We’ve seen the Kansas City Chiefs this good before. But we haven’t seen them this tough
Over the years we have seen the Chiefs morph from the league’s most frustrating team to the most fun to the fastest. But we haven’t seem them play like the league’s toughest team, at least not obviously, and at least not until now.
The possibilities here are everything, because all of those old traits — Tyreek Hill’s speed, Travis Kelce’s slipperiness, Patrick Mahomes’ gifts — remain, but now they’re paired with a defense and identity tied closely with their ability to win a rock-fight.
This is a champion embracing evolution, and also stretching its boundaries. The playoffs are still 30 days away and the Super Bowl another 30 days after that, so the final story is far from written, but the Chiefs told us who they can be in a 34-28 overtime win over the Chargers here on Thursday night.
This is a tough team, as tough as the Chiefs have been in years, and they just put their most impressive win of the season on national television.
“You’ve seen it with the defense and the swagger they’ve had,” Mahomes said. “You’ve seen guys step up on that defense and make plays. You’ve seen on offense, even when games are ugly, and they’re not the games you’re used to having, stepping up and making drives to win football games. And that’s what happened today.
“The defense held us in that game, all the fourth-down stops against a really really good offense, and then at the end of the day the offense stepped up on those last three drives and got down there and scored when we needed to.”
Remember 3-4? The Chiefs lost because they fumbled, then lost because they turned it over, then lost twice because they were the decidedly inferior team. Four losses, all in the first two months, by a team that didn’t lose that often in a 2020 season that stretched into six months.
Since then: seven wins, including four over teams currently in the playoff field.
Remember when Jack Del Rio became the face for this idea that the rest of the NFL saw the Chiefs as a gimmick team? That was five AFC West titles ago, two Lamar Hunt trophies ago and one parade ago.
They will almost certainly add to their division titles total, and the rest will depend on how well the Chiefs maintain and build on their current form. Combined with last week’s annihilation of the Raiders, this is by far the best the Chiefs have played in consecutive weeks. And recent history will tell you this is part of a broader pattern of the Chiefs playing their best late in the season.
It’s been feeling rather 2019-ish, right?
“I just think we continue to work,” linebacker Anthony Hitchens said. “Sometimes it’s not going good, and you just keep working.”
This isn’t quite that simple, or else everybody would do it. But Hitchens emphasized a common theme over the years from veteran players: Andy Reid trusts them, treats them as men and protects their bodies with shorter practices and fewer drills with pads than most NFL coaches.
Sports contain too much variance to trust cause-and-effect specifically, but can it be a total coincidence that the Chiefs — with the notable exceptions of Chris Jones, Willie Gay Jr. and Josh Gordon, all of whom are on the COVID-19 list — are among the league’s healthiest teams now?
The Chiefs did not have a lead for the last 48 minutes of regulation Thursday night. They trailed by seven when Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert finished a boss drive with a touchdown pass to Keenan Allen with 2:24 left.
From there, no big deal, Mahomes led his second of three — THREE! — 75-yard touchdown drives in the last 10 minutes of regulation and overtime.
“I do trust our guys,” Reid said. “And I think they trust themselves, which is huge, in those situations. But you’ve gotta go out and you’ve gotta produce like this when your back’s against the wall.”
This is a game the Chiefs could have fairly asked forgiveness on. A road game on a Thursday night is among the toughest challenges the NFL offers, and the Chiefs did it against a strong team and without two key players on defense.
Mahomes just didn’t have it for much of the game, with an awkward fumble and an interception and another throw that he accurately described with an adjective we just won’t print here.
The defense was mostly good, particularly with three goal-line stands, but without Jones the Chiefs struggled to pressure Herbert and gave up that boss drive toward the end of the fourth quarter, when a stop would have likely prevented overtime.
Look, the Chiefs still need to get better. Kelce had one of the most productive games of his career — 10 catches for 191 yards and two touchdowns, including the walk-off in overtime — but has lacked his typical consistency. The Chiefs could not run the ball effectively against one of the league’s worst run defenses.
The defense showed moxie, but also that it needs Jones, Frank Clark and Melvin Ingram to be healthy together to pressure quarterbacks. The Chargers got whatever they wanted on the ground and were a just-take-the-points decision away from winning.
So the Chiefs are far from perfect, but they have — Eric Bieniemy voice — put consistent behavior on tape that shows they can win both a laser show and a rock-fight.
Against the Chargers, they actually did both: rocks early, lasers late.
The Chiefs need to do it, and the margins remain thin. But there is no logical reason a team with this specific talent and this specific identity can’t go from 3-4 to Super Bowl champions.
This story was originally published December 17, 2021 at 1:24 AM.