The Kansas City Chiefs beat the Detroit Lions 34-30 on Sunday. While they won the game there are three things they must improve going forward.
The Kansas City Chiefs came away with a 34-30 win on Sunday over the Detroit Lions, but it was much closer than many expected. While the Lions came into the game without a loss on the season, many (myself included) thought that the Chiefs offensive firepower would simply be too much for the Lions to keep pace with. While the close score was itself a surprise, the real shock was that quarterback Patrick Mahomes had by far his most challenging game of the season.
Through the season’s first three games, Mahomes had looked completely unstoppable even without his number one wideout Tyreek Hill, his starting left tackle Eric Fisher, and his top running back Damien Williams. Mahomes’ play had been so amazing that the Chiefs offense didn’t miss a beat without those players, and the quarterback was on pace to outperform his 2018 MVP season. With Detroit being without their top cornerback Darius Slay, most (again, myself included) thought Mahomes would have a field day against the Lions. That simply wasn’t the case.
On Sunday, Mahomes would go on to have season lows in passing yards (315), completion percentage (57.1%), yards per attempt (7.5), and touchdown passes (zero). While Detroit deserves a ton of credit for their defensive play, Mahomes and his receivers seemed out of sync with each other all afternoon. Despite that, the Chiefs found a way to score 34 points on the road and drove down and got a game-winning touchdown when it really mattered.
They say that good teams find a way to win games even when they aren’t at their best, and that was definitely the case with the Chiefs on Sunday. The game still counts as a win in the standings, and the bottom line is that the Chiefs are now 4-0. I think most Chiefs fans will agree that Mahomes won’t have a lot of games like today, so I don’t think anyone should lose any sleep over the idea that Mahomes has been “figured out” and will struggle going forward.
Another thing you often hear in the NFL is that good teams learn from their losses. While this wasn’t a loss, it certainly could have been and the Chiefs need to learn from this game like it had been. There were three things that really bothered me on Sunday, things that could come back to bite the Chiefs if they can’t improve on them before the season’s end.
Before I get to the three areas of improvement, I want to address one thing that didn’t make the list: the cornerback play. While I certainly wouldn’t call the Chiefs cornerback play great, I thought it was good enough to win this game. If the Chiefs had been better with the other three things I’m about to go over, the Chiefs could have won this game with much more ease even with an off day from Mahomes and their current corners. Plus, the Chiefs will now get Morris Claiborne back from suspension, so I would wait to mortgage the future to bring in a corner until we see what he can bring to the group.
Let’s start with what I felt was K.C.’s worst unit on the field on Sunday.