NFL Playoff Preview Countdown: No. 6 Kansas City Chiefs

This is an excerpt from this week’s edition of Mike Tanier’s NFL Walkthrough, available every Monday at The Messenger…

2023 Season in a Nutshell

Drop, drop, drippity-drop. That’s not the sound of raindrops on your drop top. It’s the Chiefs wide receiver corps, this season’s biggest flop. Andy Reid’s Alka Seltzer went plop-plop-plop (fizz, fizz). Taylor Swift made your father-in-law blow his top. Kaderius Toney should be working in a donut shop. O.K., that’s enough, please make this stop.

Quarterback Patrick Mahomes

Mahomes led the NFL in both attempts and completions entering Week 18, a testament to how much he was asked to do for the Chiefs (Mahomes, who didn’t play on Sunday, finished the season third in both categories.) He also posted a career-high in interceptions, illustrating how often he was pressing to make things happen. Chiefs receivers dropped 39 of Mahomes’ passes, also a league high. There are also no stats to itemize how often receivers lined up wrong, ran incorrect routes or made other mistakes that ended up on Mahomes’ side of the ledger. If such mistakes could be captured by stats, the Chiefs would lead the league in them.

Offense

Mahomes and Travis Kelce remain telepathically linked; many of Kelce’s 93 receptions came on glorified schoolyard “get open” routes. Rookie Rashee Rice emerged as a close approximation of a reliable possession receiver. Everything else about the Chiefs passing game had to be meticulously schemed up by Reid, with Toney, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Justin Watson and others taking turns bobbling everything from simple screens to potential game-winning deep shots.

The Chiefs receivers became so unreliable that Reid actually resorted to his running game late in the season. Isiah Pacheco is a determined runner who will drag defenders. Clyde Edwards-Helaire is not. The veteran Chiefs line can push opponents around in the running game when Reid lets them.

Defense

This rebuilt unit rescued the Chiefs offense frequently during the season. Chris Jones returned from a contract squabble to record 10.5 sacks, while George Karlaftis emerged in his second season, finishing with 10.5 as well. Trent McDuffie has grown into a shutdown cornerback. Nick Bolton is back from a midseason injury. Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo loves exotic all-angles blitzes, making the Chiefs a brutal team to convert against on third-and-long.

Special Teams

Harrison Butker missed two field goals inside 40 yards, but they were his only misses of the year. Return man Richie James once fielded a punt inside the end zone and is a threat to make a mistake every time he touches the football, but the Chiefs’ other options in the return game (Toney, Mecole Hardman) were somehow less reliable.

Bottom Line

The 2023 Chiefs are a lot like the 2005-06 New England Patriots, who suffered a lull after Tom Brady’s rise to Bradyness because their receiver corps was full of guys like Jabar Gaffney and Chad Jackson. Those Patriots teams rebuilt with an angry vengeance, and there are surely more chapters of the Mahomes saga to be written. But the Chiefs’ Super Bowl hopes this year are likely to end with a play like this.