For all the Chiefs relinquished Sunday in Denver — a fourth-quarter lead, a chance to regain some control in the AFC West and perhaps even a decade-long run atop the division — they still put the ball in the hands of quarterback Patrick Mahomes in a tie game with four minutes to play.
If that opening paragraph reads quite similar to something from a few days ago here, it’s intentional — in the hours after the Broncos beat the Chiefs on a game-winning field goal, I spotlighted the quality of Kansas City’s passes in the most critical situations of games this year.
It’s time to pull at a different thread: the quantity.
Are the Chiefs throwing the football too much?
Actually, you know what, does the whole offensive framework need to be repaired?
Or, better yet, is it too late in the season to change the entire scheme?
Or maybe the quarterback is the issue?
There are a lot of readyfor- hire solutions for the Chiefs’ offense right now — that’s a compliment in the level of interest, by the way — but that discussion needs to start with a different question: Is there much an offensive problem to be solved?
The Chiefs are 5-5, their worst record through 10 games since Patrick Mahomes left Lubbock, Texas, nearly a decade ago. They’re one game shy of the final playoff spot in the AFC, and hold the tiebreaker over precisely nobody above them in those standings. That’s their reality, and nothing forthcoming in this column is attempting to dispute it.
But there’s a reason I’m constantly bringing up contextual metrics — because while the full mixture has produced the .500 record, the context should drive the response to it. There needs to be some sort of response to 5-5, an urgency even, but how considerable?
• The Chiefs rank third in the NFL in points per possession, per FTN tracking.
• They rank second in the NFL in yards per possession.
• They punt as infrequently as all but two teams in the league.
• They advance to the red zone on 45.5% of their drives, more often than literally every other team in the league.
Does that sound like an offense in crisis?
Does that sound like an output you should be striving to completely overhaul?
Don’t get me wrong. The Chiefs could stand to make some tweaks. Their lategame execution would be a fine place to start. That’s what’s most responsible for the record. I’ll address others, as we regularly do here. But the growing sentiment that the entire system is broken? It’s losing the plot.
Those questions I proposed earlier — the rushing (in)frequency, the offensive framework, the quarterback — didn’t come out of thin air. Some version of them confronted Chiefs head coach Andy Reid during a news conference Wednesday. He rolled with them, but when asked about changing the offensive scheme established during training camp responded, “We’re not in a position where we need to wholesale that.”
I understand that response could raise some eyebrows, considering it’s coming from the head coach of a Super Bowl hopeful that’s instead stuck in third place in its own division.
