Long-term lessons learned from KC Chiefs tough win over Titans
By Matt Conner
There are some long-term lessons we can take away from such a gritty win for the Kansas City Chiefs over the Tennessee Titans.
The Kansas City Chiefs are going to be hurting on Monday morning. While they technically beat the Tennessee Titans at home in Week 9 as expected, very few likely expected the Titans to put up such a tremendous fight. The Chiefs had to endure overtime in order to take home the victory and that came after matching the Titans’ tenacity for 60 full minutes.
The Chiefs are now 6-2, have another win coming out of the bye, and are now tied with the Buffalo Bills for the best record in the AFC after watching the New York Jets shock Sean McDermott’s team earlier in the day on Sunday. That’s all good news, but before we move on to Jacksonville, it’s important to process what we learned from a game as we saw in Week 9.
What we saw on Sunday wasn’t the prettiest performance ever, but it was also the kind of game that was very important in the long term.
The Mahomes Magic is Real
We’re not sure how many times we say the same thing, but it bears repeating because, on Sunday night, the difference between winning and losing could be spelled “M-A-H-O-M-E-S.”
Chiefs Kingdom has seen this time and again over the last five years and it’s still somehow a surprise the way that Mahomes works his magic. We’re like children whose jaws keep dropping when watching the coin disappear behind our ears, or gasping “wow” every time the card we picked is drawn from the deck. The Magic of Mahomes has brought one Lombardi Trophy to Kansas City already and it fuels the annual hopes for more.
You could see Mahomes conjure one incredible opportunity after another in primetime against a strong Titans defense. It was the desperate underhand toss to Travis Kelce to keep a drive alive. It was definitely seen in the monumental late-game scrambles that moved the chains when no one could create any separation down the field. It was in the hot-knife-through-butter ease with which the Chiefs’ offense moved so early in the game. Mahomes endured a lot of frustrating moments from his teammates (more on this later) but stayed buoyant enough to carry them in the end.
On Sunday night, the distance between Mahomes and Malik Willis was the primary point of analysis coming into the game and it proved to be the deciding factor in the end.