Well this week’s version of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly gets a bit of a title addition. We all got to enjoy a very long “rainy” delay, complete with stories of bad peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
This was the 2nd worst loss of Patrick Mahomes career, and in some ways it felt even more helpless than Super Bowl LV. Maybe because this is pretty much the team we are going with the rest of the season and we don’t have the legitimate excuse of missing four fifths of our offensive line.
We simply got beat by the better team tonight.
The Good
I’m not one that thinks Pro Football Focus (PFF) is the be-all-end-all of rankings, but the future is bright when they have Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith ranked 2nd and 3rd at their positions respectively.
Patrick Mahomes had an early 10 yard scramble for a first down and did quite a great job gaining yards with his legs tonight. Jerick McKinnon had a nice early catch and run. I’m mystified why he does not get more touches. Even though it didn’t work out I believed going for it on 4th and 2 right at the 2 minute warning of the 1st half was the right call. Convert that and we can bleed the clock and score. Kick the FG and no matter what we do the Bills will come down and score as they did.
After our fumble it was nice to see the defense step up and get a stop to get the ball right back. That could have been an early backbreaker.
The 2nd half performance from the defense should leave us encouraged. We kept the Bills offense from scoring until late in the game. The defense had stop after stop to give us a chance to come back.
I liked seeing Josh Gordon helping our quarterback out on a scramble drill. I’m hopeful he can get up to speed quickly and be in on many more plays… a bigger part of the offense.
The Chiefs had nearly twice as many plays as the Bills which usually spells victory, and the yardage was equal even though the score was far from it.
.
The Bad
I’m starting to think the only reason Clyde Edwards-Helaire is still out there is to continue to try and justify him being a 1st round pick. He has zero burst or quickness, zero. He consistently takes what could be 10-plus yard gains and gets 3, 4, or 5. Often his line opens up holes so massive, yet he does so little with it. He also lacks the speed to get around the edge, and what would often be a gain ends up with him just going out of bounds at the line of scrimmage. The eye test on this is not hard to see, and I hope I never see this team take a running back early again. All that said I wish him a speedy recovery.
Patrick Mahomes missing Travis Kelce early really hurt on what likely would have been an easy score. Tyreek Hill had a drop right after on a throw that would have given the Chiefs the ball at the 5. We had to settle for 3.
Too often it seems our stars start games with jitters. I’m to the point where we need to do more of what we see the Chargers and other innovative teams doing. On the early 4th down I’d like to see us go for it, at least with how little faith I have in this defense.
Hardman is not a good receiver. He had a drop tonight that nearly cost us, if not for the roughing penalty it would be more remembered.
The defense came out as poorly as they have all season. I, like many, keep thinking at some point they have to turn it around. We are still missing 2 starters, but I’m starting to realize it won’t matter when we play good teams.
Josh Allen is no Patrick Mahomes when it comes to horizontal throw attempts. His intentional grounding was amusing. The offense can’t always carry us and tonight they (the Offense) are what kept us from being able to come back, and we had many chances to score more.
.
The Ugly
Having another 4 turnovers is absolutely not a recipe for success. Mahomes missed a lot of open throws, off target much of the night. In his defense the pressure he received was fairly consistent all night while Josh Allen was untouched unless he decided to run. This was such a factor that it’s worth mentioning twice.
Josh Allen gashed us with his legs, and the way we defended most anything else was very disappointing in the first half.
Our front 4, with or without Chris Jones, seem incapable of getting any pressure whatsoever. It just trickles down to the entire team and makes everyone’s job so much more difficult.
On Mahomes 2nd interception it was clearly a poor decision. But I couldn’t help but wonder: what was the play call there? Niang didn’t even engage the end. Earlier the announcers discussed how well he had done at getting into the taller player and keeping his hands down so he could not bat down a ball, but on this one, I can’t help but think he’s partially to blame.
It felt like the Chiefs were just not prepared tonight. There were quite a few mental mistakes. Kelce taking off early is very out of character for him and having to take a time out after we were unable to get one when we wanted and had a whole new play clock after a failed 1st down play.
Daniel Sorenson had 2 blown coverages in the first half that resulted in long touchdowns.
Sorensen also had a missed tackle at the line of scrimmage that he needed to make that resulted in a 9 yard gain as well as several other missed tackles. He’s far from the only issue, but it was even more glaring than normal tonight.
.
The Soggy
The lightning delay at half time resulted in most of the second half being played in the rain. However, that was true for both teams.
In the first 5 weeks of the season we have played the best 4 teams in the AFC and didn’t really look good against any of them.
I’ll say again there is zero reason to run out a kickoff from the endzone with this quarterback and this offense. Tonight we saw more evidence as to why. Thankfully it didn’t end up hurting us, but… you can’t fumble on a touchback. I wish Andy would see what most all fans see on this issue.
Another special team issue I question is the need to field punts at or inside the 5 yard line. The one in the first half tonight would have bounced in and we could have started on the 20.
I don’t understand the short route on the play where Tyreek was at fault for the interception. He would not have gotten the 1st down anyway. Tyreek had a couple of critical drops tonight and has had a number of them it seems in our losses this year.
Refs didn’t decide the outcome tonight, but the call on Josh Gordon for offensive pass interference was pretty poor. It’s frustrating when a player is being held by the jersey and they end up getting called for something, and this is not the first time in recent memory.
Another set of bad calls involved the one on Mitch Morse of the Bills for holding.
It also seemed like the bad call on Frank Clark for roughing was a make up call. Sadly… that was the one time tonight that Frank Clark’s name was called.
Having 4 turnovers is not a trend we can have continue: one was Pringle’s fault, two on Mahomes, and one on Hill. We were fortunate that only 1 really hurt us, but it is impossible to win games that way.
One play and we had both a fumble and a holding call, and that hurts deep inside.
.
Final Thoughts
It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a team as chippy and dirty as how Buffalo plays. We noticed this the first time in the AFC title game, here’s to hoping their coach, who I really like, finds a way to clean that up.
I still don’t believe the narrative out there is accurate that this is a Super Bowl hangover. The Chiefs have a very small chance of any sort of home field advantage, and at this point the division seems like an appropriate goal. If we play the Bills again, at this point, I don’t care where the game is. If we get our issues fixed we will still be a team no one will want to face in the playoffs.
.
Shawn Sorter — ArrowheadOne
.
If you are viewing this in Apple News and would like to join the Discussion, [GO HERE.](http://arrowheadone.com/chiefs-v-bills-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-soggy/#disqus_thread)
.