Arrowhead Pride
With the Week 11 loss in Buffalo, Kansas City fell to 9-1 on the season.
Heading into the Week 11 matchup against the Buffalo Bills, the Kansas City Chiefs had not defeated them in the regular season since 2020. That streak continued on Sunday. Right out of the gate, Kansas City struggled to make plays, falling to 9-1 with a 30-21 loss.
Here are five things we learned.
On the first play of the game, the Chiefs picked up seven yards. On the second play, quarterback Patrick Mahomes tried to throw a pass as he was being tackled — and was intercepted.
It’s true: he’s made plays like this before. He’ll probably make plays like this one many more times before his career ends.
But situational context matters.
It was second-and-3 on the team’s opening drive. You can afford to take a sack. You can afford for the drive to stall and punt the ball away. You’ll live to fight another down.
What you can’t do is turn the ball over at midfield and make your defense defend a short field right out of the gate. Mahomes has to know better than this.
There is a time and place for Mahomes to play hero ball — to make a play by any means necessary. This was not one of those times.
The Kansas City defense wants to bring pressure by blitzing the quarterback from exotic and unpredictable places. This means there will be many situations where outside cornerbacks are left in man coverage against wide receivers — or that players who do not normally drop into coverage will be asked to do so.
On Sunday, however, we saw that this version of the Chiefs’ defense doesn’t have the personnel to play that way against a contending team. A player like cornerback Nazeeh Johnson is a liability when playing man coverage on the outside. Since the team has been short on cornerbacks in recent weeks, Kansas City been forced to play safety Chamarri Conner in the slot. He is not athletic enough to play man coverage for a large percentage of a game’s snaps.
This isn’t a situation where defensive coordinator Steve Spagnualo doesn’t know how to fix the problem. It’s just that he doesn’t have the players he needs. A lack of high-end depth at cornerback has come back to bite his defense.
The Bills were taking notes last week when the Denver Broncos' defense found ways to stop the Chiefs' offense. Buffalo committed to taking away tight end Travis Kelce and wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins — and pressured Mahomes enough to make him uncomfortable in the pocket.
This made the opening drive’s interception an even bigger issue. Since Kansas City was playing from behind, it made the Bills’ strategy even more...
