The Kansas City Chiefs’ margin of error disappeared a month ago.
So to achieve their 2025 goals, they desperately needed a Week 9 victory over the Buffalo Bills in Orchard Park — but instead, they allowed
themselves to get taken out behind the woodshed on both sides of the line, getting bullied in the trenches. They struggled to cover Buffalo’s tight ends and finish their drives when it mattered most. It all added up to a disappointing 28-21 loss that the Bills controlled from their opening drive.
As the dust settles on Sunday afternoon’s loss, Kansas City finds itself firmly in third place in the AFC West, two games behind the Denver Broncos.
And the season is no longer young.
Here are five things we learned in Buffalo.
1. The Chiefs’ offensive line is a problem… again
In the blink of an eye, we’re back to 2024 on the offensive line.
Hopefully, the Chiefs can get healthy during the bye week so that this doesn’t become a long-term issue. But as it stands right now, Kansas City is banged up (or missing its starter) at four of the line’s five positions.
We don’t have a solid timeline for Josh Simmons’ return. We don’t yet know how serious Jawaan Taylor’s ankle injury is. But Jaylon Moore and Wanya Morris facing the Broncos’ pass rush in Week 11 isn’t something anyone wants to imagine.
Even though they played through their injuries on Sunday, starting guards Trey Smith and Kingsley Suamataia are also banged up. The Chiefs need them healthy for the back half of the season.
On Sunday, the offensive line came up short. If they can’t quickly get back to full strength, this won’t be the last time we see Kansas City get overwhelmed in the trenches.
2. Chris Jones has lost a step
It’s time to acknowledge the elephant in the room: the Chiefs’ star defensive tackle isn’t the player he once was.
He’s still a good player. But he can no longer consistently fight through double-teams to make an opposing quarterback miserable. He can still win plenty of one-on-one matchups, but he is no longer the one-man pass-rushing force of nature we used to see.
While Father Time comes for us all, we are rarely ready to hear his knuckles rapping at the door.
This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem — except for one thing: the Kansas City defense is still built around Jones being a dominant player. If he isn’t consistently collapsing the pocket, the Chiefs don’t have another lineman who can win fast and speed up the opposing quarterback’s internal clock.
It’s time to recognize that this is the basic problem with the team’s pass rush.
3. The Chiefs’ refusal to run the ball is a problem
Head coach Andy Reid refused to run the ball for most of Sunday’s second half.
This is, of course, a recurring issue. It didn’t help that there were other problems on the offensive line. But even if the line is at full strength, the coaching staff’s decision to abandon the running game invariably leads to the team having difficulty with protecting quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Being without running back Isiah Pacheco on Sunday didn’t help. But the bigger problem is that beyond him, the Chiefs don’t have another player who can fill his role. At this stage in his career, Kareem Hunt is little more than a short-yardage back — and rookie Brashard Smith continues to show he’s not quite ready for his close-up.
That’s why we saw Clyde Edwards-Helaire running the ball on Sunday — something that Kansas City fans would happily go the rest of their lives without seeing again. Still, the Chiefs must find a way to consistently run the ball — because if they can’t, it always puts Mahomes in a bad situation.
4. The Chiefs struggle in close games
This one feels like Opposite Day.
As Kansas City fans, we’ve grown accustomed to seeing the Chiefs snatch victory from the jaws of defeat in close games. But so far this season, the team has found itself in four one-score games — and lost every one of them.
That’s right: if the team could have found a way to win those games — as it did so consistently in 2024 — its record would now be 9-0.
The NFL is a league of parity. If you fold in close games, you won’t win often. Somehow, Kansas City must rediscover its ability to close out games — when the pressure is at its highest.
5. The Chiefs are too obsessed with big plays
As it stands, the Kansas City offense is all-or-nothing. A year ago, it couldn’t buy an explosive offensive play. Now that it has demonstrated the ability to create them, it’s like there are no other options; the short and intermediate routes are missing in action.
On Sunday, Mahomes completed only 14 passes — a career-low completion percentage of 44.1% — but threw for 250 yards. That average of 17.8 yards per completion exceeded his season average of 11.1 by more than six yards.
Mahomes might have been forcing the ball downfield. It’s also possible the coaching staff believed the Chiefs could beat the Bills’ secondary over the top. Either way, the result was an offense that looked disjointed — and determined to live or die by the big play.
In the end, it was the latter.
