Chiefs need to look at the mirror, not the referees after crushing playoff loss

The Chiefs regular season was defined by their penchant for the nerve-wracking comeback. Four rallies of stupefying proportions made it come to seem a part of this team’s DNA — and maybe even a trait that could finally eclipse their excruciating modern playoff history.

So as they trailed Pittsburgh 18-10 in the fourth quarter of an AFC Divisional playoff game on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium, if you could fend off the weight of the past, it was only natural to anticipate another great escape.

So of course Alex Smith completed a fourth-and-8 pass to Chris Conley to enable Spencer Ware’s 1-yard touchdown run and a two-point conversion pass to Demetrius Harris that evened it all up with 2 minutes 43 seconds left.

But the celebration — and the season — was reduced to a mere mirage when offensive tackle Eric Fisher was nabbed for holding on the play, the final crucial mistake in an 18-16 loss that was riddled with them.

Actually, the last revealing testimony came after the game, when tight end Travis Kelce came unhinged in what began as a defense of Fisher and ended as a cheap rant against the officials that perhaps provided some insight as to how Kelce followed up a dropped pass by incurring an unnecessary roughness penalty on the next play.

“That wasn’t a hold on my guy Eric Fisher, and sure enough I hope (Fisher) doesn’t go the entire off-season thinking it was his fault,” Kelce said, using an expletive for the call and adding, “Just get our jugulars ripped out because the ref felt bad for (Pittsburgh’s) James Harrison falling on the ground. …

“(Referee Carl Cheffers) shouldn’t even be able to wear a zebra jersey ever again. He shouldn’t even be able to work in a (darned) Foot Locker.”

Whatever Fisher felt about the call, he handled it like a pro after he turned from his locker to a horde of waiting media and muttered “let’s get this over with.”

“For me to let the team down,” Fisher said, “it’s going to be a hard one to let go.”

Luckily for Fisher, he was hardly alone in a game that illuminated the scant margin for error the Chiefs had.

Even as they were stoking expectations, it was impossible not to wonder how much of winning those wacky ways was fool’s gold that couldn’t be counted on when it mattered most.

The answer, it turns out, is somewhere in between:

The Chiefs were a good enough team to win this game at their best, but not at all a good enough team to win with the laundry list of gaffes they made Sunday.

A team that tied for the NFL lead in turnover margin in the regular season at plus-16 lost the turnover battle 2-1.

It dropped passes repeatedly and served up a batch of untimely penalties — from Kelce’s ridiculous shove that earned him an earful from linebacker Justin Houston on the sideline to a delay of game in the second half to a hold on Mitch Morse and ineligible man downfield call on Laurent Duvernay-Tardif on the second drive of the game.

It bungled coverages, such as the one that had Houston chasing Antonio Brown down the field, and it took a casual 7:06 to drive for Ware’s touchdown … leaving it only the most minuscule of possibilities to score again after the two-point conversion to Harris was negated by the penalty and Smith’s subsequent pass to Jeremy Maclin was incomplete from the 12-yard line.

The Chiefs couldn’t match Pittsburgh’s urgency or poise, or more to the point they couldn’t do anything to disrupt it despite having the bye week to prepare and coach Andy Reid’s well-documented success in that scenario: 19-2, including 3-0 in the playoffs, entering the game.

They managed one sack of quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who is built like a statue and moves like one, too, and were steamrolled by the Steelers line and Le’Veon Bell, who ran 30 times for 170 yards.

The Steelers never could get in the end zone, but they amassed 389 yards while the Chiefs only mustered 227.

“We left too many opportunities on the field: dropped balls, missed throws, holding calls, missed blocks. You can’t do that,” Maclin said, later adding, “We have nobody to blame but ourselves.”

And that’s where the Chiefs need to look after this: in the mirror, not at the referees.

The better team won on Sunday, but probably only because the Chiefs weren’t disciplined enough to be the team they’re capable of — and that’s the real shame of this loss.

This story was originally published January 16, 2017 at 12:11 AM with the headline "Chiefs need to look at the mirror, not the referees after crushing playoff loss."