Chiefs vs Titans: The Good, the Bad King, and a Whole Lot of Ugly

Shawn Sorter

Sometimes doing a writeup about the Kansas City Chiefs games can be a lot of fun… other times, it can be like the weather where I live currently, damp, dark, and very wet. The reality of what this team really is is staring us in the face. Our 4 losses are to the 4 division leaders going into today. We should have won 2 of the games, and in 2 we got absolutely destroyed. The playoffs are still likely in my estimation, but going anywhere far is very doubtful.

The Good

Nick Bolton is likely the only player who can be singled out as having an outstanding game. He was consistently making plays, often hitting King Henry in the backfield. He really had a coming out game that we can only hope becomes a jumping off point for the future. We know we have a lot of needs on defense, it would be nice to start to identify the few things we don’t need there.

Willie Gay made a very impressive interception. Sadly the Chiefs could not capitalize on it.

I was actually pleased with how the defense played the King today. 86 yards total rushing and he honestly didn’t even look that good. Maybe we put too many resources into stopping him which opened up nearly every possible play for Ryan Tannehill who torched us all day long. 

The defense shut out the Titans in the 2nd half and the Chiefs actually win 3-0 if we just start the game there. I’m sure the Titans pulled an Andy Reid and took their foot off the petal, but the good section has to have more meat in it than this, right?

A couple of other good things from this loss. First, it must be clear to Brett Veach by now that without a couple of impact moves before the trading deadline this team won’t go anywhere. We are running out of excuses.

Secondly, we could decide to be sellers and pick up some extra picks, an idea I’m not at all opposed to.

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The Bad King

There was quite a bit of hype about RB Derrick “The King” Henry prior to the game. He was built up as a major problem for us. It didn’t quite work out this way, but he had to be in this section anyway in order to be part of this article’s title.

I only heard Frank Clark’s name called once again this week, and again it was for a penalty. This one was on 3rd and long and gave the Titans a very easy to make 1st down that helped lead to their first touchdown.

Frank, we appreciate the help with the Super Bowl. I worried at the time we had given up way too much both in trade capital as well as cap and now the team is simply getting robbed. Please pull a Gil Meche and do the team a solid and walk away in the cheapest way possible after the season.  

All 1st half the Chiefs defense could not get off the field on 3rd and long. They made Ryan Tannehill look to be the far better quarterback today, but hardly any of the throws he made were contested and the Chiefs have zero idea how to cover screens or backs out of the backfield at all. This is not a new problem.

The fact our own offensive line can’t stop 4 pass rushers very often at all has to be concerning, and K.C. doesn’t seem to be making solid adjustments to counter it. Trey Smith had 2 holding calls and at least one sack given up. He has been stellar so far this year, but not at all today.

Willie Gay badly whiffed on tackling Ryan Tannehill on his 3rd down run that led to the Titans 3rd touchdown. No idea what he was doing on the play, but a good linebacker makes that tackle. 

Our playcalling seemed stale today. I almost always hate running the ball up the middle on 2nd and 10. 

Patrick Mahomes was horrible today. He has gotten so lucky on many risky throws in his career that have made him incapable of giving up on a play and it’s been hurting him badly lately. His interception was on 1st down and there is really no reason for a risky throw on that down. The last chance we had to come back in the game came at the end of the 1st half. Score there, get the ball to start the 2nd half and you could pull to within 10 at 24-14. All of that was erased by Mahomes making yet another turnover. I don’t fault him for running, or for not sliding as it was 2nd down and the way our offense was stalling there was no guarantee that we get the 1st on 3rd down. However, the entire team has to find a way to: hold onto the ball!

Often Patrick also seems to be moving into sacks. Opposing pass rushers know his tendencies, where he wants to move, and they are often going to those spots before he does. I wish he would get better at stepping up in the pocket.  He’s also still hopping a lot of balls. He came into the game 2nd in the league in QBR, but man we need him to still be a Savior with this team.

Penalties were a problem today, again. Multiple times we committed penalties to keep drives for the Titans alive and multiple times we committed them on offense at critical times that really hurt.

The coaches blowing a 2nd half timeout to switch from a Punt to a FG attempt seemed like a really bad decision. Losing the timeout could have mattered, thankfully it didn’t.

We were lucky late that we didn’t get a running into the kicker penalty. Our players don’t seem to be doing the little things well at all.

Our first 3rd down conversion came in the 4th quarter. That may be all that needs to be said about the offense today.

It was the worst I’ve seen the offense be in the Mahomes era, we literally did nothing right. 

I never saw Josh Gordon on the field. If he was, he was once again quiet, and I don’t know what we are saving him for.

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A Whole Lot of Ugly

AJ Brown had a slight push off on an early reception. I don’t fault him for doing it or the officials for letting him, but I always wonder why our receivers don’t even seem to take advantage of how infrequently offensive pass interference is called in the NFL.

This past year the Chiefs seem to have a knack of getting phantom penalties called where no replay is shown. After Patrick’s first interception, the camera did a horrible job of showing where the ball was by not having the camera centered at all. We will never know if the ball hit the ground or not. Later on Fenton’s hold, once again the camera guy was horrible and kept the focus on the line of scrimmage after the ball was already down the field.

Demarcus Robinson got his name called only about once today, and once again it was not good. When receivers hold on running plays it just hurts the team so badly, and brought back a really nice play. 

3 more turnovers today. That’s 17 on the season in 7 games. This issue is not getting better. Even if Mahomes alone doesn’t turn it over, the game could have been closer, but this along with our other ailments just gives us such a little chance to win. With the game being well past the point of mattering it was almost comical to watch Mecole Hardman fumble the 2nd week in a row, this time at the 5-yard line, with the Chiefs having their best chance to actually get a touchdown. Hardman just lacks that “it” factor, and I can’t ever see him being a clutch performer. 

Orlando Brown Jr got abused today.

We were smart to wait to sign him to any long term extension. If this sort of play keeps up I’m not sure I see a reason to even franchise him. Ward is another player that long term may not stay here, he’s hurt way to much. He’s been fine for an undrafted free agent but overpaying for a good cornerback does not seem like a good idea, and it didn’t seem to matter today whether he was in the game or hurt again. 

Maybe the most baffling part of the game was how there was no flag thrown on the 4th down play that caused Mahomes to have his 2nd fumble. He was hit low, and while in the grasp he was hit again in the head by a 2nd defender. The announcers seemed clueless. A hit does not have to be dirty to be an illegal hit. If that was Tom Brady we would have seen yellow all over the field. This just doesn’t seem to be the Chiefs year. Patrick Mahomes does not get star power calls at all and honestly doesn’t seem to get the calls that average quarterbacks get. 

One of the message boards I frequent had a lot of people claiming they were turning off the game to go do other things. I must say I rarely feel that way, but today could have been an exception. If not for the horrible weather outside, or my loyalty to our readers, there were other things that could have been much more enjoyable to do. 

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Shawn Sorter — ArrowheadOne

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