The Houston Texans woke up the offensive juggernaut in the Kansas City Chiefs
The 2019 Kansas City Chiefs had a good season, but the Houston Texans may have woke up the offensive juggernaut in the Chiefs 51-31 playoff win Sunday.
The Kansas City Chiefs put their fans through an emotional rollercoaster on Sunday as they came back from a 24-0 deficit against the Houston Texans to win 51-31 and advance to the AFC Championship Game. It was one of the wildest games I have ever seen. The absolute lack of poise and execution early was as bad as I have ever seen and then the absolute dominance they showed from that point on was also unlike anything I had ever seen.
You could spend the entire offseason dissecting this game and what happened in it and why, but I want to focus on what I think was the most significant development: the Chiefs offense woke up.
The Chiefs offense was good in 2019. They finished the regular season 6th in the NFL in yards per game and 5th in points per game. Most teams would kill for those numbers. However, last year the Chiefs ridiculous video game like offense was first in both of those categories by a significant margin. Last season, the Chiefs averaged over 35 points per game. Going into this playoff game the 2019 Chiefs had only scored 35 points or more twice all season long. Patrick Mahomes and the passing attack had been good this year, but the Chiefs still ended up with 20 less passing touchdowns than last season.
To put it in the most simple of terms, the Chiefs went from having one of the most prolific offenses in the history of the NFL to having a really good offense. Chiefs fans have already debated why this has been the case, with the most common answer being the injuries they have dealt with throughout the season. At this point with the season on the line, the reasons don’t really matter. Results do. The Chiefs now have a good enough defense that if they are great on offense they can win the Super Bowl. The question entering this game was could the offense get back to firing on all cylinders?
The results early in this game weren’t good. The Chiefs had brutal drops on two straight third downs that would have converted if Travis Kelce and Demarcus Robinson just held onto the football. Patrick Mahomes was doing his job but the players around him seemed rattled by the moment. I couldn’t believe that this team was going to lie down and let their season go out on such an awful note, especially with a home field AFC Championship Game hanging in the balance after the Baltimore Ravens lost. I was depressed, angry, shocked, and everything felt hopeless.
Then it happened. The offense woke up. They didn’t just “play well”. They didn’t just take advantage of defensive mistakes. They went out and dominated in a way that we hadn’t really seen since week two of the season when they scored 28 points in the 2nd quarter against the Oakland Raiders. It looked like the unstoppable unit that they had last season. It looked like the offense that we all believed was good enough to lead this team to a Super Bowl.
It took the worst possible start to a playoff game that you can possibly imagine, but staring into the black abyss of their season collapsing, the offense we’ve been waiting for finally emerged.
I don’t want to take anything away from the defense. They absolutely deserve their fair share of the credit for this epic comeback as well. When a team goes on a 51-7 run, there is a natural instinct to focus on scoring 51 points, but the defense also held a very good Texans offense to just 7 points through the rest of the game.
It should also be noted that a huge part of that 24-0 hole was dug by the special teams with a blocked punt for a touchdown and a muffed punt that set the Texans up near the goal line. The defense should feel great about their role in this comeback, but for the most part, I feel like the defense was what we’ve come to expect from them over the second half of the season, really good, but not great.
The offense was more than great. Let’s take a second to look at just how amazing they were and then we’ll talk about what that could mean for the AFC Championship Game against the Tennessee Titans next week.