On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs dropped a 22-19 decision to the Denver Broncos, giving them a 5-5 record that substantially reduced their chance to win their 10th straight AFC West title.
After reflecting on this bitter loss, three things come to mind.
1. Bringing back the deep passing game was ill-advised
Even when Alex Smith was Kansas City’s quarterback, head coach Andy Reid would often take a deep shot in the first few plays of a game. It rarely worked, but the idea was to get the defense committed to defending against it.
In Sunday’s game, Kansas
City called three straight deep passes on its opening drive. All three fell incomplete, forcing the team to punt after just four plays.
That was well beyond putting a play in the opening script to keep the defense honest.
In Sunday’s game, quarterback Patrick Mahomes attempted 10 passes described as “deep” in the matchup’s official record. Only one of them was completed: a 61-yard third-quarter strike to wide receiver Tyquan Thornton that set up Kansas City’s first touchdown. Another was intercepted, ending a drive that would have put at least three points on the board — and led to Denver’s first touchdown. Two more drew pass interference penalties that gained a total of 87 yards.
Mahomes’ passer rating on these throws was a horrifying 12.9. If they could be removed from his 29 completions on 45 attempts for 276 yards, one touchdown and one interception — which gave him an ugly rating of 79.5 — he would have ended up with an adequate 101.8 rating. And Kansas City probably would have left Denver with a victory.
Ever since general manager Brett Veach traded wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins in 2022, hundreds of thousands of words have been written about whether (or how) the team could replace his production. To date, it hasn’t happened — but here’s what has happened: Kansas City appeared in three straight Super Bowls, winning two of them and becoming the only team in history to return after back-to-back wins.
It now seems that the Chiefs cannot use their top wide receivers Rashee Rice, Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown to return to the aerial assault they had with Hill, wide receiver Sammy Watkins and tight end Travis Kelce. As our Nate Christensen once again pointed out on Tuesday, none of them are built for the job.
It’s incredibly frustrating that Kansas City has used its resources on receivers with redundant skill sets. None of them can win a contested catch or beat physical coverage. They all require role catering (or scheme) to create chances for them; none of them can do it themselves.
So why are the Chiefs even trying? Why don’t they simply return to the approach that gave Mahomes his second MVP award, as he became the first quarterback in NFL history to lead the league in passing yards and win the Lombardi Trophy — without Hill — in 2022? Move the sticks with quick, efficient intermediate passes. Take time off the clock to keep the defense fresh, so it can help… you know… win games.
Who cares if the team ever brings back Hill’s production? Kansas City has been better without him — as long as it has taken the approach that best fits it.
2. Luck is an underrated NFL skill
It was just a year ago that we couldn’t escape daily takes that the Chiefs weren’t actually good enough to win so many consecutive single-score games — a streak that ended at 17 when the team collected a 27-21 loss to the Los Angeles Chargers in its 2025 season opener. Instead, we were told, Kansas City was just lucky enough to win them.
While he was with the Chiefs, legendary NFL quarterback Joe Montana gave the best explanation for this phenomenon.
“The ball is shaped weird,” he once told reporters in Arrowhead’s basement press theater. “Sometimes it bounces funny.”
But Montana was better known for a different explanation.
“The best luck of all,” he said, “is the luck you make for yourself.”
So while not every one of last season’s 12 one-score wins was due to luck — in some cases, Kansas City made its luck — we can’t deny that luck was a deciding factor in many of them. The same is true of the 0-5 record the Chiefs have recorded in 2025’s one-score games. Sometimes, the team has made its own bad luck. Other times, bad luck has been forced upon it.
This doesn’t mean that Kansas City deserves something better than its 5-5 record. But in a league so carefully constructed to achieve parity — and whose postseason schedule is determined on the results of only 17 games for each team — luck will always be a significant factor.
It’s now clear that the Chiefs could miss the playoffs this season — just as the New England Patriots did in 2002 and 2008 and the San Francisco 49ers did in 1982 and 1991. But today, those seasons are nothing more than wrinkles on the banners that fly above the stadiums in Foxborough and Santa Clara. We should not fear change, because even teams that hold freshly minted Lombardi trophies have flaws that need to be corrected. But Kansas City is a long way from the point where the team needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch.
Let’s not forget that.
3. Travis Kelce is still The Man
It’s amazing how a team’s 0.500 record — or a celebrity fiancée — can alter perceptions.
Somehow, Kansas City’s superstar tight end is being viewed as a player who has outlived his usefulness. Is the 36-year-old Kelce a step or two behind where he was five years ago? Of course he is. Father Time remains undefeated.
But Kelce is still a player to be taken seriously. With 631 receiving yards on the season, he is on pace to reach 1,000 yards for the first time since 2022 — and among tight ends, only the Arizona Cardinals’ Trey McBride has more. Among tight ends with at least 50 targets, only one player has a higher catch percentage — and no one has more yards per target or a higher success rate. Kelce continues to be a first-down machine, moving the sticks on 50% of his targets — a higher rate than any of the league’s most-targeted tight ends.
Kelce now holds the team’s franchise record for most career touchdowns. More importantly, he continues to be a key cog in the team’s offensive machinery — not because of what he once was, but because of what he is today.
Let’s not forget that, either.
