This was still a Chiefs-Raiders game, Chiefs coach Andy Reid made sure to mention the other day. His implication was that colorful history somehow would make their season finale on Sunday something more than just two teams trudging to the end of long-dead seasons.
“So,” Reid added, “I’m sure it will be a good game to watch.”
Not so much, as it happened. Especially when it came to the Chiefs’ contributions to the unsightly 14-12 loss at Allegiant Stadium as they fell to 6-11 — as many regular-season losses as they’d suffered in the previous three seasons combined.
The twist, of course, is that the Chiefs prospered more — at least in terms of their future — by losing than winning. In the process, they ultimately enhanced their NFL Draft position (ninth). That’s their best perch since having the overall No. 1 pick in 2013 — and first in the top 10 since they momentously traded up to select Patrick Mahomes in that spot in 2017.
The dynamics of this as something to celebrate, as many fans seem to be doing, speaks to many things at once.
Like how abruptly a team that entered the season with ambitions of playing in a fourth straight Super Bowl seems to have fallen back to the pack, for instance.
And the inherent, underappreciated cost of their vast success in the Mahomes Era, highlighted by playing in seven straight AFC Championship Game and five Super Bowls and winning three.
That’s an extra season-plus of games (21) in that span, not to mention a series of compressed offseasons, making for an enormous challenge to replenish through the draft from among the last few picks every year.
What the Chiefs were pulling off was utterly unsustainable in the modern NFL, which goes to great lengths to cultivate parity with the salary cap and scheduling, and yet they outran the waves bubbling up and rippling their way for years.
All of that and more went into Sunday being, in fact, not at all a good game to watch.
Which was no surprise in multiple ways, but most significantly because, well, very few Chiefs games this year provided that sensation.
It’s not just that the Chiefs scored only three touchdowns in their final five games — the last three of which were without the injured Mahomes and having been eliminated from the playoffs.
Or that they ended the season with a six-game losing streak, the second-longest of Reid’s career to the eight he suffered in his final season in Philadelphia in 2012.
It’s that it essentially was that way from the get-go this season, with the only exception in hindsight being a deceptively dominant three-game span (clobbering the Lions, Raiders and Commanders) that proved to be fool’s gold.
Despite some offseason maneuvers that at least seemed to address the Chiefs’ issues in the wake of a 40-22 hammering by the Eagles in Super Bowl LIX; despite the burn to return always stoked by Mahomes and expressed by Chris Jones in that postgame locker room, as captured in the ESPN docuseries “The Kingdom”; despite a worldwide stage ... the Chiefs were inexplicably lethargic, flat and undisciplined in their opening loss to the Chargers in Brazil.
At the time, I thought what happened there was distressing enough. But I had little idea how much it actually projected.
Setting an underlying tone for the season, they committed a holding penalty on the first play of the game that offset receiver Tyquan Thornton’s 42yard return. Then, on the third play from scrimmage, tight end Travis Kelce inadvertently blasted receiver Xavier Worthy on a crossing route, leaving him out of commission for weeks.
Offensive lineman Jawaan Taylor would be called for four penalties. Jones deviated from his assignment and failed to contain the edge on a pivotal late play.
More concerning than anything else, though, was the unacceptable fact that they simply weren’t ready to play. So much so that Reid did something he rarely does: called out the team for failing to be in the right state of mind.
Echoing Reid and reflecting what was quite apparent to any observer moments into the game, Mahomes said, “I could feel it pretty early on. They definitely came out with more energy than we did. In this league, everybody’s too good for you to not match the energy of your opponent.”
That should have been a wakeup call. But the alarm never really sounded — or at least never seemed to resonate — in a season also marked by how chance events they’d benefitted from for so long nearly always went the other way.
With such narrow margins for error, not matching the energy was too much to overcome.
The Chiefs now have quite a list to audit and address if they’re going to reinvigorate this team and add a new chapter to a dynasty instead of seeing it fade out now.
They’ll need to run the diagnostics on stale offensive schemes, their sluggish running game, too many dropped passes, the absence of defensive pressure and creating turnovers and all the exasperating penalties.
A franchise that for one shining era seemed to have all the answers now faces more significant questions than perhaps it has since the fateful day Mahomes was drafted, especially with offensive coordinator Matt Nagy and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo possibly leaving for head coaching jobs.
And with Travis Kelce’s future remaining uncertain … and Mahomes’ full recuperation timetable something that can’t really be known until he returns in approximately nine months.
But really for the first time in ages, another sort of question hovers over the overall operation.
After the game, Reid spoke to being optimistic about the future because of continuity and a nucleus and foundation. Indeed, that’s all served the Chiefs remarkably well for years.
And between that and general manager Brett Veach’s past currency with the draft and free agency, Reid reckoned after the game that “it will be a fresh start coming up here.”
Based on this season, though, the fresh start figures to require more than just tweaks and spackling. This team needs some overhauling, churn and new voices.
Because a season with mostly bad games to watch says there are too many cracks in the foundation to fall back on that.
