Chiefs Are Finally Winners But Look Even Less Like Contenders

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. — A team that’s been to five Super Bowls in the past six years and won three of them doesn’t feel relief over early-season victories. They don’t exhale after beating a bad team like the New York Giants.

But it was clear that the Kansas City Chiefs felt something on Sunday night, because the alternative was unfathomable. They knew falling to 0-3 would’ve been a death sentence for their season and maybe their dynasty, too. They knew they had to win, no matter how it happened or how ugly it looked.

“Good win to get, particularly when you haven’t had one,” a very reserved Andy Reid said. “That was important to take a step forward.”

Important, yes. And it’s OK if the Chiefs, and maybe all of Kansas City, took a big deep breath after their 22-9 win over the winless Giants at MetLife Stadium on Sunday night. But don’t be fooled into thinking that everything is OK now, that this win will suddenly jump-start their season.

Because the truth is, these Chiefs still don’t look very good.

They know it, too, even if they’re temporarily content with their 1-2 record. They knew that their offense still looked messy, especially in the first half. They knew that, with a few exceptions, the great Patrick Mahomes looked pedestrian. The signs of trouble were obvious on their tense sideline — most notably when Reid and tight end Travis Kelce had a heated exchange and even a chest bump.

For most of the game, they looked more like an 0-2 team and less like a modern dynasty. And they could feel it in how they just couldn’t put the lowly Giants (0-3) away.

“Obviously we didn’t have the start we wanted,” Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton said. “But it’s a long season. Every week it’s back to work, back to square one, trying to figure out things we can get better at. This week we had some success, found a way to win a football game.

“But it’s obvious we have some stuff to clean up.”

They have a lot of stuff to clean up, especially with a dangerous game against the Baltimore Ravens looming in Kansas City next Sunday afternoon. Because they played with fire in New York. Mahomes may have completed 22 of 37 attempts for 224 yards, including a perfect, 33-yard strike to Tyquan Thornton that set up the dagger touchdown in the fourth quarter. But he also threw three passes that should have been intercepted — balls that went right off the buttery hands of Giants defensive backs.

He also threw two passes backwards — unimaginable and unintentionally dangerous throws that he later admitted, “I don’t think I’ve done maybe ever in my career.” And one of them, late in the first half, was nearly a disaster. He threw to his left, inexplicably two yards behind the line of scrimmage, to running back Isaiah Pacheco, who had turned the wrong way. It bounced through the legs of Giants safety Dane Belton before linebacker Bobby Okereke scooped it up at the 10, almost in a full sprint toward the end zone.

It was 6-6 then with about 90 seconds left in the half, and if Okereke had scored it could’ve changed the entire complexion of the game. But Mahomes came darting over, ripped the ball out of the linebacker’s hands, and fell on the ball back at the Chiefs 7. Season saved.

“That was big,” Reid said. “That’s how he rolls. He’s 100 miles an hour. It seems like every week he does something like that. He’s going to do whatever it takes to come out on top of the game.”

It was Mahomes Magic, but not the kind the Chiefs are used to. It was a desperation, cover-your-behind, save-the-season play, not a no-look pass, improbable run, or pinpoint throw down the field. Mahomes is still capable of all those other things, too, but right now desperation plays seem more like the Chiefs’ style.

None of that is to say Kansas City’s dynasty is dead or even dying. Maybe it’s far from it. Its season-opening losses were to two legitimate contenders — the unbeaten Chargers and Eagles. And while the Chiefs don’t get any style points for escaping with a win over the Giants, they’re not the first good team to play down to their opponent.

But the warning signs are flashing bright red. There was the first half that Reid admitted “was hard to watch.” There was his latest sideline encounter with the fiery Kelce. There was the odd lack of chemistry between Kelce and Mahomes, who connected on just four of seven targets for a mere 26 yards.

And mostly there was the constant flirting with disaster — those three near-picks and Mahomes’ game-saving steal of a Giants fumble recovery. It felt a little too much like they were relying on the ineptitude of their opponent to avoid falling into an 0-3 hole, not to mention a significant portion of luck.

That’s not exactly a championship formula, even though for one desperate evening it got the job done.

“A win is a win. We’ll take it and look at it just like we did these past two losses,” Chiefs linebacker Leon Chenal said. “But winning is a nice thing.”

It is, even when a good team struggles to beat a bad opponent, and even when the next-day film session will show just how sloppy the win was. But the Chiefs’ standards used to be higher. They used to play crisp, clean, championship-style football with a remarkable regularity. Mahomes used to work some magic almost every game.

Mahomes is too good and Reid is too smart for anyone to think those days are over. Those two have co-authored one of the most remarkable seven-year stretches in NFL history, and as long as they’re still together it’s hard to count them out. 

But maybe this is just not their year. Maybe it’s the kind of year when they find ways to win, but something just looks constantly off. Even last season, when an incredible 11 of their 15 regular-season wins were by one score, they rarely looked so hapless. More often they looked resilient and clutch.

But so far this year? As Reid saw in the first half on Sunday night, “We had too many mistakes. One thing here, one thing there. Some of that can be that you’re just trying too hard at times and dumb things can happen.”

Dumb things aren’t supposed to happen to championship teams. Dumb things don’t often happen to the Kansas City Chiefs.

Even so, it’s way too early to predict doom for their dynasty, or to definitively say this is the year when someone else represents the AFC in the Super Bowl. But after the way things have gone for the Chiefs in the first three games of the season, it’s not too early to rule that out either.

Because the warning signs are clearly there.

Ralph Vacchiano is an NFL Reporter for FOX Sports. He spent six years covering the Giants and Jets for SNY TV in New York, and before that, 16 years covering the Giants and the NFL for the New York Daily News. Follow him on Twitter at @RalphVacchiano.

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