It feels like each week, as part of Roger Goodell’s new world order, the nation is required to watch the Kansas City Chiefs play down to their competition and squeak out a win. That feeling is based in some reality: Kansas City is 10-0 in one-score games this season, and many of those have been nationally broadcast affairs. But it might be useful to create a distinction between closing and underachieving.
Even if there is a requisite amount of luck to these razor-thin wins, the Chiefs are talented, well-coached, and deeply familiar with crunch time. Mostly, they excel at error-free football when it matters, and they are good on pouncing on opponents’ mistakes. These are the back-to-back Super Bowl champions, after all. So why does a team of this caliber need a field goal at the gun to beat the lowly Carolina Panthers, as they did a couple of weeks ago?
“You want to be a little calmer in the fourth quarter,” Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes said after that three-point win over Carolina in November. “I’ve always said it can be a good thing as you get to the playoffs and later in the season, just knowing that you’ve been in those moments before and knowing how to kind of attack it. But I would love to win a game [before] the very last play.”
Mahomes hasn’t received his wish yet. Kansas City’s two most recent victories, both against divisional opponents, have been decided by the same 19-17 score. The first, a Thanksgiving weekend game, was against the Las Vegas Raiders, whose final drive ended in a botched snap. The second, Sunday night’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers, concluded with the Chiefs bleeding the last 4:35 off the clock thanks to a couple of third-down conversions, before Matthew Wright kicked a 31-yard game-winning field goal, with a doink off the upright as if to make it a little less rote.
With this win, Kansas City earns its ninth straight AFC West title and will now focus on keeping the top seed in the conference. Here’s an impressive stat: Mahomes has a 35-5 all-time record against divisional opponents. Here’s a potentially alarming one: Mahomes has thrown for 300 or more passing yards only twice this season, because he hasn’t needed to.
The Chiefs used to have the kind of dominance that resulted in blowouts. Now they have the kind that suggests inevitability. Mahomes can get crushed on a sack, and cast a dumbfounded look toward the sideline. Travis Kelce can look visibly checked out. Jawaan Taylor can false-start on every other snap. And despite all that, this team will put together a five-minute drive and score, then rely on the defense to keep it together. This season, the Buffalo Bills are the only opponent to get the best of them—a 30-21 win, so by two scores—but judging from their playoff head-to-head in the past decade, Buffalo can’t be trusted to do it again. Who, if anyone, will prevent Kansas City from the threepeat?
The Chiefs’ final four opponents of the regular season are the Cleveland Browns, Houston Texans, Pittsburgh Steelers, and Denver Broncos. Aside from the Browns, it’s a nice little stretch of playoff-caliber opponents before the actual playoffs. It’s funny that while another much sorrier team’s quarterback insists that 30 points is the ultimate goal for success, a winning organization can stay at the top of the conference by hanging a whopping 19-burger on the two-win Raiders.
