Quibble if you must, but Chiefs’ triumph over Broncos reiterates team’s grit, direction
So, yep, it was another game and yet another white-knuckled, premature-graying narrow escape for the Chiefs on Sunday at Arrowhead Stadium.
And you could fret and quibble to your heart’s content if you wanted after this.
Certainly, you could fixate on a somewhat bizarre offensive night featuring two would-be Tyreek Hill touchdowns disallowed (including one that wasn’t because of failures on multiple levels) and focus exclusively on the fact they eked past the Broncos 22-16 only weeks after beating the same group 43-16 in Denver.
But the takeaway of the night isn’t that without Tyrann Mathieu’s late takeaway (an interception of Drew Lock) that they almost lost — just like you might figure they almost lost to Carolina, Las Vegas and Tampa Bay as they won those last three games by a total of nine points.
The takeaway is that they keep amassing victories of all shapes and varieties, by all sorts of twists and turns, all of which are affirmations of the bigger picture:
The defending Super Bowl champions are 11-1 this season now (for just the second time in franchise history), have won 20 of their last 21 games and are firmly immersed in the second golden era of club history.
(In fact, by clinching a playoff spot on Sunday, they assured themselves of the opportunity to repeat that their Super Bowl-winning predecessors were denied 50 years when they finished 7-5-2 and failed to make the playoffs.)
The abiding prosperity is true foremost because everything is possible with Patrick Mahomes and in the culture coach Andy Reid has established.
And a zillion other reasons including the resourcefulness and resolve of general manager Brett Veach.
And, yes, a defense that was pivotal last year and bookended this victory with Mathieu interceptions and seems back on trajectory toward improving for the stretch run.
But it’s also true because each hard-earned win (in this case with a pivotal performance by Harrison Butker with five field goals) begets more conviction and faith and momentum about where this is all going: A team that gets everyone else’s best still keeps besting them all and learning more about itself along the way.
“I think it builds up that confidence that you can win games different ways,” Mahomes said. “If you look at how we’ve played the last few games, we’ve won every single way possible, it seems like. And the defense stepped up today and kept us in the game whenever we were having lulls, and then we found a way to keep battling.
“I think that’s the biggest thing: In this league, you have to find a way. Not everything’s going to be easy. We’re not going to be able to throw 70-yard touchdowns to Tyreek every single play. Hopefully just a few of them.
“But we’re going to go out there and battle and find a way to do whatever we can to just have more points than the other team at the end of the game.”
So they did even when the offense was a touch off much of the night, especially in the red zone, and beset with oddities even when it did hum.
In sharp contrast to the first meeting this season, won by the Chiefs 43-16 after they seized a 24-9 halftime lead with the help of defensive and special teams touchdowns, the Chiefs trailed 10-9 at halftime.
And the discounted touchdown notwithstanding, it also was because they had other chances that sputtered with their distinctly discombobulated offense.
At least it was in terms of the standards of the Mahomes era and when it came to making the plays that create touchdowns instead of field goals.
They were off-kilter all half, really, epitomized by Mahomes and a remarkably open Hill misconnecting on what had the makings of a 64-yard touchdown pass on their opening drive.
Especially only a week after the duo had harmonically converged for 203 yards in the first quarter against Tampa Bay, it was a strange sight to see Hill either have trouble tracking the ball or running contrary to where Mahomes expected him or some combination of both.
On their next possession, following a Denver field goal, the Chiefs zoomed into Broncos territory but could only manage a countering field goal after they fizzled again on a third down.
To that point of the game, the Chiefs were 0-10 in those situations against Denver this season.
Then came the 40-yard touchdown pass to Hill that wasn’t, missed both by game officials and Chiefs coaches and the replay seemingly slow to be delivered — and with the normally animated Hill inexplicably making no apparent fuss over it, either.
Never mind that it was apparent to about anybody else after one good glance at what felt like a mighty delayed replay:
The further review we saw on TV but that never was carried out on the field plainly revealed that the ball landed in the alert Hill’s arms even after he seemed to jump too early and knocked it up in the air on trajectory to himself.
“Wow man he caught that!! That was a TD by Cheetah,” LeBron James wrote on Twitter, speaking for plenty of other observers.
As if that wasn’t exasperating enough, then the Chiefs had a chance to match the Broncos’ 10-3 lead when Mahomes scrambled 20 yards to the Denver 4. But they were foiled on two tries from the 1 and settled for another field goal.
And, stop us if you’ve heard this one, they were relegated to another field goal at the end of the half to cut the lead to 10-9.
This, after maneuvering from their own 39 to the Denver 5 in the final 33 seconds only to have some clock management issues.
Perhaps fittingly summing up the half, a Mahomes pass was batted down at the line of scrimmage for at least the third time to compel Reid to go for the field goal in the final seconds from the Denver 5.
But after another Butker field goal to open the half and take a 12-10 lead, the Chiefs finally got into the end zone on Mahomes’ 20-yard pass to Kelce to take a 19-16 lead late in the third quarter.
Early in the fourth quarter, it fleetingly looked like the Chiefs would establish a double-digit lead on a 48-yard touchdown to Hill — punctuated by his pause-into-a-backlfip into the end zone. But it was just another optical illusion, as it happened, brought back by a holding penalty on offensive lineman Nick Allegretti.
Butker’s fifth field goal of the night accounted for the final score, with Mathieu finally sealing yet another win.
So what if was delivered in a different kind of package with another sort of bow around it? What didn’t undo them makes them stronger.
“I truly believe so,” Mathieu said. “Not only does it build character, it builds trust, too. You may not play your best game, but if you win the game you go into that week realizing that, wow, we actually trusted each other, we actually committed to each other and that’s the reason why we won the game.
“We obviously want to play well and dominate, but when we get in these tough spots, these critical spots, it’s all about leaning on each other. … As long as we can kind of keep that, I think we’ll always be a tough team to beat. “
This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 11:01 PM.