Kansas City Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes face familiar doubts as quest for Super Bowl history continues | NFL News

The Kansas City Chiefs have been here before. The NFL has been here before. The outward doubts, the poor performances, the wins by a fine margin, the feeling that their luck might be about to run out.

And with that, the same aura of inevitability that comes with New England Patriots-style football villains – but a little more sympathetic. It's all a little too familiar. And for their rivals, a little too nervous.

They went through the 2023 campaign on offense a shadow of their former devastating selves while relying on Steve Spagnuolo's defensive turnaround to carry them through, only to neutralize their favored counterparts and once again break the hearts of the San Francisco 49ers as they captured a second straight Super Bowl .

Here they are once again, showered with scrutiny and credulity-questioning grimaces for living off one-goal wins and seeing Patrick Mahomes post his worst season statistically as a Pilot to a so-so offense, only to win the No. 1 and key bye week with a 15-2 record.

Their quest for a historic third consecutive Super Bowl remains alive and well and continues this weekend when they host the Houston Texans for a chance to compete in a seventh straight AFC Championship game.

Talk of a three-peat has hovered over them all year, even if Andy Reid has tried to downplay it.

“You never go there,” Reid told the media. “You're pulled into a tunnel.

“You're trying to find another play that works. It's a weird dynamic. “You're just entrenched in trying to communicate with the players and trying to teach.

Lombardi's triumph last season was considered their most impressive and incredible yet, such were their struggles. But another one this year would outshine the crowd by ricocheting through near misses, late escapes and paw injuries to remain dominant without ever letting us know if they were any good or not.

The Chiefs beat the Baltimore Ravens with Isaiah Likely's sprained toe in the season opener, didn't take their first lead against the Los Angeles Chargers until the final six minutes of a Week 4 game, survived overtime games against Baker Mayfield and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and blocked a last-second field goal to hold off the Denver Broncos while starting the season 9-0.

Only then did they get a taste of their own medicine when Josh Allen's 26-yard heroics on fourth-and-two shut down another late loss for the Buffalo Bills against their storied AFC foes in November. That rematch may be yet to come depending on how this weekend goes.

But the Carolina Panthers will bear the brunt of the football gods next week when Kansas City's own football god — albeit less divine this season — called for a 33-yarder at 27-27 to set up a Kansas City field goal. If there was any cheering for Bryce Young and his NFL revival, the Chiefs and Mahomes didn't want any of it.

Come Black Friday and they had more drama at the end when a fumble between Jackson Powers-Johnson and running back Aidan O'Connell gifted Nick Bolton a fumble recovery after the Las Vegas Raiders reached the 38-yard line trailing by just two points at the 14 seconds to go. So far, the buzz around Chiefs voodoo has never been louder. Indeed, there may be.

Of their 15 wins this season, 11 came by one score apiece as the Chiefs finished with a 59-point margin, 11th in the league.

“It's not easy to get through every week because you're public enemy number one, and you get the best of the team,” offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said. “So there's a mindset of that mental callousness, of preparing every week knowing you're going to get the best.”

Sure, a back-to-back defending champion with (still) the league's best quarterback, one of the NFL's greatest offensive minds and a defensive coordinator who boasts the numbers of every other quarterback in the league is good. But how good? We're about to find out how good it is.

The Chiefs offense finished the regular season ranked 17th in total yards, 14th in passing, 22nd in rushing, 15th in scoring and ninth in EPA/game, Patrick Mahomes threw for a career 3,928 passes as a starter and 26 interception touchdowns .

Reid's squad lost receiver Rashee Rice to a season-ending injury at a time when he drew the second-highest target share in the NFL, as well as spending several weeks without starting running back Isiah Pacheco, who will later return to the stretch.

With the injury to Rice comes increased pressure on rookie Xavier Worthy's role as the Chiefs look to expand the route tree that was initially suited to his straight-line speed, not to mention 34-year-old Travis Kelce who will once again find himself playing a central role in the offense. en route to leading the team with a career-low 97 catches for 823 yards.

Veteran running back Kareem Hunt re-signed with Arrowhead to replace Pacheco behind three Pro Bowl interior offensive linemen in Joe Thuney, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith, while the Chiefs went and traded three-time All-Pro first-team receiver DeAndre Hopkins to bolster Mahomes aerial possibilities below.

They've had consistent problems in pass protection at any offensive position on offense, salvaged wins with a makeshift qualifying group, Mahomes is guilty of bad decisions and rank tied for 22nd in the red zone, all while leaning on Spagnuolo's fourth-ranked scoring defense .

“This team shows a lot of resilience,” Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones said. “This team can win in a lot of ways, whether it's on offense, defense or special teams. We've carried that over all year. This team has had a lot of close games, we've had a lot of injuries, we've faced a lot of adversity early in the year. .”

What was once a Pandora's box full of offensive sauce and wizardry has been rebranded as an unsexy but hard-nosed winning machine built on elite clocking and possession control, along with an incredibly efficient defense with the flexibility to meet the different needs of each opponent on a week-to-week basis.

For all of their limitations this season, the prevailing feeling remains that there are more gears they could go into come the playoffs; nobody knows how to navigate postseason football like they do.

Mahomes can still ignite the league's best pass rushers as a generational outside pocket creator, and he can still crush the dreams of worthy challengers in the fourth quarter of a game like no other running back in the NFL.

Kelce still has that tendency to buy separation despite every player on the court knowing the ball is headed his way. Hopkins still has some of the surest suction hands in football, Pacheco still runs the football like his life is on the line, and suddenly Worthy has become one of the most intriguing components in the playoffs as potential haymaker Reid could look to struggle over ground control. .

No one knows which version of the Chiefs team will arrive this weekend. But telltale signs of improvement came as the regular season continued, including Mahomes entering the game riding a career-long streak of 237 consecutive passing attempts since throwing his last pick after throwing at least one career interception. the first seven games of the season.

He finished the campaign strong, posting a season-high 127.1 passer rating in a Week 17 win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, also throwing for 260 yards and a touchdown while rushing for a score to lead the Chiefs to a 27-19 win over the Texans in Week 16. .

The three-time Super Bowl MVP is 15-3 in the playoffs after throwing for 5,659 yards, 46 touchdowns and just eight interceptions with a 105.8 passer rating. Within that he is 6-0 in the Divisional Round with 1,813 passing yards to go with 16 total touchdowns, zero interceptions and a 115.8 passer rating. A win would move him into a tie with the great Joe Montana for second all-time in playoff wins by a quarterback with 16, behind only Tom Brady's 35.

Him, Reid, Kelce, Chris Jones, Spagnuolo – they found the formula for the postseason.

It's time to see if the Texans can crack the code, as they just intercepted Justin Herbert four times and sacked him four other times to dismantle the Chargers on Wild Card weekend as the third-ranked unit in sacks and takeaways this season (including in the playoffs ). DeMeco Ryans team has also allowed a league best completion percentage of just 58, while Danielle Hunter and Will Anderson Jr are both top five in QB pressure percentage.

Houston itself, however, endured its offensive woes, ranking in the bottom half in yards, passing, rushing and scoring while ranking 26th in the red zone and allowing a tied third-highest 54 carries. Can't beat the Spags defense? Then you can't beat the bosses.

“I think every year is special,” Mahomes said. “Obviously you want to win three in a row and build those memories with the guys and the community. But every single year is special. And when I look back at all the different Super Bowls that we've won, I look back at the special moments that we had and the special games that we had and so we'll try to do the same this year.”

Here we go again. A defending Super Bowl champion Chiefs team that divides opinion, the league's best quarterback facing questions about whether he's still the best, Kelce being 'too old' and a title defense being questioned every week this season. Deja vu.

“Football is a simple game. Twenty-two men throw, catch, run and catch the ball for four quarters in the span of about three hours, and in the end – Patrick Mahomes always wins. Or something like that,” I wrote last February, in the immediate aftermath of a Kansas victory City in the Super Bowl.

Would you bet against a similar story this year?

Watch Houston Texans vs Kansas City Chiefs in the Divisional Round Play-Offs live on Sky Sports NFL on Saturday, starting at 9.30pm.