Kansas City Chiefs salvage win over Giants, but Patrick Mahomes continues to puzzle
Twenty-one months ago, the Chiefs won their first Super Bowl in half a century, and the prevailing mindset was that it was a nice start. Moments after the exhilarating rally to beat San Francisco, defensive lineman Chris Jones sat at a podium and proclaimed one title wasn’t enough.
“Two, three, four,” he said, banging a table repeatedly for emphasis. “We’ve got to build a dynasty here. You know what I’m saying?”
It sounded outlandish in some ways.
Then again, suddenly anything seemed possible with a young nucleus established and led by the apparently miraculous Patrick Mahomes.
Sure enough, the Chiefs earned their way back to the Super Bowl, to that point winning 26 of the last 27 games started by Mahomes.Tampa Bay proceeded to dismantle the Chiefs 31-9 in Super Bowl LV, but in the moment that felt like a blip, albeit a jarring one.
And some of us, oof, bought into the broader premise when Mahomes spoke in the offseason about 20-0 being the goal. Not so much because it seemed attainable but because why shouldn’t they strive to keep breaking boundaries with Mahomes?
That all seems like a long time ago now, though, here in the middle of a season in which the Chiefs sputtered by the crummy New York Giants 20-17 on Monday night at Arrowhead Stadium — where they needed a late Harrison Butker field goal to salvage a victory in a game they should have owned from the start.
Given the trajectory of this season to date, even a lopsided win would have been of dubious reassurance after losing two of the previous three and getting straitjacketed by Tennessee 27-3 only eight days before. Instead, this was one of those wins that no one can convincingly say was meaningful beyond the fact that it (barely) beat the alternative against the now 2-6 Giants.
But for notably great games played by Tyreek Hill, Willie Gay and Nick Bolton, the Chiefs (4-4) looked little less lost or hollow or off-kilter than they did against Tennessee.
Certainly, they did nothing to suggest they now are ready for a harsh portion of their schedule with Green Bay (7-1) up next.
And just as the play of Mahomes symbolized all that made it feel like the future would be as gleaming as the recent past, his play now embodies what’s wrong with this team’s present:
Because he rather inexplicably looks more disjointed by the week, on Monday finishing with a quarterback rating of 74.6 — meaning that three of his five worst-rated games have come in the last four Chiefs games.
On Monday, he started the game with eight straight completions to drive the Chiefs to the verge of an opening-drive touchdown … only to suffer his 10th interception of the season.
Even if it was the fifth of those to carom off a Chief, in this case via Jerick McKinnon’s helmet, it was part of a stunning dropoff the rest of the half as Mahomes completed only six of his next 19 after that opening groove predicated on working the short passing game.
He recovered some and finished the game 29 of 48 for 275 yards. And he shepherded the game-winning drive with a couple key passes (and by having the presence of mind to take a sack rather than do something risky or stopping the clock by throwing it away before the final field goal). It’s also true that some of his passes were thrown away, another couple perhaps were catchable, others still seemed to reflect some miscommunication with a receiver.
But the lingering thing is that you can’t watch him right now and think he’s playing with the same nerve or verve or free mind or mojo or whatever you’d call the magic we’ve seen from him in the past.
You can’t watch him and not notice the times he seems to be forcing the ball one place when a receiver is open elsewhere.
He’ll say, “I think we’re the same as we’ve always been.” But almost nothing looks the same, and that includes in his decision-making.
And the qualifiers he gives have become defining these last few weeks.
For instance, he said late Monday, the Chiefs still are doing a lot of great things. But then, he added, they’ll commit a turnover (their two on Monday gave them 19, the most any Andy Reid-coached Chiefs team has committed … and there’s nine games to go) or a penalty (the team had 12 for 103 yards on Monday) that kind of ruins the drive.
Later, he’d say, “We have answers for everything,” but then he proceeded to note the gaps in curriculum: “You’ve seen in every game, pretty much, that there’s been times where we kind of stall out, and we don’t execute … I don’t hit the right spot, or the receiver doesn’t see it the same way that I do.” Or penalties or turnovers.
At some point, until proven otherwise, those things are what these Chiefs are on offense.
And you can blame Reid’s play-calling (why not more Derrick Gore on Monday after his first nine NFL carries were good for 48 yards and a touchdown?) or the new offensive line or whoever the don’t-turn-it-over coach is supposed to be. Or the receivers who sometimes aren’t where Mahomes believes they’ll be.
Or the defense, which in fact played a winning game on Monday, for being porous and getting into Mahomes’ head and making him press.
But like everyone else, Mahomes is at fault and in some ways at the first crossroads of his NFL career.
It had been all “kind of rainbows and flowers and awesome” the first few years, he said after the loss to Tennessee.
Right now, it’s clouds and weeds and mediocrity, with even Mahomes acknowledging he’s been taking “big-picture” inventory lately on his trend toward trying to “make stuff happen that wasn’t there.”
It’s also a moment to step back for all of us and put this in perspective. Maybe we got spoiled with three straight AFC Championship Games in his first three seasons as a starter and the back-to-back Super Bowls. It was easy to see him as super-human.
He’s not, of course. And now he’s mired in the first funk of his NFL career. Nothing says he has to stay in it. In fact, we’ll be shocked if he does: We’ve seen enough of him to know that he’s endlessly resilient and resourceful, mentally tough and, oh, a generational talent.
For that matter, the Chiefs could make a run of this yet. You remember two years ago, when they fell to 6-4 and then won the last nine. That was supposed to be the start of something enduring, and it might yet be.
But Mahomes isn’t a miracle worker, actually, just a terrific quarterback being tested in a new way. And this season is a journey all its own … no matter how much we wanted to believe the run the last two years was a prelude of more to come.
This story was originally published November 2, 2021 at 1:14 AM.