As seen again vs. Saints, Chiefs’ holding-on habit is more beauty mark than fatal flaw
The Chiefs ventured to the Superdome in New Orleans on Sunday as the reigning, and quite thriving, defending Super Bowl champions. They had won 21 of their last 22 games and a franchise-record 10 straight on the road and stood 12-1 for the first time in the organization’s history.
With the Patriots earlier Sunday eliminated from the playoffs for the first time since 2008, no team in the NFL has made more consecutive postseason appearances than the Chiefs — who have earned their sixth straight playoff berth and likely as the No. 1 seed in the AFC.
Between this and the infrastructure that begins with Patrick Mahomes and extends with a young, talented nucleus, this is something like an ideal scenario. And all the more so after they fended off New Orleans 32-29 to improve to match the most victories in franchise history.
Pretty good stuff, right?
Once again, though, it was delivered with a twist that some perceive as a potential fatal flaw but others of us figure is more like a beauty mark — and stands for character and resilience that are part of the modus operandi of this team.
After blowing a 14-0 lead on Sunday along the way to staving off the Saints, some surely entered the panic room, again.
But the Chiefs now have won their last six games by a total of 23 points. According to @StatsBySTATs, that makes them the first team in NFL history to win six straight games by six points or fewer.
If twice is a coincidence and three times is a trend story in the news business, this now counts as a full-on signature trait.
And from this side of the Rorschach test, anyway, we see not the dark side of it, some sort of looming disaster, but the bright one:
Whatever the ebb and flow of the game might be, the Chiefs have made a virtual art form of closing them out now. Knowing what that takes, executing it and flexing that habit, is going to be essential in the long run toward repeating as Super Bowl champions.
Or as Mahomes put it after the game when I asked him at what point this is the sign of strength.
“I mean, I’ve always felt like it was a strength,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to win games in this league. That’s it, at the end of the day.
“I mean, it looks cool and it feels awesome to win by 20, 30 points. But when you have a team that can find a way to win with their offense and defense and special teams, every single game, and find a way to win no matter what the score is, those are the teams that make runs at the end of the year.”
What doesn’t kill them makes them stronger, in other words. And here’s how the latest version of that played out:
With Saints quarterback Drew Brees either rusty or still constrained by or both after missing the last four games with rib injuries, the Saints failed to convert a first down until their fifth drive with Brees misfiring on his first five passes for the first time in his storied career.
Meanwhile, the Chiefs started semi-out-of-sync, including Mecole Hardman dropping a demanding-but-highly-catchable deep pass from Mahomes and Mahomes being just off-kilter enough to misfire altogether a few times and make a couple others way more challenging than was ideal.
The Saints had plenty to do with that, generating frequent pressure and largely Velcroing themselves to Chiefs’ prime targets Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. Often with a four-man rush, Mahomes was harassed repeatedly and sacked three times in the first half alone.
But the Chiefs nevertheless seized a 14-0 lead, courtesy of L’Jarius Sneed’s pickoff of Brees to set up a 36-yard touchdown drive culminating in Mahomes’ 5-yard TD pass to Hill.
Another Saints’ three-and-out later, the Chiefs made it 14-0 with what seemed some particularly demoralizing flourishes including Mahomes’ scrambling 23-yard completion to Sammy Watkins on third and 8 and his 19-yard pass to Hill on third-and-15.
That set up yet another unprecedented wrinkle from Mahomes: a chest-pass to Kelce that was delivered in .50 seconds, according to @NextGenStats on Twitter, the quickest release this season in the NFL.
But that just served to bring the Chiefs back to a familiar crossroads … and, to paraphrase, Yogi Berra, their inclination to take it.
Instead of breaking away, they receded.
In the spirit of their recent 27-24 win over Tampa Bay after leading 17-0 in the first quarter and last week’s game against the Dolphins, when they took a 30-10 lead and had to hold on for a 33-27 victory, the Chiefs waved the Saints had waved the Saints back in the game by halftime.
Even as some, ahem, wondered if the Saints would be best-served by pulling Brees, his 51-yard pass to Emmanuel Sanders paved the way to Taysom Hill’s 1-yard run.
The Chiefs might have regained the buffer on their next drive. But on fourth and 2 at the Saints 42, Mahomes couldn’t find an open man as he went up for a jump pass and lost his grip. It ended up in the arms of offensive lineman Stefen Wisniewski but was ruled not a fumble but pass … to an ineligible receiver.
So the Saints cut it to 14-9 when Demarcus Robinson committed punt-return malpractice at the end of the half, fielding it on the bounce at the Chiefs’ 14-yard-line in the final seconds of the half and uncorking a bizarre backwards and cross-field run with a swarm of Saints en route to knocking it loose for a safety.
The unraveling continued at the start of the second half, with the Saints taking a 15-14 lead on Brees’ 24-yard pass to Latavius Murray on a drive enabled with the help of Chris Jones roughing the passer, an interference penalty on Sneed and Tyrann Mathieu missing a chance to intercept Brees in the end zone … just as he had done for his first NFL interception in the last game he played here in his hometown back in 2013.
Circumstances made for a pivotal time to restore some order. And Mahomes and Co. were up to it with a 75-yard drive punctuated by Mahomes’ gorgeous 5-yard pass lasered into the corner of the end zone to Hardman — who perfectly executed getting one foot down and dragging the other.
One play after Saints defensive lineman Cam Jordan was ejected and the Saints were penalized half the distance to the goal for what appeared to be a punch, the Chiefs made it 29-15 early in the fourth quarter.
With some more unconventional touches: At least 5 yards downfield, Mahomes flipped an option pitch to Le’Veon Bell for a 13-yard TD run and followed up with an under-hand inside pass to Kelce for the 2-point conversion.
And that would about do it, right?
Instead, on a day he was hit perhaps as often and hard as he ever has, Mahomes was crunched between two defenders and fumbled. Then Brees hit Alvin Kamara for a 14-yard TD pass to cut it to 29-22 … and here we were again with the Chiefs staring at collapse.
And, yikes, looking even closer at it on Brees’ third touchdown pass of the game with 2:06 left.
The Chiefs might have been able to make it easier on themselves by running back the kickoff to take the clock to the 2-minute warning.
Nevertheless, they stashed it away with execution down the stretch.
First, Mahomes hit Kelce, the NFL leader in first-down conversions, for yet another on second and 8 with 1:52 left. Then a run by Bell compelled the Saints to take their final timeout with 1:45 left. Then Bell ran for another first down, and was facemasked for good measure.
And that was that, as it happened.
Ho-hum, another staredown without blinking for a team that has emphatically demonstrated the upside of the habit … even if it tends to get too close for comfort from the observation decks.
This story was originally published December 20, 2020 at 7:29 PM.