No team has ever done what Kansas City is hoping to accomplish this season
This is the ninth and final edition of NFL Thursday Thoughts. With the season opening tonight, there’s one team who must be at the front and center of every title conversation, seeing as they’ve won the last two in a row. The Chiefs’ quest for a third straight Super Bowl begins tonight.
It’s a drizzly January day in Baltimore, and the offenses inside M&T Bank Stadium are as dreary as the weather. After three combined touchdowns on their first four drives, the Ravens and Chiefs manage just two field goals — one each — 10 punts, three turnovers, a turnover on downs and a kneel down on their ensuing 17 drives.
This is out of the norm for the Ravens, a well-oiled machine led by MVP-to-be Lamar Jackson that scored more points than any team other than the 49ers. On the other hand, even with Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce and Andy Reid, this is nothing new for the Chiefs. Thanks to a variety of factors — underwhelming wide receivers, underachieving offensive line play — Kansas City’s attack finished just 14th in points per game.
Mahomes and co. take the field up 17-10 with 2:34 to go, looking to salt away the game. After a first down via Baltimore penalty, two Isiah Pacheco runs go nowhere. It’s third-and-9. Here comes the home crowd, and here comes Baltimore’s outstanding defense.
Unfortunately for Baltimore, here comes Mahomes with a perfect 32-yard pass to Marquez Valdes-Scantling. It’s another all-time play for an already-all-time player. Game, set, match.
MVS IN A BIG SPOT.
📺: #KCvsBAL on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/IIZbdmhqNS pic.twitter.com/qRCH0uuAdw— NFL (@NFL) January 28, 2024
Mahomes’ stats are nothing special: 241 yards passing on 6.2 yards per attempt (his fewest ever in a playoff win) and one touchdown. But once again, in the defining moment, he made the defining play. And in his worst season, statistically, it’s the plays Mahomes doesn’t make that wins the day. Baltimore turns the ball over three times, two by Jackson. Mahomes, by contrast, plays a turnover-free game.
Two weeks later, Mahomes is up to his pre-2023 hijinks, with 333 yards passing and 66 yards rushing and a pair of touchdowns, including the Super Bowl-winning one to Mecole Hardman in overtime. Mahomes is, it seems, inevitable. A Super Bowl triumph in his most challenging season yet? Who does that?
When Mahomes emerged as a superstar, he still had some of the gunslinging risk-taking in him. Now, in the crucial moments, he has learned to tamp down that aspect of his game. He had just one turnover in the 2023 postseason, and his 0.6% playoff turnover rate was the second-lowest ever by an eventual Super Bowl MVP.
“That’s stuff that I’ve learned throughout the season — even if we’re not having the success that I want to have, [if] the defense is rolling [and] getting stops, let’s just take the safe choice, get the ball out of my hand, don’t turn the ball over, and let’s go win a football game,” Mahomes said after the AFC Championship game.
It may not have been the way Mahomes expected to earn his third Super Bowl ring, but there’s not too much to complain about in Kansas City.
With the Chiefs opening their quest for an unprecedented three-peat tonight against the Ravens, there are plenty of reasons to believe they can do what no team has ever done. But there are even more questions, and there are plenty of teams eager to disrupt the NFL’s latest dynasty.
Two reasons Chiefs will repeat
1. Patrick Mahomes is in a class by himself, and he might just get better.
There are no stats that definitively quantify a player’s mental development, but there are indicators, like the turnover rate we mentioned above. “Game manager” is often used disparagingly, but when you combine Mahomes’ ability to manage games when he should with his ability to win games when he needs to, you get the best of both worlds.
Last season, the Chiefs did not have a single wide receiver in the top 75 in ESPN Receiving Tracker Metrics’ “Catch” score (how often a player catches a pass thrown his way vs. how often he’s expected to catch said passes based on a variety of factors). Kansas City had one wide receiver (Rashee Rice) in the top 70 of the “YAC” metric (similarly, how many yards after catch a player has compared to what was expected). In overall grade, Rice was the team’s only player among the top 80 wide receivers.
There are plenty of reasons to believe the offense will be better, particularly through the air. Xavier Worthy is a legitimate burner. Rice, a physical player who can make big things out of small passes, enters Year 2. Marquise Brown, once he returns, adds more speed. And Kelce is still getting it done.
The Worthy addition might be the most exciting development. After he blazed to a record 4.22-second 40-yard dash, the Chiefs moved up to take him 28th overall. It’s not hard to see why they made the move. Mahomes’ average pass last year traveled just 6.5 yards downfield, the third-lowest rate in the NFL and a career low by far. When he did go deep, the results were unsightly: 27.9% completion rate and a 1-to-4 touchdown-to-interception ratio, both career lows. The Chiefs badly needed field stretchers. They got them.
2. Steve Spagnuolo still calls the defense, and he still has great players.
Steve Spagnuolo is a defensive mastermind, and he received long-overdue credit last year when his unit — not Mahomes’ and Reid’s offense — led the way. Last season, Kansas City played Cover 1, Cover 2, Cover 3 and quarters at a 15% or higher rate, the only team to do that. Spagnuolo confuses opposing quarterbacks with wrinkles and flexibility. And above all, his defenses are disciplined. Kansas City allowed just 46 plays of 20+ yards last year, fewest in the NFL.
Of course, you need good players, too. Chris Jones is a one-man wrecking crew. Only Dexter Lawrence had a higher pressure percentage at defensive tackle, and only five players had a higher pressure percentage at defensive end (min. 100 pass rush snaps). Trent McDuffie tied for the league lead in sacks by a cornerback and led the league in pass rushes by a cornerback — an example of Spagnuolo letting his players play to their strengths. The names and faces and strengths/weaknesses of players may change, but there’s no one better equipped to adjust than Spagnuolo and his staff.
Three reasons Chiefs won’t repeat
1. Is the offense really that much better?
It’s fun to say that Worthy and Brown will add deep threats, which not only lead to downfield plays but also open up the underneath stuff for Rice and Kelce, and everything will be great. But there are questions. Can Worthy play through NFL-level physicality? Can Brown stay healthy? Can Rice diversify his game? What do the wide receivers look like beyond those three?
Then there are the other questions. Using success rate, Kansas City had its worst rushing season in the Mahomes era, and that included the second-worst yards before contact per rush of the Mahomes era, a sign of poor blocking. The Chiefs finished 18th in Pro Football Focus’ run blocking grade.
Now, Kingsley Suamataia enters the fold at left tackle. The second-rounder out of BYU was assessed as a “boom-or-bust prospect” after a strong 2022 and a step back in 2023 according to Chris Trapasso, and he’ll step right in to protect Mahomes’ blind side. Last year, the Chiefs went the veteran route with Donovan Smith, and even though it was a mixed bag, there was a reasonable baseline. This year, the options — for now — are Suamataia or Wanya Morris, who hardly played as a rookie.
Again, this wasn’t a great offense last year. In fact, if there was a year for other teams to catch the Chiefs, it was last year. Kansas City, in theory, has a better offense. But if the improvements are only modest — or, worse, not there at all — things become all the tougher on the defense. Speaking of that defense.
2. L’Jarius Sneed is a big loss.
Kansas City had to choose between Jones and Sneed over the offseason and chose Jones, sending Sneed to the Titans.
Sneed is a premier player at a premier position. Consider this: Among over 250 players who played at least 250 coverage snaps last season, Sneed was one of just seven who allowed zero touchdowns and had multiple interceptions. He ranked 11th in opponent completion percentage allowed. Remember the three Ravens turnovers I mentioned earlier? Sneed produced the biggest one, punching the ball out from Zay Flowers‘ hands inches from the end zone on the first play of the fourth quarter.
Kansas City has made a habit of replacing big-name defenders with aplomb, but one can never be certain. Joshua Williams, Jaylen Watson and Chamarri Conner are among the most important under-the-radar players not just for the Chiefs but in the NFL, especially given Kansas City’s goals.
3. The NFL is a game of tiny margins that make massive differences.
There’s a reason no team has won three straight Super Bowls. So much has to go right to win one. So much more has to go right to win two. An unprecedented amount has to go right to win three.
What if Valdes-Scantling drops that ball last season against the Ravens, or Sneed is one split-second late on that punch out and Flowers scores? A week earlier, what if the Bills‘ Tyler Bass makes a late field goal? What about all the huge pass rushes Jones has delivered, or the magical moments Mahomes has delivered? What if one goes begging at a crucial juncture?
Or what if, simply, another team is on the right side of those tiny margins on the right day? The AFC is absolutely loaded at quarterback, and each one presents a new and unique challenge in 2024. Joe Burrow is back, and the Bengals solidified the back end of a leaky defense. C.J. Stroud’s Texans have added major talent on both sides of the ball, taking advantage of his cheap deal. In Baltimore, Jackson has a new running mate, literally, in Derrick Henry. And Josh Allen might be the closest thing to a player who can go toe-to-toe with Mahomes, as their epic playoff battles indicate.
We have to go all the way back to the 2022 AFC Championship game to find a time the Chiefs ended their season on a loss. In that game, too, the margin was razor thin: Tyreek Hill came up inches short on a touchdown that could have been the knockout blow to the Bengals. Instead, Cincinnati rallied, and Mahomes experienced playoff heartbreak for the second straight year.
The idea that it’s a game of inches is a cliche, but it’s not wrong. Mahomes and co. have found a way to be on the right side so many times. But one bad break — no one’s fault, no rhyme or reason to it — can make or break a season of thousands of plays.
That’s the beautiful, nerve-wracking nature of chasing a title. The Chiefs know that all too well by now.
