KC Chiefs face another round of doubts before AFC Championship

Patrick Mahomes’s incredibly gritty performance against the Jacksonville Jaguars has the Chiefs in familiar territory: facing doubt from the NFL. 

When Patrick Mahomes went down late in the first quarter of the Kansas City Chiefs’ 27-20 Divisional round win over the Jacksonville Jaguars with what we now know is a high ankle sprain, the collective breath of an entire fanbase vanished. Mahomes would come out of the game after finishing the first quarter but eventually be sent to the locker room by head coach Andy Reid and head athletic trainer Rick Burkholder, something Mahomes clearly wasn’t in agreement with.

The way the rest of this game went down at this point somehow numbly feels routine for Chiefs fans. Add it to the list of things that seem to just file themselves away in the “Mahomes Magic” folder, but make no mistake that what we saw on Saturday was borderline miraculous. You had Chad Henne’s 98-yard drive where he converted two third downs before capping it off with a touchdown pass to Travis Kelce. You had Kelce’s NFL playoff record of 14 receptions for the tight end. Frank Clark moved into a tie for fourth place on the all-time postseason sacks list with Reggie White. Jaylen Watson now has the two most important interceptions of the 2022 Chiefs season. And Mahomes returned to the field, willing the team to victory despite a broken body.

The Chiefs have now advanced to the AFC Championship game for the fifth consecutive season. The Patriots are the only team ahead of the Chiefs in this category—they reached eight consecutive AFC Championship games—and the 1970s Oakland Raiders matched the five under Hall of Fame coach John Madden. This is rarified air that the Chiefs are breathing.

The main reasons to doubt the Chiefs

On the other end, however, we see a familiar foe: the Cincinnati Bengals. A team who is 3-0 against K.C. in the last 13 months will be coming to town behind a defense that just held Josh Allen and the Bills to 10 points. They will be chomping at the bit to take on a hobbled Mahomes.

While the Chiefs opened as 2.5-point favorites over Cincinnati, bettors flooded the Bengals with their money. Within 20 minutes it had narrowed to a 1-point bump for the Chiefs. That is where it stands presently. It’s nearly impossible to think that by the time we reach kickoff, the odds will not have shifted completely to the Bengals with the most valuable player in the NFL nursing a high ankle sprain with just a week to treat it. Cincinnati’s Lou Anarumo has had success against Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense before; imagine what they could scheme up with an extremely limited Mahomes under center.

Doubts from the offseason

These thoughts and betting trends are nothing new. When the Chiefs traded Tyreek Hill in the offseason and failed to land a marquee wide receiver to replace him, many wrote about how the Chiefs’ offense would not be the same and Mahomes would struggle without his top weapon. Mahomes threw for over 5,200 yards and will be a landslide winner of the league’s MVP award in a couple of weeks.

A lot of folks talked about how the Chiefs would have a hard time bringing home their seventh consecutive AFC West banner when the Broncos added Russell Wilson, the Chargers added J.C. Jackson and Khalil Mack, and the Raiders traded for Davante Adams and signed Chandler Jones. As the rest of the division stocked up, the Chiefs simply brought in some platoon wide receivers and drafted players who were tasked with starters’ reps on defense. The Chiefs went 6-0 against the AFC West en route to a 14-3 regular season and the AFC’s top playoff seed.

Doubts from the regular season

But the record and the seed weren’t enough, because they didn’t do it the right way. Sure, the Chiefs were 14-3, but they lost to both Buffalo and Cincinnati at I mentioned before. They weren’t really the best team in the AFC, because if Buffalo would have beaten Cincinnati before tragedy struck Damar Hamlin, Buffalo would have been the top seed. If Cincinnati won, then they’re clearly the best team in the AFC with wins over Buffalo and Kansas City.

Plus a healthy Joe Burrow and a healthy Josh Allen are a coin flip to some when it comes to matching up with Patrick Mahomes. Surely with Mahomes injured, Burrow is bound for his second consecutive trip to the Super Bowl, right?

No reason to doubt

Mahomes is banged up and the Chiefs are staring down a rematch with the one team that they have to conquer in order to silence the critics once and for all in 2022. With the determination and toughness that Mahomes showed yesterday, however, there should be no doubt about who should be fearing who. Mahomes’ relentless competitiveness and commitment to winning are incomparable to Josh Allen or Joe Burrow. Saturday he ascended to a level that history will remember fondly—a realm where names like Jordan, Brady, and Woods reside.

Are the odds against the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes going into the AFC Championship? Sure, but according to many, the odds have been against them for the entire season. The Chiefs have stood in the ring and not flinched for an entire season and they’re near a crest that they have reached before. This is all familiar territory for Kansas City, including the doubt. Through it all, neither the team nor the quarterback has rolled over. Why would we expect them to now?