The Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes face familiar doubts as the quest for Super Bowl history continues | NFL news
The Kansas City Chiefs have been here before. The NFL has been here before. Outside doubts, lackluster performances, thin margin wins, feeling like their luck is about to run out.
And with all that same aura of inevitability that comes with a New England Patriots-esque — but slightly more endearing — villain. It’s all a little too familiar. And for their rivals, a little too nervous.
They stumbled through the 2023 campaign on offense a shadow of their former devastating self while relying on Steve Spagnuolo’s defensive turnaround to carry them, only to neutralize their favored counterparts and once again break the hearts of the San Francisco 49ers as they clinched their second straight Super Bowl .
Now here they are again, showered with scrutiny and grimaces of credential questioning as they lived off one-score wins and saw Patrick Mahomes post his statistically worst season as a Pilot in such an offense, only to clinch the No. 1 seed and a crucial bye week with a record 15-2.
Their quest for a historic third consecutive Super Bowl continues and continues this weekend when they host the Houston Texans for a chance to compete in a seventh straight AFC Championship game.
Three-way talks have hovered over them all year, even if Andy Reid tried to play it down.
“You never go there,” Reid told the media. “You are drawn into a tunnel.
“You’re trying to find another play that works. It’s a weird dynamic. “You’re just rooted in trying to communicate with the players and trying to teach.
Last season’s triumph of Lombardi was considered their most impressive and so far the most unlikely, such were their struggles. But another one this year would eclipse most as she bounced back through near misses, late runs and open ball injuries to remain dominant without ever letting us know if they were good or not.
The Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens with Isaiah Likely’s sprained toe on the opening day of the season, took their first lead against the Los Angeles Chargers in the final six minutes of a Week 4 game, survived overtime against Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and blocked a field goal in last second to hold off the Denver Broncos as they started the year 9-0.
Only then did they get a taste of their own medicine when Josh Allen made a heroic 26-yard touchdown run on fourth-and-2 to shut out another late Buffalo Bills loss to their storied AFC foes in November. That rematch may be yet to come, depending on how this weekend turns out.
But the Carolina Panthers will bear the brunt of the football gods next week when Kansas City’s own football god — albeit less god-like this season — conjures a 33-yarder at 27-27 to top Kansas City’s walk-on field. goal. If there was any rooting for Bryce Young and his rebuilding of the NFL at all, the Chiefs and Mahomes wanted no part of it.
Black Friday came and they benefited from even more drama at the death when a failed tackle between Jackson Powers and Johnson and running back Aidan O’Connell gave Nick Bolton a fumble recovery after the Las Vegas Raiders reached the 38-yard line trailing by just two points with 14 seconds left. So far, the buzz around Chiefs voodoo has never been louder. Indeed, there may be.
Of their 15 wins this season, 11 have come by one score as the Chiefs finished with a 59-point margin, 11th in the league.
“It’s not easy to go through every week because you’re public enemy number one and you get the best of the team,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “So there’s that mindset of that mental callousness, that you’re ready every week knowing you’re going to get the best.”
Sure, he’s a good defending champion with (still) the league’s best running back, one of the NFL’s greatest offensive minds and a defensive coordinator that boasts the numbers of every other running back in the league. But how good? We’re about to find out just how well.
The Chiefs quarterback finished the regular season 17th in total yards, 14th in passing, 22nd in rushing, 15th in scoring and ninth in EPA/game, Patrick Mahomes throwing for a career-low 3,928 passing yards as a starter and 26 touchdowns up to 11 interceptions.
Reid’s team lost star wide receiver Rashee Rice to a season-ending injury at a time when he had the second-highest target share in the NFL, as well as spending several weeks without starting running back Isiah Pacheco, who would later return to the league. they stretch.
With Rice’s injury came increased pressure on rookie Xavier Worthy’s role as the Chiefs looked to expand a route tree that was initially suited to his straight-line speed, not to mention 34-year-old Travis Kelce who will once again find himself playing a central role in the offense down the road. to a team-leading 97 catches for a career-low 823 yards.
Veteran Kareem Hunt re-signed with Arrowhead to replace Pacheco behind three Pro Bowl interior offensive linemen in Joe Thuney, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, while the Chiefs went out and traded for three-time All-Pro first-team wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins to bolster Mahomes’ aerial capabilities down the stretch.
They’ve faced consistent problems in pass protection at any offensive tackle position, salvaged wins with a makeshift group at the skill position, Mahomes has been guilty of poor decision-making and ranked 22nd in the red zone, all while leaning toward Spagnuolo’s fourth shooting defense.
“This team shows a lot of resilience,” Chiefs defensive end Chris Jones said. “This team can win in a lot of ways, whether it’s offense, defense or special teams. We’ve broadcast that all year. This team has had a lot of close games, we’ve had a lot of injuries, we’ve faced a lot of adversity early on years.”
What was once a Pandora’s box full of offensive sauce and wizardry has been transformed into a tricky but stubborn winning machine built on elite clock and possession control along with an extremely efficient defense with the flexibility to meet the different needs of each opponent on a week-in and week-out basis.
For all their limitations this season, the prevailing feeling remains that there are still gears they can shift into when the playoffs come around; nobody knows how to manage postseason football like them.
Mahomes can still turn the league’s best passes into insignificance as a generational outside pocket creator, and he can still crush the dreams of worthy challengers in the fourth quarter of a game like no other running back in the NFL.
Kelce still has that tendency to buy separation despite every player on the court knowing the ball is headed his way. Hopkins still has some of the surest suction hands in football, Pacheco still runs the football like his life is on the line, and Worthy has suddenly become one of the most intriguing components in the playoffs because potential haymaker Reid could look like a major player through ground control.
No one knows which version of the Chiefs team will arrive this weekend. But the telltale signs of improvement have arrived through the stretch of the regular season, including Mahomes entering the game riding the longest streak without an interception of his career after 237 straight pass attempts since throwing his last pick after throwing at least one interception in his first seven games season.
He finished the campaign strong, posting a season-high 127.1 passer rating in a Week 17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, also throwing for 260 yards and a touchdown while rushing for a score to lead the Chiefs to a 27–19 victory over the Texans in Week 16. week
The three-time Super Bowl MVP is 15-3 in the playoffs with 5,659 yards, 46 touchdowns and just eight interceptions with a 105.8 passer rating. Within that, he is 6-0 in the Divisional Round with 1,813 passing yards to go with 16 total touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 115.8 passer rating. A win would tie him with the great Joe Montana for second all-time in playoff wins by a quarterback with 16, behind only Tom Brady’s 35.
Him, Reid, Kelce, Chris Jones, Spagnuolo – they found the postseason formula.
It’s time to see if the Texans can crack the code, having just intercepted Justin Herbert four times and sacked him four other times to dismantle the Chargers on Wild Card weekend as the top three ranked units in sacks and takeaways this season (including in playoffs). The DeMeco Ryans team also allowed a league-best completion percentage of just 58, while Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr are both top five in QB pressure percentage.
Sam Houston, however, endured his own struggles on offense, ranking in the bottom half in yards, passing, rushing and scoring while ranking 26th in the red zone and allowing a third-highest of 54 carries. Can’t beat Spags defense? Then you can’t beat the Chiefs.
“I think every year is special,” Mahomes said. “Obviously you want to win three in a row and build those memories with the guys and the community. But every single year is special. And when I look back at all the different Super Bowls that we’ve won, I look back at the special moments that we had and the special games that we had. And so we will try to do the same this year.”
So here we are again. The defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs a team that divides opinion, the league’s best quarterback facing questions about whether he’s still the best, ‘he’s too old’ Kelce and a title defense that’s being questioned every week this season. Deja vu.
“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men throw, catch, run and catch the ball for four quarters in the span of about three hours, and in the end – Patrick Mahomes always wins. Or something like that,” I wrote last February, in the immediate aftermath of the victory Kansas City in the Super Bowl.
Would you bet against a similar story this year?
Watch Houston Texans vs Kansas City Chiefs in the divisional round of the play-offs live on Sky Sports NFL on Saturday, starting at 9.30pm.
