Chiefs playoff X-factors part 3; Turnovers, special teams and self-inflicted wounds
The Chiefs have gotten in their own way more than they've been "stopped" this year. How that plays out will determine their Super Bowl chances.
The Chiefs have secured the #1 seed in the AFC. After an offseason in which their demise was predicted by many due to trading away Tyreek Hill and the AFC West arms race, Patrick Mahomes and company find themselves back in the same ol’ spot… the driver’s seat for the Super Bowl. With that in mind, I’ll be examining X-factors beyond the obvious people (Reid, Mahomes, Kelce, and Jones), and how they’ll determine Kansas City’s fate. In part 1 we looked at Isiah Pacheco and Kadarius Toney. Part 2 featured George Karlaftis, Mike Danna, and the Chiefs’ pass rushers as a whole. Today, we’re talking turnovers and self-inflicted wounds.
The term “self-inflicted” may be something of a trigger point of Chiefs fans.
It was a phrase I utilized time and again last season when discussing how Kansas City found ways to make life more difficult on themselves than it needed to be. And ultimately, self-inflicted wounds were what bounced them from the playoffs last year in an epic meltdown against the Bengals. In the end, the 2021 Chiefs simply could not get out of their own way.
2022 has been, in many ways, quite similar. While the Chiefs haven’t been quite as prone to losing games due to their own mistakes (racking up a 14-3 record compared to last season’s 12-5), that doesn’t mean they’ve cleaned up their act completely when it comes to self-inflicted errors. And that tendency to stumble over themselves cost them in each of their losses this season.
The truth about the Chiefs is that when they don’t plague themselves with mistakes they are something close to unbeatable absent an opponent with an elite quarterback and excellent defense. That’s great news, of course, and it’s what led to win after win in the regular season.
But the other side of Andy Reid’s squad is that they’ve exposed a genuine tendency to create problems of their own making. Chief among those (hey, look, I did a thing there!) have been turnovers, but a close second has been special teams snafus and other unforced errors that have cost them dearly against competition that they can’t overwhelm with superior talent.
It’s worth noting that their opponent in the Divisional Round (Jacksonville) benefited from multiple mistakes like that in Week 10 when the teams previously met. A breakout game from Kadarius Toney along with a terrific Mahomes performance were nearly overshadowed by the Chiefs losing the turnover battle -3 and giving up an onside kick to start the game (after bumbling the coin flip and electing to receive rather than defer… somehow). It was a good lesson in how the Chiefs can take a game that they should run away with and make it just a LITTLE closer than it should be.
So let’s talk turnovers, special teams, and other self-inflicted mistakes that, if the Chiefs can minimalize, will make them a tough out against anyone. If they can’t? Well, that’s another story.
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