Last year in Week 7, the Chiefs visited Nashville with the hope of righting the ship after a confusing 3-3 start to the season. They left with more questions than answers after a 27-3 demolition at the hands of the Tennessee Titans.
When the Kansas City Chiefs traded up to draft Patrick Mahomes in 2017, there was a lot of excitement from the fan base, but also a fair amount of questions. High draft picks were something that Chiefs Kingdom wasn’t completely unfamiliar with, unfortunately, but trading up to the top ten as a playoff team to take a “project quarterback” certainly was. It had been since 1983 that the Chiefs had selected a quarterback in the first round of the draft, and as someone who wasn’t even born when this happened, I can confirm that the move to take Mahomes was a shock to much of the fan base when it happened.
To say the move has paid off would be an understatement. From 2018 to 2020 the Chiefs’ offense hummed with the speed of an F-15 and with the power of an M1A2 Abrams. Mahomes eye-popping numbers and breathtaking performances led to a nearly unanimous sentiment league-wide that he was “it”, and that the old guard of quarterbacks such as Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers were simply biding time until the new King of Crowntown had the throne all to himself.
Brady wouldn’t give up the throne that easily, though. As we all know, in Super Bowl 55 Brady collected his 7th ring behind a blistering performance by the Tampa Bay defense that left Mahomes and the Chiefs reeling. That offseason GM Brett Veach set out to rebuild an offensive line that proved to be the downfall of the team on 2020’s biggest stage, thus setting the stage for a revival (and more of the same) of the 2021 Chiefs offense.
The only problem? That plan didn’t get off the ground as everyone expected, and certainly far from what the team or the fans had hoped for. If there is one thing that the past 2 seasons have brought more than another time in the Patrick Mahomes era, it has been questioned. In 2021, for the first time in 4 years, the Kansas City offense experienced spurts of vulnerability that, at times, bordered on ineptitude. The rebuilt offensive line took time early in the season to gel, causing Mahomes to look uncomfortable in the pocket. The receiving corps, without Sammy Watkins, looked like it was Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, and just about no one else that belonged on an NFL field. The Chiefs were reeling coming into a game against the 5-2 Tennessee Titans at 3-3.
Coming into 2022 the Chiefs had even more questions surrounding the offense. Without Tyreek Hill, who would the Chiefs’ go-to receiving threat be outside of Kelce? Sure they had brought in JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling to help deepen the group, but did they really have the ability to damage a defense the way that Hill could? Mecole Hardman was back and the team used a second-round draft pick on Skyy Moore, so there were speedsters that could be utilized for many of the same misdirection plays that Hill burned so many defenses before with. But could they do it at the clip that Tyreek did?
Well, if there is one thing that we have learned from these two scenarios – both in 2021 and 2022 – it’s that we should never, ever count out a Patrick Mahomes-led offense.
Nevertheless, heading into their matchup with the Titans in 2021, the Chiefs were reeling. Sitting at 3-3, tied for last place in the AFC West with the lowly Denver Broncos, and just two weeks removed from their first double-digit home loss since 2014 against the Buffalo Bills in Week 5. Kansas City had to get something going against the 5-2 Titans or it would appear the season was slipping away from them. The Titans won a wild game against Kansas City in 2019 in Nashville – Patrick Mahomes’ first game back from a dislocated knee cap – but had exacted revenge against the Titans at Arrowhead in the AFC Championship later on that same season. So the energy was in their favor, right?
Wrong. Very, very painfully wrong. The Titans embarrassed the once mighty Chiefs on their home field, leading 27-0 at halftime before calling off the dogs in the second half and riding out an easy 27-3 victory against a Chiefs team that, much like the previous 6 games, couldn’t get anything going offensively. The Chiefs faced more questions. Had the league figured out the blueprint for the Kansas City offense? Did the Super Bowl loss to the Bucs permanently spook Mahomes? He hadn’t looked comfortable in the pocket yet in 2021, and the number the Titans’ defensive line did on him not only provided more of the same – it knocked him out of the game.
Sitting at 3-4, under .500 for the third time in 2021 and coincidentally the third time in Mahomes’ career, Kansas City had to figure something out, and quickly. Lucky for the Chiefs, and for all of us, they did. After the catastrophic loss to the Titans the Chiefs—specifically, their defense, which had been the worst in the league to that point – did a complete 180. KC reeled off 8 consecutive wins after their loss to the Titans, including 5 over playoff teams, and seemed to have the ship righted. A 12-5 finish to the season netted them the AFC’s two seed. And while the season didn’t end where anyone wanted it to, the Chiefs were able to host a fourth consecutive AFC Championship game and – for the most part – calm the anxieties of us, the fan base.
Where does that leave us heading into the rematch with Tennessee this Sunday? Well, to put it lightly, in a much much better position than we were coming into 2021’s tussle. Those weapons we mentioned earlier—Smith-Schuster, Valdes-Scantling, Moore, Hardman, and even running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire—are off to pretty solid starts on the season thus far. Below is a look at how the Chiefs’ offensive weapons are projecting to finish the 2022 campaign:
Patrick Mahomes – 5,243 passing yards, 49 TD, 12 INT (67% completion percentage)
Travis Kelce – 114 catches, 1,343 receiving yards, 17 TD
JuJu Smith-Schuster – 83 catches, 1,200 receiving yards, 5 TD
Marquez Valdes-Scantling – 92 catches, 896 receiving yards
Clyde Edwards-Helaire – 1,032 all-purpose yards, 14 TD
Will these numbers change? Sure. Adding Kadarius Toney leading up to the trade deadline will surely mean that targets might drop slightly for MVS and JuJu. We have to assume that Isiah Pacheco will play a bigger and bigger role in the backfield as the season progresses, which will ultimately cut into Clyde’s production projections. But the overall theme here, and for the entire 2022 season for the Chiefs offense, has been balance. There are now more weapons than ever at Mahomes disposal and that has equaled a much more consistent product in 2022 than we’ve seen at any point in his tenure in Kansas City.
To say the team is in a better spot heading into this matchup with Tennessee would be an understatement. Sitting at 5-2, atop the AFC West while having lost to the Bills again – this time by 4 points with a depleted secondary and no Willie Gay – the sentiment of the team’s progress so far and the confidence in where they are going is much, much different than it was in 2021.
With Willie Gay and Trent McDuffie coming back from injury, the defense is finally looking healthy for the first time since Week 1. Sure, Frank Clark will miss a couple of games including this one against Tennessee while serving a suspension for something he did in 1997, but defensively the team is rounding into form with all of its key contributors returning to the field. Offensively the bye week provided some much-needed rest and recovery time for guys like Trey Smith and Mecole Hardman. And I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but Andy Reid’s record coming off of the bye – an incredible 20-3 all-time—lends itself well to the Chiefs coming out and putting a well-earned ass-kicking on the Titans on Sunday.