The games that define the Patrick Mahomes era for the Chiefs, Part 2
Looking at the lowest moment of the Mahomes era... and how that catapulted them to a dynasty
What games define the Patrick Mahomes era for the Kansas City Chiefs?
It’s an interesting question to answer as we head into year 9 (!!!) of Mahomes’ career. And so I set out to figure out what games have defined this era of Chiefs football, which is without a doubt the greatest era of Chiefs football. In Part 1, I wrote about games from the beginning of the era through “13 seconds.” Today, we’ll talk about the worst loss of the Mahomes era, and the games that showed the journey as that loss brought them from “champions” to “dynasty.”
Here’s the criteria I’m using:
How much does the memory of a moment in this game (or the game itself) live on after the season is ended? The more memorable, the more likely it is to be included.
How pivotal was the game in not just that season’s outcome (otherwise we’d have to include every single playoff game), but in determining how Chiefs fans and the league in general talks about (and thinks about) the team? Games that played a huge role in both team success and general narrative matter more than games that fell by the wayside or didn’t move the conversation about the team.
Did the game play a major role in the team’s development (an easy example, spoiler alert, is the 2018 AFC Championship leading to Andy Reid firing defensive coordinator Bob Sutton and hiring Steve Spagnuolo)? The bigger the role a game played in the direction the team went, the more likely it is to be included. That makes tough losses more likely to be included if we’re being honest.
Can you tell the story of the Mahomes era without this game? How important would it be in a movie, for example? This is probably the single most important factor, and one reason why some games may not be included, as important as they were in other ways, because they came right before or right after an even more important game. In other words, a game we HAVE to talk about may outshine a game we normally WOULD talk about.
We’ve got a lot of ground to cover (and you should read Part 1 if you haven’t, as we’re picking up right where we left off, the 13 Seconds game), so let’s get right to it, starting with the worst loss of the Mahomes era and one that set the groundwork for dynasty.
CIN at KC, AFC Championship - 1/30/21 (KC loses 24-27 in OT)
This is one of the most important games of the Mahomes era, so we’ll use up a little more (online) ink on it.
In order to understand how tough a loss this game was, one has to revisit “13 seconds” and understand just how high the Chiefs were riding at the time. As I wrote in Part 1, the 13 seconds game over the Bills turned Mahomes and Kelce into essentially demigods in the football discourse. The Chiefs had become an inevitable Thanos-level event, considered utterly inevitable after arguably the craziest comeback the league had ever seen in terms of “this game was supposed to be over.”
The Super Bowl loss from the previous year was clearly nothing more than an aberration of losing the entire OL to injury. Nothing could stop the Chiefs from getting to (and winning) another Super Bowl with a healthy OL. And the vast majority of the first half of this game felt like a coronation, as the Chiefs ran up a 21-3 lead and marched up and down the field with impunity while the defense held Burrow and the Bengals to a mere field goal.
And then it all fell apart. The self-inflicted wounds that had plagued the Chiefs all year came home to roost. Mahomes went from fire-breathing dragon in the first half to playing one of the worst halves of his career. Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill dropped crucial passes. And somehow, despite numerous chances to put the game away, the Chiefs fell in overtime.
The Chiefs losing this game had so many narratives attached to it:
They lost that aura of invincibility that they had JUST grabbed in the 13 second game, which was now relegated to more of a footnote than it should have been.
They fell further short than they had the previous year for the first time in years, failing to make the Super Bowl after getting there two consecutive seasons.
The idea that Mahomes COULDN’T fail in the playoffs barring some kind of crazy issue elsewhere (Ford being offsides, the OL being blown up) was ruined, as for the first time in his career he was a big part of a playoff loss.
The Bengals became the Chiefs’ kryptonite, after having already beaten them in the regular season, and Joe Burrow became the new “it” quarterback that pundits and opposing fans had been dying to root for.
The Chiefs’ defense was showing cracks, with aging stars from 2019 no longer playing as well and the overall performance leaning towards below average. The offense had become terrific again but had shown some signs of stagnating as well. And with Hill’s contract expiring and him in need of a new (undoubtedly market-setting) deal, the entire roster looked like it was in need of an overhaul. And this game laid all of those potential issues bare.
Of course, you all remember what happened next. Because the flaws that were shown in this game (particularly on defense) led to Brett Veach and Andy Reid making one of the boldest moves of the last decade by trading Hill for a mountain of draft picks and hitting the reset button on the offensive weaponry and the defense. And that… well, let’s keep going.
KC at ARI, Week 1 - 9/11/22 (KC wins 44-21)
Looking back now, it’s tough to remember just how much negative chatter there was about the Chiefs in the offseason leading up to 2022. Hill was gone, they’d “taken a step back” by losing before the Super Bowl, the Bengals owned them, etc.
The Chiefs were trying to go an entirely new direction for the offense, with Juju Smith-Schuster and MVS being brought in to serve as WR1 and WR2 with Kelce remaining the centerpiece of the offense. The chatter around the talking heads was that Mahomes was going to take a huge step back without the best (and most dangerous) WR in the game complementing Kelce. And let’s be honest, many were expecting that to be the case. Nevermind that the defense was going in a completely new direction, counting on multiple rookies from the 2022 draft.
Then Week 1 against Arizona came, and Mahomes threw for 360 yards and 5 TDs, while making throws like this.
In the meantime, the newly rehauled defense looked competent. And suddenly, the Chiefs looked a lot less dead in the water than people had hoped. In fact, they looked like a more dangerous, well-rounded team than they’d ever been. It was a preview of things to come (as was Isiah Pacheco’s 12 carry, 62-yard day, something that shouldn’t be ignored given his importance the next several seasons).
KC at TB, Week 4 - 10/2/22 (KC wins 41-31)
It’s impossible to not include this game for several reasons. This was Mahomes and company returning to Tampa to avenge their Super Bowl humiliation with a win that was far more dominant than the final score indicates (they were leading 41-24 with less than 5 minutes remaining in the game). It was a big moment.
But the real reason this game is a NECESSITY when defining the Mahomes era? It’s bessed summed up in a picture.
