KANSAS CITY, Mo. — With two Super Bowls and four AFC Championship Game appearances in the past four seasons, the Kansas City Chiefs have set a high standard for themselves.
That’s why, despite an 11-3 record, seven wins in their past eight games and Sunday’s clinching of another AFC West championship, some people are asking, “What’s wrong with the Chiefs?”
In their past four games, the Chiefs have a listless win over the Los Angeles Rams, a loss to the Cincinnati Bengals and narrow victories over the Denver Broncos and Houston Texans — a less-than-inspiring month for a team with Super Bowl aspirations.
Struggling against some of the NFL’s bottom dwellers does not bode well for their chances against the high-quality opponents they’ll meet in the playoffs, which could include the Bengals and the Buffalo Bills, responsible for two of their three losses this season.
“We know we have a lot to work on, to clean up at least with the turnovers and the penalties,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said after the Chiefs needed overtime to beat the one-win Texans on Sunday. “We have to continue to get better as a team so when we get to the playoffs, we’re ready to go to try to make a run.”
The Chiefs are still doing many things well. They lead the league in scoring. Mahomes is on pace for his second 5,000-yard season and is a strong candidate for MVP. They are fourth in the league in sacks.
But the past few weeks have left little doubt they have some areas to fix, as well. Here are some of them.
Turnovers
The Chiefs are minus-6 this season in turnover differential, which is otherwise the domain of losing teams. The two teams with a worse differential are the 5-9 New Orleans Saints and the 4-9-1 Indianapolis Colts. Those immediately above them are the 4-10 Rams, the 6-8 Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the 1-12-1 Texans, the 6-8 Green Bay Packers, the 6-8 Las Vegas Raiders, the 6-8 Cleveland Browns and the 7-7 New York Jets.
The Chiefs have committed at least one turnover in nine straight games. Week 5 against the Raiders is the most recent clean game they’ve played.
“Ridiculous,” coach Andy Reid said of the turnover streak. “You can’t have that. The guys know that. Nobody tries to turn it over, but you’ve got to do the best you can and hang on to the football and take care of the football.”
Not only have the Chiefs created few turnovers on defense, but they have also been lousy in preventing the opponent from scoring after a Kansas City interception or fumble. The opponent has gone on to score a touchdown after seven of the Chiefs’ past nine turnovers.
The Chiefs committed just one turnover in Cincinnati, but it was Travis Kelce‘s crushing fumble in the fourth quarter of a close game. Mahomes threw three interceptions in Denver, and they allowed the Broncos to climb from a 27-0 deficit to make it a close game. The Chiefs fumbled twice in Houston, and the offensively challenged Texans used favorable field position to drive for a touchdown each time.
After the three-interception game against the Broncos, though, Mahomes didn’t put the ball in harm’s way in Houston. He had just five incompletions in 41 attempts and none after halftime.
“I looked at the tape of the Denver game, and there were a lot of easy completions that I didn’t take, and I was trying to be aggressive and it worked sometimes, but obviously hurt us sometimes,” Mahomes said. “So I just went back to the fundamentals of taking what’s there and when the stuff underneath is there, give it to the guys, let them make plays, and we were able to have success.”
Special teams
The Chiefs have usually been strong in the kicking game since Reid arrived as coach in 2013, but not this season. They’ve lost four fumbles on kick returns, with a botched punt return being the game’s most significant play in a three-point loss to the Colts in Week 3.
A bigger problem of late has been the kicking of Harrison Butker. One of the league’s most accurate kickers in recent years, Butker has struggled most of the year since a sprained ankle kept him out of the lineup for four games early in the season.
The Chiefs this season are making 75.9% of their field goals, third worst in the league. They are 88.9% on point-after kicks, fourth worst. They’ve missed seven field goals and five PATs, meaning they’ve forfeited 26 points directly with their kicking game. Their opponents have missed two field goals and zero PATs for six points.
“Being a kicker is little like being a batter, and sometimes you get in a slump,” Reid said. “He’s a great one, and he’ll get through it and then he’ll come out of it even better than what he was. You’ve got to keep kicking, and that’s what we’re going to do with him.”
Of late, Butker was perfect against the Rams with four field goals and two PATs. But the next week in Cincinnati, he missed what would have been the tying field goal, albeit from 55 yards, late in the fourth quarter.
He was perfect on two field goals and four PATs in Denver but ran into problems Sunday in Houston, where he missed a PAT early in the game and later a 51-yard field goal in a tie game near the end of the fourth quarter.
The Chiefs couldn’t have been comfortable with the thought of sending Butker out for a potential winning field goal in overtime. They never had to make the choice because Jerick McKinnon scored the winning touchdown on a 26-yard run on the first play after they recovered a Houston fumble.
Butker said he was working on fixes with snapper James Winchester and holder Tommy Townsend, but that making change for change’s sake can make things worse.
“You don’t want to reinvent the wheel, especially during the season,” Butker said. “Obviously you’ve got to go back to the drawing board if things aren’t working out and make some small changes, [but] you don’t want to do too much. You’ve got to stick to the process. You can’t just throw everything out the window and try to do something completely new.”
Penalties
Penalties haven’t been a season-long problem for the Chiefs. They have been penalized fewer times than their opponents (83-72) but for more yards (725-629).
They were a huge problem against the Texans. The Chiefs had at least one defensive penalty on three of Houston’s four scoring drives, a big aid to a struggling opponent that was playing without its two top wide receivers and its leading rusher because of injuries.
The Chiefs were penalized three times for pass interference and once for illegal contact.
“You’ve got to work your fundamentals and techniques and then you’ve got to trust them when you’re out there,” Reid said when asked how the Chiefs can clean up the penalties. “That’s what we’ll do. That’s the simplest way.”
Sponsored Content
Juega en grande con cryptomonedas
