Michael Jackson has been a fan favorite in our house recently. With two toddlers obsessed with "Thriller" and "Beat It," we've found some welcome relief from the usual musical requests by artists such as Blippi and Alvin and the Chipmunks. So on Sunday, after the Kansas City Chiefs blew a critical AFC West game against the Broncos in monumentally soul-crushing fashion, one Michael Jackson song came to mind: "Man in the Mirror."
I had to take a good long look in the mirror Sunday night. Why am I out here in my garage alone, sulking about a football game? Why did I get so mad that I tossed a bottle of Perrier on the ground when Jaylon Moore was called for an extremely questionable false start? What time is it actually? That last question was more a product of daylight saving time, but you're likely familiar with the line of self-interrogation I'm referring to. Why is it that I allow myself to let the physical and mental performance of 53 millionaires between the ages of 22 and 37 dictate my mental health on a weekly basis? The answer is quite simple.
When you invest this much time into following, supporting, and keeping tabs on this team, you invest not just your time but your emotions into it as well. That's part of the beauty of sports fandom. You tie a piece of your identity to something that you have absolutely zero control over. It's a faith-adjacent concept in some ways that creates wonderful emotional outputs that are unparalleled in a lot of ways at times, but it will drive us absolutely insane at times as well.
Where was I going with that? That's right—getting my visceral overreactions out on electronic paper. Did the Chiefs look far better than they did in Week 7 against Seattle this past week? Absolutely. Did some of the "bad things about this team" we've all pondered over the course of the last 10-12 weeks rear their ugly heads in this particular game? Nearly all did, yes. Let's dive into my takeaways from a game we should all just work on forgetting.
1. Emmett Johnson has officially arrived
Let's start with one of the positive pieces from this game. Rookie running back Emmett Johnson is an electric playmaker, and he officially arrived on the scene on Sunday against the Broncos. Johnson has flashed glimpses of explosive, dynamic play in limited snaps over the first seven weeks of the season but broke out in a big way on Sunday to the tune of 143 offensive yards on six touches, including a 73-yard touchdown pass from Patrick Mahomes.
Johnson wasn't the only element of the Chiefs' offense that manufactured positive vibes on Sunday, but he was certainly the biggest breath of fresh air. The Chiefs have a real, viable weapon in Johnson that could pose some major matchup problems for opponents down the stretch in 2026, and hopefully in another deep postseason run. The Chiefs haven't had this type of receiving threat out of the backfield since Jerick McKinnon, and Johnson has far fresher legs at this juncture than McKinnon ever had as a Chief.
2. My game-day outfit nonchalance simply will not do
I've documented time and time again the overtly superstitious nature I possess when it comes to watching the Chiefs. My gamedays are largely structured the same week in and week out, albeit those routines have changed a bit since children have come into the picture. Fewer gameday beers now and more "don't put the Play-Doh in the dog's mouth" fatherly sage wisdom being doled out.
Nonetheless, one thing I can control that I certainly have not this season has been my gameday outfit. Weeks 1-5, I stuck to the script. Same shirt, same shorts, same socks, underwear, shoes—everything. Did I wash them all from week to week? Probably. I'm sure they got into the laundry at some point. But the moral of the story is they were all the same all the time, and the Chiefs were 5-0.
Fast forward to post-bye Chiefs outfits. Random, seasonally appropriate, wrong. Flat-out wrong. Non-victory-inducing outfit choices have been a massive crux in my gameday preparation after the bye week, and I vow to correct that moving forward. A perfect time in the schedule for me to lull myself into thinking that the universe cares about what I'm wearing when the Chiefs play football, with the airborne portion of the Chiefs' schedule (Jets, Falcons, Cardinals) appearing to be one of the easier stretches they will have this season. A 3-0 run over the next three games will certainly be because of what I wear, not because of the quality of the opposing teams.
3. Everyone is being too hard on Andy Reid
Listen, I'm not going to sit here as a complete Andy Reid apologist, a bootlicker, if you will. Were there some wildly confusing decisions made on Sunday? Without question. You have the Kingsley Suamataia situation, the clock management at the end of the game, the decision to throw the ball twice with two yards to pay dirt with Kenneth Walker in the backfield. Hell, the decision to leave Suamataia on the bench with the game on the line, a de facto nod to Mike Caliendo being someone you want out there with the AFC West hanging in the balance.
Can I ask an obvious question? What's different about those decisions than anything else we've found a way to complain about with Andy Reid over the last 13 years? This is Andy Reid. These are the things that we hate about his coaching style, the things we've constantly made jokes about throughout the course of his time in Kansas City. What's different now, the fact that the Chiefs were 6-11 a year ago and we haven't won a Super Bowl in three whole years?
You get the good with the bad with every situation in life. We saw some of the bad on Sunday, and it played a big part in costing the Chiefs the game and valuable positioning in the AFC West race. But you know what? The good is still attainable this year. And we've all seen the good—it's the best you can ask for in football. We all need to take a step back and try to remove ourselves from this "prisoner of the moment" mindset and just let things unfold as they will.
4. Xavier Worthy appears to not know the Chiefs offense
The subheading here is far too kind. How many times are we going to watch Xavier Worthy run an incorrect route or end up somehow out of bounds again on a bootleg pass where Mahomes is running for his life? Worthy was a nice piece of inspiration, a pipe dream of a concept of a playmaking piece of the puzzle that we all let ourselves get far too excited about when he was drafted in the first round in 2024. What did we get instead? The slowest player to ever run a 4.2 40.
But he is not the guy. It is clear that Worthy can't grasp the concepts of the Chiefs' offense, let alone the route tree. At the end of the second half on Sunday, Worthy had the Broncos dead to rights to keep a drive alive. Third-and-2 on the Denver 27, with a cornerback playing inside about eight yards off the ball. Option-route territory. Mahomes was obviously looking for him to break to the sticks and catch a back-shoulder throw. What did Worthy do?
Ran 20 yards downfield without even looking for the ball. On the last play of the game, with Mahomes scrambling right, trying to make something, anything happen, Worthy can be seen standing out of bounds. Someone may want to brief him on the fact that, at that point, he's out of the play.
Has he played football his entire life on a field that is significantly larger than most football fields? Maybe there's some sort of undiagnosed vision disorder that could be cleared up by the team optometrist. It's like he's wearing a VR headset while everyone else is right here on Earth waiting for him to take it off. It's maddening. This guy just does not seem to get it, in any way. The Chiefs, unfortunately, don't have a better option at wideout at the moment. Hopefully that changes.
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