The biggest questions surrounding KC Chiefs at midseason

Is the offense really back?

For a few weeks, no one was quite sure what was wrong. Tyreek Hill was being force-fed targets for short gains. Travis Kelce found his timing disrupted and his effectiveness lowered. Patrick Mahomes was unable to move the chains as easily as normal with defenses taking away any and all deep threat considerations. It didn’t help that silly penalties and costly turnovers were plaguing the team week in and week out.

On Sunday, it all seemed to disappear against the Raiders.

Some people are pointing to the final pass from the team’s win over the Packers that “vintage Mahomes” is back but that feels a bit simple and even reductionistic. Is that really true? Is Mahomes back to his dominant self? Is this Chiefs offense really back to “normal”?

No one would blame you if you were all in and just believed that the Chiefs were good to go again. After all, the body of evidence in favor of their offensive supremacy goes back a few years with Mahomes as a starter. Meanwhile, it could be argued Mahomes’ recent slump was just that, a few weeks where the timing was just off, where things just didn’t happen the way the Chiefs wanted. But is it that easy?

The real possibility here is that maybe the Raiders were so ill-prepared for the Chiefs that they made them look like the dominant teams of previous seasons. If that’s the case, the Chiefs could be in for a rude awakening against a better team.