AFC Championship gives Chiefs challenging chance at redemption against nemesis Bengals
When the Bengals clobbered the Bills 27-10 on Sunday in Buffalo, the Chiefs theoretically became the secondary beneficiary:
Instead of playing the Bills in the AFC Championship Game in the neutral site of Atlanta — a fair-minded accommodation to playoff seeding in the wake of the harrowing Damar Hamlin episode — the Chiefs will play host to Cincinnati in what, incredibly, will be their fifth straight home conference title game.
But forgive us if we reserve judgment over whether this is a charmed turn for the Chiefs, who have won 26 of their last 28 games against the rest of the NFL while losing their last three against the Bengals.
Those were all in the 2022 calendar year and, of course, featured the brutal collapse in last season’s AFC title game.
Which leaves me absolutely gridlocked over what to expect now.
Which is all the more reason I can’t wait to see how this plays out.
Are the Chiefs (15-3) finally just due?
Or is Cincinnati (14-4) the sort of nemesis that’s taken up a distressing residence in their collective mind?
Or even just a better team until proven otherwise?
Moreover, if the Chiefs couldn’t beat them with a more healthy Patrick Mahomes three times before, what does that mean for their chances with Mahomes coming off what is understood to be a high-ankle sprain suffered Saturday in the 27-20 win over Jacksonville?
Then again …
Even with many pundits anointing Buffalo the AFC champion before the season, this matchup has been a year in the making and should galvanize the Chiefs into the best version of themselves.
Because they know nothing less will beat the Bengals.
And they certainly know how scrawny the margin for error has been in this rotten streak: Each of the losses has been by three points, and each featured a laundry list of self-inflicted blunders by the Chiefs.
Just the same, the chance at redemption evidently hasn’t carried enough clout yet. So who’s to say it will now? Especially against a team that just dissected the Bills on both sides of the ball.
The specter of this recent past looms over this.
Because the Chiefs have been unable to shake it.
A year ago, for instance, it was easy to assume they would promptly atone for their 34-31 loss to a Bengals team that had been 9-5 entering the game.
But versed in the Bengals firepower as they might have been after surrendering a 14-point lead that day in Cincinnati, weeks later they still blew an 18-point lead to fall 27-24 in overtime with a third straight Super Bowl berth on the line.
The gnawing and hollow sensation of that squandered opportunity drove them through the offseason.
Maybe even consumed them.
Mahomes would blame himself for the playoff loss and, as ever, endeavor to learn from it and get better yet. In the offseason, coach Andy Reid raved about how Mahomes was responding to the still-hovering loss.
“I’d tell you every day, the ‘Be Great’ is back right there,” Reid said. “And demanding that from the guys around him.”
In training camp, Reid would talk about how the team’s failure to finish the game exposed the absence of what he called “a certain attitude, a certain edge” that you can bet became a point of emphasis.
Months after the loss, when defensive tackle Chris Jones was asked in June about how he looked at the 2022 season, Jones instantly referred to that final game in which Joe Burrow most notably eluded his grasp to run for a first down that set up a go-ahead fourth-quarter field goal.
“I missed some of the biggest plays of the game,” Jones said then. “I used it as motivation the whole offseason. I feel like if I would’ve made those sacks, the game would’ve been different. I take accountability for that. Attack it; use it as motivation going into next year.”
To some degree, the loss even informed how the Chiefs recalibrated in an offseason marked by the Tyreek Hill trade and letting Tyrann Mathieu go, as they sought not just more financial flexibility but to get younger and faster on defense.
No doubt the loss also was part of the impetus to radically improve their pass rush after a 2021 season in which the Chiefs were 29th in the NFL in sacks (31) and mustered just one in the AFC title game.
That was a particularly glaring issue sandwiched between the Titans sacking Burrow nine times and the Rams nabbing him seven times in the Super Bowl.
With new defensive line coach Joe Cullen, Jones matched a career-high with 15.5 regular-season sacks. Add reinforcements such as rookie George Karlaftis (second on the team with six) and veteran Carlos Dunlap (four), the Chiefs had 55 sacks this season — second in the NFL.
Trouble is, none of that changed the script when the Chiefs had their latest shot at vindication last month in Cincinnati.
Despite the Chiefs gazing toward that game for months, they fell 27-24 as they frittered away another lead, again sacked Burrow just one time and once more offered up key miscues such as Travis Kelce’s fumble and Harrison Butker’s missed 55-yard field goal.
More generally, Burrow still had way too much time to throw and Mahomes seldom had enough.
How that dynamic unfurls will be at the crux of how this game goes.
So here we must note that Burrow wasn’t sacked once against Buffalo on Sunday, even with the Bengals down three starting linemen, and that Mahomes one way or another doesn’t figure to be as mobile as usual.
At his locker in Paycor Stadium after that latest loss, Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark talked about the “sour feeling” the team would have in their mouths after that game.
Again. Or is it still?
And he spoke, too, of wanting another chance at the Bengals.
“At the end of the day, you want to see a team like this (again),” Clark said. “I’ve got a lot of pride in myself, and I’ve got a lot of pride in my team.
“Today wasn’t (our) best effort. We didn’t display true Chiefs’ football today. We’ve got a long season left, and I guarantee we won’t put on a display like that again.”
In fact, the Chiefs have won six straight games since then.
Not one of those, of course, was against the Bengals — who also happen to be the only team to have beaten a Mahomes-led Chiefs team three times.
So when it comes to an AFC Championship at Arrowhead, you could say careful what you wish for.
But, in fact, the Chiefs should have wished for just this.
Not merely to play at Arrowhead.
But because this is what the ultimate competitor seeks: a chance to flip the narrative with the Bengals, who have become the Chiefs’ albatross, and to reassert themselves atop the AFC and as a perennial Super Bowl contender.
And now it comes to just the intriguing meeting it should have, really, a year in the making:
The one that confronts if the Chiefs actually can solve the very force that propelled their offseason … or whether all of that will prove to be for naught and suggest that the AFC order has changed for the foreseeable future.
This story was originally published January 22, 2023 at 7:34 PM.