ClutchPoints
The Kansas City Chiefs have essentially earned the benefit of the doubt for any regular season problems that they may have over the last few seasons, coming back to make the Super Bowl in almost every year with Patrick Mahomes at the helm. However, that doesn’t make their season-opening loss to the Los Angeles Chargers any prettier.
Friday night’s opener in Brazil was ugly and sloppy from the Chiefs on both sides of the ball at times, allowing the Chargers to get ahead of their division rivals with a very impressive 27-21 victory.
While the result isn’t shocking against a good Chargers squad, the way that the Chiefs got there didn’t feel like the Kansas City that NFL fans have come to know during the 2020s. The Chiefs usually figure this stuff out, but there is still some reason for concern.
Andy Reid’s squad did have 10 penalties for 71 yards in this one, but that is something that can get ironed out over the course of the season. The Chiefs were one of the least-penalized teams in football last year, so that is something that should solve itself.
However, two position groups on the perimeter were at the center of the problems for the Chiefs on Friday night.
Coming into this season, one of the talking points around the Chiefs was that they finally had gotten the necessary weapons around Patrick Mahomes to become an explosive offense once again, contrary to the dink-and-dunk offense that they were working with for much of last season.
Unfortunately, that dream only lasted about three plays into the season. After Rashee Rice was suspended by the NFL for the first six games of the season, the Chiefs lost speedster Xavier Worthy on their first drive of the season to a shoulder injury after he ran into Travis Kelce on a route.
That left Mahomes with Kelce and a lot of familiar faces on the outside, headlined by Hollywood Brown and JuJu Smith-Schuster. Brown got a lot of targets and finished with 10 catches for 99 yards on 16 targets, but he had some costly drops that hurt the Chiefs in some key moments.
All of a sudden, the Chiefs were back to the same feeling as last year and found it hard to generate many explosive plays outside of a late Kelce touchdown. Until Worthy and Rice get back on the field, that is going to continue to be an issue.
While the offense has worked through some kinks during the last few regular seasons, it has been the Kansas City defense that has picked up the slack and kept them in most games. Steve Spagnuolo has been able to consistently flummox opposing offenses and quarterbacks during his time as the Chiefs defensive coordinator, but he had no such luck on Friday night against a red-hot Justin Herbert.
The Chiefs have lost a lot of important pieces...
