The Kansas City Chiefs have a choice which path to head down following their 54-51 loss to the Rams at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on Monday night.
To the right lies “Same Old, Same Old Boulevard,” where the Chiefs can tell themselves they should take pride in the fact that they took a Super Bowl contender to the wire on the road (the Rams on Monday night) despite wide receiver Sammy Watkins playing sparingly and All-Pro safety Eric Berry (still) unable to play. They can point out that the Rams needed some incredibly fluky plays and perhaps a bit of help from the gentlemen in the striped shirts to win an absolute barn burner of a game.
In fact, the Chiefs would be totally logical in thinking to themselves that the only two teams that have beaten them this year are Super Bowl contenders, both games were on the road, and the opponents had to play their best football to do it. It’s an absolutely true statement, and this 2018 Chiefs squad remains a wildly talented team that no team wants to play in the playoffs.
The left turn is a more difficult one.
It’s at “This Must Stop Avenue.” Down that road lies some starkly brutal truths, the most cruel of which is this: The Chiefs should be undefeated right now, and they have no one to blame but themselves.
The problem isn’t a lack of talent. Almost the opposite: The Chiefs are so talented that they can make multiple mistakes and still win the vast majority of their games. They’re so good that they can lose the turnover battle, 2-0, to New England and still almost walk out a winner. They’re so good that they can turn the ball over five times Monday and take a great Rams team to the absolute limit. And that’s sort of the problem when it comes to forks in the road like this one: When you know you’re already great, it’s tough to acknowledge that you could be greater.
On Monday night against the Rams, much like the Sunday night game in New England earlier in the season, the Chiefs looked like the better team for much of the night. Yet, in both cases, they still lost. And in both cases, mental mistakes, a lack of discipline and self-inflicted errors were the primary culprit.
Perhaps you’ve heard this old expression: They didn’t win, we lost. It sounds like sour grapes, but in the case of the Chiefs’ pair of heartbreaking losses, it holds quite true. That was especially the case Monday evening, when the Chiefs had the opportunity to seize a commanding lead and put the game away multiple times, and fumbled (sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically) chances away.
A few examples:
After the defense forced a fumble and then a punt on back-to-back possessions in the second quarter, giving the offense a chance to extend a 17-16 lead, star quarterback Patrick Mahomes — yes, it’s OK to use that term for him now — was hit from behind by Rams star defensive tackle Aaron Donald, which resulted in a returned fumble for a touchdown.
The Chiefs started the second half with the ball in a tie game, only to have Donald force another fumble. This time, the Chiefs had the opportunity to recover the ball, but left guard Cam Erving tried to pick it up instead of falling on it and the Rams recovered it. The Chiefs would’ve had 2nd and long but still could have been in field-goal range.
After the Chiefs reclaimed the lead, 44-40, in the fourth quarter, the defense was no match against the Rams’ offense and the lead was lost in six plays.
Cornerback Orlando Scandrick had a chance to seal the game with just more than two minutes left, but this happened.
The Rams were out of timeouts at this point, so had Scandrick merely hung on to the interception, the Chiefs would have been able to bleed almost the entire remaining game clock. Instead, the Rams scored shortly thereafter. Mahomes then threw an interception on a 1st-and-10 play on the Rams’ 49-yard-line when he needlessly tried to rifle the ball despite pressure looming. The resulting throw after his arm was hit landed squarely in the arms of former Chiefs Pro Bowler Marcus Peters.
Those missed opportunities don’t comprise the entirety of the chances the Chiefs didn’t take advantage of, yet they still almost managed to pull a win out of thin air with nothing but pure talent and good coaching.
And make no mistake, the Chiefs are that talented. They feature a murderer’s row of talent on offense and have enough juice in the pass rush defensively to force opponents into turning the ball over. That’s a Super Bowl-winning combination if utilized correctly, and even if the Chiefs continue to shoot themselves in the foot, they still have a great chance at winning multiple playoff games. They’re that good.
Mahomes’ game against the Rams was, in many ways, a microcosm of where the Chiefs currently find themselves. Mahomes made several crucial mistakes and also dealt with a little bad luck on his way to five turnovers, an absolutely unacceptable number for a franchise quarterback. Yet he was so brilliant on his way to 478 passing yards and six touchdowns that it very nearly didn’t matter. His talent was an eyelash away from covering the self-inflicted wounds. That is the 2018 Kansas City Chiefs in a nutshell. The talent is so overwhelming that they can overcome their own mistakes the vast majority of the time and still be wildly successful.
Which brings us back to the fork in the road. The Chiefs are good, arguably the best team in Kansas City since 2003. But they can be better. Much better. This is a team that has the talent to go all the way. And the biggest barrier to preventing this isn’t the Los Angeles Rams. It isn’t Tom Brady and the Patriots, or the Saints and their high-flying offense.
No, the biggest barrier the Chiefs face right now is tripping over their own feet and waiting for their talent to bail them out. They need to realize that now. They can cut back the missed opportunities and grind their way to an AFC championship or even Super Bowl win. Or they can continue to rely on talent alone and see their season end following another action-packed, entertaining loss.
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