Sabotaged; Toney and Moore's struggles made the Chiefs' offense impossible to evaluate

Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore were an active problem against the Lions. So much so that it's tough to analyze the rest of the offense.

Good news, bad news time. Well, mostly bad.

Let’s start with the bad news. With all-world tight end Travis Kelce sidelined due to a bone bruise in his knee, Patrick Mahomes found himself in a position he hadn’t been before. As I wrote prior to the game, one cannot replace Kelce. However, the hope was that with a young and (ostensibly) deep wide receiver group, Andy Reid could coax a solid performance out of the offense regardless.

The bad news is that didn’t happen. The Chiefs only put up 20 points in a disappointing loss to the Lions in which the offense had multiple opportunities to seize control of the game and didn’t. It was a frustrating game to watch.

The good news (sort of)? Well, it’s basically impossible to say for certain whether or not Mahomes, Reid and company could have gotten a competent performance out of the offense because of one of the worst performances by an individual wide receiver I’ve ever seen.

“Seth, how in the world is that good news?”

Well, you have to really want to see it I suppose. But like I said, it’s mostly bad news. And that bad news was that Kadarius Toney had such a poor performance against the Lions that he not only didn’t help the Chiefs win, he actively hindered it. Toney ended the evening with a NEGATIVE “expected points added” number of -2.19 EPA per target. Another way of thinking about that is that had Toney literally just fallen down at the snap and not been targeted at all, it would have been a huge benefit for the Chiefs and probably meant a win. Seriously.

We (unfortunately) need to talk about just how badly Toney’s night altered the Chiefs’ offense, because it was to such an extent that I can’t give a good evaluation on the offense as a whole. And he wasn’t alone in those struggles, as Skyy Moore (who played nearly 70 percent of the snaps) had some issues of his own that directly led to drives ending. In fact, Moore’s had some genuinely game-altering bad plays that flew under the radar due to Toney’s more obvious issues.

Let’s talk about how a night of drops, failed contested catches, and mental errors marred the Chiefs’ home opener. I’m sure it won’t make any of us irate at all. But it’s important to see how impactful it was to get to that (sort of) good news; It’s quite unlikely to be this bad in the future.

Yay? Let’s talk about it.