Why Chiefs’ airing of grievances is latest self-inflicted challenge to their season
At first, the distress signals seemed like outliers or blips. The kind of temperamental stuff that over the course of a season comes and goes and is subject to the fickle discretion of a camera here and there.
Here was typically restrained Chiefs coach Andy Reid last month against the Eagles, fuming at tight end Travis Kelce to the point of what might be considered snarling.
A couple weeks later against Buffalo, you’ll recall, Patrick Mahomes made a spectacle of himself after a controversial — but accurate — late call cost the Chiefs the likely game-winning touchdown on the spectacular lateral from Kelce to Kadarius Toney.
More startling yet, Reid cast aside his usual tact and blasted officials after a game that also featured defensive lineman Chris Jones and defensive line coach Joe Cullen in such a contentious exchange that Cullen spiked his touchscreen tablet so hard, Jones later joked, that it “lost its heartbeat.”
Then, even along the way to victory, there was Mahomes venting on the sideline in New England after Toney’s latest deflection into an interception.
All of which turned out to be mere prelude to a disturbing Christmas Day that punctuated a sense of intensifying turmoil — and the challenge in itself that presents among their other unresolved issues.
The agitated Mahomes, whose default leadership demeanor is what might be called passionate but positive, could be seen essentially scolding the offensive line and clashing with coaches over the timing of plays coming in.
But the most revealing snapshot was the jaw-dropping exchange between Reid and Kelce: After Kelce slammed down his helmet, Reid blocked a Chiefs staffer from giving it back — turning his back to the field as the Chiefs’ offense was going out — and later jamming his shoulder into Kelce.
Add it all up, and the Festivus-like airing of grievances looms as another dimension of what has most afflicted the Chiefs (9-6) this season as they prepare to take on Cincinnati (8-7) on Sunday.
Self-inflicted offensive issues, from turnovers to penalties to dropped passes to too often not being on the same page one way or another, have been their Kryptonite.
But it’s now reasonable to consider if they are fighting themselves on a corrosive and distracting separate front altogether.
Even Reid, who typically downplays anything that might suggest even a whiff of dissension, acknowledged on Wednesday that the flare-ups are more pronounced than to normally be expected.
“Listen, when you’ve won a lot of games, your tolerance level for not doing as well as we should goes down,” said Reid, who said he’d had a talk with Kelce since the game but declined to elaborate. “So, things happen. … The game of football is an emotional game. That’s expected. You see those things happen.
“We’ve just got to make sure we generate it in the right direction and go that way. And fix the problems.”
How they cope with this increasingly foul dynamic figures to go a long way towards whether they will somehow at last “fix” the elusive ongoing troubles gunking up the offense as they’ve lost three of the last four.
In short, you can only wonder if the Chiefs can alchemize the meltdowns into melding back together for the stretch run and into the postseason.
So at this stage, talk about correcting their flaws and finishing strong is almost irrelevant.
“At the end of the day, we have to go out there and prove it,” Mahomes said. “I mean, I know everybody hears us saying it, but unless we go out there and prove it, I don’t think anybody’s going to believe it.”
Mahomes was speaking to the broader point of resetting. But the words were just as apt in the context of rekindling the sort of offensive cohesion that was apparent over the last several years with three Super Bowl berths and two titles.
While surely there were plenty of harsh exchanges to be witnessed or behind the scenes even in those triumphant seasons, the prevailing messaging amid adversity was about encouragement, belief and galvanizing.
Not what now looks more like a negative, flustered and fractured offensive identity.
It’s one thing to seek accountability. It’s another to be finger-pointing, whether literal or figurative.
With so much in disarray around him, it’s no wonder that line either has become harder for the uncannily self-aware Mahomes to navigate ... or if he simply sees more benefit to crossing it.
Speaking in a general sense, he said he believes such signs of frustration don’t so much signal controversy as “that people care. They care about their profession. They care about trying to do whatever they can to win games. … Obviously, we want to be in a positive light and everything like that. But I see someone that cares about the game and someone that wants to be better.
“Not better for themselves,” he added, “but better for the team.”
When I asked him if it’s hard to know how to harness those feelings, Mahomes put it this way:
“I think you can motivate in a lot of different ways,” he said. “I try to do my best to be positive and keep the guys going in the right direction. But you catch me sometimes on the sidelines, (and) I look frustrated. I think lot of the guys are frustrated that we’re losing.
“But at the same time you’ve got to have the right message to (let) the guys know that I believe in them. And I do. So now it’s just about how can we utilize our situation and make it into a positive going into this next week.”
One way to do it is hardwired into Mahomes.
Few athletes of his caliber are so open about their own mistakes, and he was true to that in the wake of one of the least-productive games of his career. If you wanted to dismiss all the things going wrong around him that were part of that, you could even call it one of the worst games of his career.
“You have to be critical with yourself; you have to be true to what’s on the field and what’s happening,” said Mahomes, who spoke of falling into old bad habits with his footwork and judgment in trying to make plays. “I think a lot of people make excuses, and that’s why they don’t take that next step or become better because of it.”
That kind of denial, he added, is “when stuff kind of snowballs.”
That example sets a tone and gives him credibility, to be sure. And presumably latitude in a locker room where he remains grounded among others even from the pedestal that comes with being a two-time NFL and Super Bowl MVP.
Moreover, Mahomes knows if he’s going to cajole teammates, like he did the offensive line, that he has to deliver, too.
“Obviously, the first few drives you saw me talking to them, I just challenged those guys to be better, and they were,” he said. “Then it’s on me. If I’m going to challenge them to be better, I have to be better within the pocket. …
“I have to trust those guys as much as I talk. That’s on me to be better and better as games go on and don’t drift and try to do too much.”
Whether this is all as healthy as it sounds from Mahomes or as jarring as it has looked is a matter of conjecture.
The Chiefs stood at what I believed was a comparable crossroads after the late chaos of the Buffalo game and seemed largely to jell for the Patriots game.
But in the wake of the 20-14 loss to Las Vegas marked by more strife and two turnovers converted into Raider touchdowns seven seconds apart, their unity and ability to convert that into improvement are an open question.
“These guys are emotional. They want to do well. That’s what you see,” Reid said. “There’s a sense of frustration, ‘What can I do better?’
“That urgency is going to help us get better.”
At least if they “generate it in the right direction.”
Otherwise, the trend will underscore a season of self-destructive play.