and, weird as this sounds, punting was actually the Chiefs’ best play on Sunday).
“You can’t work on a win if it’s a loss,” Reid said. “I’d rather work on getting better when we still have the opportunity to win a game.”
He’s right about that, and Rodgers or not, nobody should be apologizing for beating a 7-1 team.
But the pattern has long been set by now. The Chiefs make too many mistakes for consistent success, either in a particular game or throughout the season. They can be disjointed, whether it’s presnap confusion on the play that ended with the Packers’ only touchdown, or receivers who don’t see the field the same as the quarterback who is still trying to trust a good pocket.
Nobody is saying this outside of the usual cliches, but Mahomes carries an outsized part of this.
Even with the big money part of his contract not kicking in until next season, the Chiefs simply cannot be a credible championship threat if their unicorn quarterback is playing like a mule.
He can be so much better than this. The Chiefs need him to be so much better than this.
They need him to be what he was on that last throw, actually. That’s what’s been missing. That was the flash that broke up the stale. Mahomes has always been emotional, and his successes have tended to stack on one other.
After two months of the opposite, the Chiefs need that last throw to be a new beginning.
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 8:57 PM.