This Kansas City Chiefs season can still, somehow, go wherever they want it to go
This Chiefs season, once seen as a tire fire by many fans, is now more like a rocket ship. Anything is possible. Whatever the Chiefs want this season to be, it can still be.
What a wild ride, and we still have six more games to go. Plus the playoffs.
Their biggest win of the season (so far) came 19-9 against the Cowboys at Arrowhead Stadium on Sunday, the league’s best offense held to no touchdowns, a team’s growing swagger taking its biggest leap yet.
“They’ve had to work for this,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. “I think when you have to really work for something and bear down I think you enjoy it a little bit more. You’re not resting on what happened before. You earned this right here. The little knot in the stomach, the ups and downs, you earn every one of these. And I think that’s where we’re at right now.”
The NFL moves so fast. Much of this is the nature of the sport; more of it is the nature of the league’s structure. The empire was built on parity. Billionaires have been made even wealthier with games played on a razor’s edge, and with the fates of accomplished athletes and coaches tied to the changing winds.
This Chiefs team has already seen so much. They won their season opener in the last minute. They lost in Baltimore on a fumble, had a chance to beat the Chargers even with four turnovers and were objectively non-competitive in embarrassing losses to the Bills and Titans. They had lost more than they had won at that point, and looked up at nine teams in the AFC standings.
Now they have won four games in a row. No other team this season has made a push back up this fast, and this far.
The Titans — and we have to mention here that they just lost to the sorry Texans — are the only AFC team with more wins as the Chiefs go into their well-timed bye — a time when fans know that Reid usually puts his team on another level.
The Chiefs have done all this with … defense?
Mercy, they’re dominating that side of the ball. They gave up 163 points in their first five games — an average of 32.6. They have now given up 87 in their last six — an average of 14.5.
Starting with halftime of the Titans game, they’ve given up 47 points in 18 quarters.
This has been a championship defense for a month, and this was their best performance, by far. This would have been most teams’ best defensive performance of the season, by far.
The Cowboys were without left tackle Tyron Smith and receiver Amari Cooper. They played the second half without CeeDee Lamb. Those absences are worth noting, but you’re lost if you think that’s where this game swung.
Frank Clark, Melvin Ingram, and especially Chris Jones dominated the line of scrimmage. The pass rush was atrocious early but has been consistently disruptive for the last month, a nod to better health and Ingram’s arrival.
The coverage behind them could not have been better. L’Jarius Sneed made the interception to ice it late, and has now played the best two games of his career consecutively. There probably is not a better-tackling defensive back in the league. There certainly is not a defensive back who covers and tackles better.
Charvarius Ward played one of his best games as a pro, particularly as the Cowboys kept challenging him deep. Ward was left one-on-one with Lamb on a home run ball. He intercepted it.
“It’s never how you start, man,” Jones said. “It’s how you finish.”
Talking about the Chiefs now can be a jarring experience, because if we’re just talking about the last month, we’re talking bout a team that’s beating good teams while often getting next to nothing from its offense. If you only saw this season’s games, you might come up with a take that the offense will keep this team from reaching its Super Bowl ceiling.
What weird form of reality is this, anyway?
The Chiefs had two touchdowns and a short field goal, all set up by the defense, on their first three possessions. After that they went punt, punt, fumble, interception, punt, field goal, missed field goal, punt.
So: Not great.
“I’m excited about it because we’re still not playing our best football and we’re sitting here 7-4 and at least a half game up on the AFC West,” Mahomes said. “You go into the bye week knowing you’re going to play a lot of divisional opponents coming up, so everything’s right in front of us.
“We can be better, especially offensively. The defense can continue to get better and better each and every week. So to be where we started to where we’re at now, and still not be playing our best football, I would take that every time.”
That’s the part that’s so intriguing about this team. They really aren’t playing well offensively. This is four out of the last five that they’ve scored 20 points or fewer. A ball bounced off Travis Kelce’s hands for an interception, which is at least the fifth time a ball has hit a Chiefs receiver’s body before being picked off.
The timing doesn’t seem right between Mahomes and his receivers. Some of his throws appear just a little off target, or perhaps aimed at the wrong receiver. The same Cover-2 defenses have been giving the Chiefs too much trouble for far too long now.
But, some reality. The Cowboys are one of the league’s best teams, a half-game from the NFC’s top seed entering the week.
After losses to the Ravens, Chargers, Bills and Titans — the best four opponents through the first two months — the Chiefs’ resume looked an awful lot like that of a soft one-and-done playoff team, at best.
But they now have four wins in a row, and beating the Cowboys means they have the signature win they previously lacked. This isn’t college football, so you don’t get to claim things like “statement win,” but these are games played by human beings so it’s not meaningless, either.
This team is changing. They are improving. They are winning in ways that were previously thought impossible, and they are doing it with the offense struggling — a trend that feels impossible to continue much longer.
The Chiefs have been criticized, and not unfairly. This is a group that talked of winning more championships than Michael Jordan, for goodness’ sake, and they started 3-4. They earned whatever was said about them.
“Obviously I knew we were never broken as a team,” Mahomes said. “We have too many good players, too many special guys on this team who go through the process in bad times and good times. But we’re still early in the season.
“I mean, I know we’ve kind of gotten to that second half, but our goal is to be on top at the end of the season. It’s not to win the regular season. But you have to go through that process every single day of being better, winning that week, and being a great team.
“And I think we’re going to try to do that, and at the end of the year we’ll figure out what we need to say then.”
This story was originally published November 21, 2021 at 8:55 PM.