Bizarre Chiefs loss will be remembered for field-goal gaffes, not Mahomes’ big return
Before the diabolical fiasco bubbling ahead, this game couldn’t have felt more over with 1 minute, 48 seconds left Sunday at Nissan Stadium.
So much so that you could be forgiven for assuming the result before chaos came out of nowhere — or at least from an utterly improbable source, via a bizarre trap door that didn’t exist until it was custom-built on the spot.
When Tennessee quarterback Ryan Tannehill’s fourth and 17 pass fell incomplete, let the record show, the Chiefs led 32-27 with the ball at the Tennessee 32.
Presto: This day was going to be best remembered for Patrick Mahomes’ brilliant (and unscathed) return behind a patchwork offensive line that at one point featured just one man (center Austin Reiter) who started the season at his position.
And it would be recalled for Mecole Hardman’s 68-yard touchdown reception off Mahomes’ contorting jump pass, Tyreek Hill’s 11 catches and four sacks by a defense trending toward standing tall when it had to.
All the elements of a gritty victory.
“Our (offense) is coming on the field to close it out; you’re giving the ball to Pat Mahomes with (less than 2 minutes) to go?” said defensive end Frank Clark, whose sack had put the Titans in that fourth and 17 bind. “Ninety-nine percent of the time, that’s a ‘W.’ But it’s that 1 percent, you know, where it went in the other’s favor.”
A zillion things poured into how this became a 35-32 loss that will be known henceforth for two bungled field goals in the last 90 seconds. Those were more symptom than cause, more gateway to the downfall than the reason for it, but they loomed large and indelibly.
Damien Williams’ fumble was returned for a 53-yard Tennessee touchdown earlier in the game. Tennessee’s Derrick Henry uncorked a 68-yard touchdown run to highlight his 140-yard second half. The Chiefs had nine penalties for 80 yards, and Harrison Butker missed an extra point that played into the final dynamics.
But the Chiefs had sustained all that, and now it was a matter of closing. A simple-sounding concept that seems to elude them more often than it should.
And then it all just drizzled right through their grasp, a fine step forward transformed into a debacle and making for a locker room in shock.
It began inconspicuously enough when they opted to pass on third and 2 and Mahomes slid for a five-yard loss that compelled Tennessee to use its last time out.
Bummer, but no big deal: Here came Butker, fresh off being named AFC Special Teams Player of the Week after a performance that featured two field goals against Minnesota in the last three minutes and included the game-winner as time ran out.
More to the point, he’d be set up by ever-steady long-snapper James Winchester and holder Dustin Colquitt, who have been working together since 2015.
That means thousands, if not tens of thousands, of exchanges that are seldom anything but smooth in games. Never before had one between the two gone so awry in a game that it led to Colquitt needing to run or pass.
But then came what might be summed up as a botched snap but seems to have been done justice in the berserk official play-by-play description:
“(1:27) (Field goal formation) D. Colquitt Aborted. J. Winchester FUMBLES at TEN 37, recovered by KC-D. Colquitt at TEN 37. D Colquitt pass incomplete short left. … PENALTY on KC-D Colquitt. Intentional Grounding. 10 yards. Enforced at TEN 29.”
Somehow, they miscommunicated on the snap, with Colquitt’s glance up at Butker misinterpreted by Winchester as the cue to snap.
“I looked back, Dustin was looking forward,” Winchester said. “Then I started to see him look back. But I had already started the snap.”
Realizing he’d misread Colquitt, Winchester tried to hold back but was too committed and thus skimmed it in low.
“I saw a flash,” Colquitt said, “which was the ball.”
The flash, alas, turned into a burst for Tennessee.
“It obviously fell apart after that,” Colquitt said.
With no timeouts left, Tannehill orchestrated a four-play, 61-yard drive that ended with his 23-yard pass touchdown pass to Adam Humphries and was punctuated with Tannehill’s two-point conversion run.
“Unfortunately, I let (the team) down,” Winchester lamented. “A lot of guys worked their (butts) off all game.”
But it happened so fast that the Chiefs still had 23 seconds left to work with … albeit with just two timeouts left after they squandered one on the two-point conversion. There was time to render that botched field goal just an asterisk in an odd game.
Mahomes being Mahomes, they were at the Tennessee 34 with three seconds left to give Butker a shot to tie it from 52 yards away at game’s end.
You know what happened next, but maybe not how: Tennessee’s Josh Kalu zoomed in from Butker’s right with a running jump having read Colquitt’s cadence pattern.
“It’s the same cadence he’d been giving the whole game; I’d been getting closer and closer,” said Kalu, who eluded Blake Bell coming off the edge. “Game on the line, whether I jump offsides or not, it’s not going to make any difference. So I jumped it and made a play.”
After he blocked a kick that Butker at least tentatively believed was well-struck and on the right trajectory, Kalu said he felt “too much adrenaline in my body. Infinite adrenaline.”
Safe to say the Chiefs had the opposite sorts of stuff surging through them. Something like infinite anguish and regrets about a game that was theirs to lose … and lose they did.
It’s just one game, it’s true. And there sure was a quirk to how it was enabled by one of the most reliable units on the team.
But it ultimately was lost because the offense couldn’t generate a late first down and the defense couldn’t stop the Titans.
And because one way or another, for all it’s potential, it’s still hard to ever exhale with this team or know what it’s really about … 99 percent chance of winning or not.
This story was originally published November 10, 2019 at 8:22 PM.