Doug Farrar 

The Kansas City Chiefs are at a perfect 4-0. But are they any good?

The Super Bowl champions are off to an unbeaten start. But turning Patrick Mahomes into a checkdown artist seems reductive at best
  
  

Patrick Mahomes launching a huge throw has become a rare sight this season.
Patrick Mahomes launching a huge throw has become a rare sight this season. Photograph: Kirby Lee/USA Today Sports

Any coach in any sport will tell you that a win is a win: no matter how you get there, it’s a good thing. But how good can the defending Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs feel about their 4-0 start this season after Sunday’s scratchy 17-10 win over the Los Angeles Chargers?

Yes, the Chiefs are undefeated, but their point differential of +20 shows just how vulnerable they’ve been and they could easily be 1-3 – or worse – if a few plays had gone differently in each of their games this season. This Chiefs team looks like last season’s, when they had to hope for Patrick Mahomes to get hot at the right time in an uneven offense with mystery receivers.

Through Kansas City’s first three wins, even future Hall of Fame tight end Travis Kelce was feeling the burn: he had caught just eight passes on 13 targets for 69 yards and no touchdowns. In the week leading up to the Chargers game, head coach Andy Reid said he was using Kelce as a decoy to get other receivers (particularly Rashee Rice) open. And when Rice suffered what looked to be a serious knee injury early in this game, Kelce responded with seven catches on nine targets for 89 yards.

Even this came with a dark underpinning. Initial reports indicate that Rice may have suffered a season-ending torn ACL, which would be a further devastating blow to the Chiefs’ passing game.

Then there’s the matter of one Patrick Lavon Mahomes II.

Last season, Mahomes was the NFL’s worst deep passer. Despite the fact that the Chiefs won their third Super Bowl in five seasons, Mahomes completed just 24 of 76 passes of 20+ air yards for 817 yards, leading to two touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 49.1 (the league’s lowest rating among quarterbacks who took at least 50% of their teams’ snaps). Coming into Sunday, Reid and offensive coordinator Matt Nagy hadn’t given Mahomes too many opportunities to chuck it deep this time around. Mahomes had completed four of just seven deep attempts for 171 yards, three touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 101.8. The improved efficiency is nice, but turning someone with Mahomes’s interstellar talent into a checkdown artist seems reductive at best.

Mahomes did hit rookie speed receiver Xavier Worthy for a 54-yard touchdown in the second quarter against the Chargers, but other than that, those explosive passes came few and far between on Sunday.

Are the Chiefs in a similar spot to last season – when they have to rely on Steve Spagnuolo’s defense to even get into the playoffs – while Mahomes deals with an uncertain receiving corps outside Kelce? We will know a lot more as the Chiefs go into a particularly tough part of their schedule: they face difficult defenses – the New Orleans Saints, the San Francisco 49ers, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Denver Broncos, and Buffalo Bills – in five of their next six games. Las Vegas provide what may be the only “get well” game, and you never know which Raiders defense you’re going to get.

So yes, a win is a win. But to paraphrase George Orwell in Animal Farm, some wins are more equal than others.

MVP of the week

Baker Mayfield, QB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Coming into Sunday’s game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Vic Fangio’s Philadelphia Eagles defense had played no cornerbacks in press coverage on 88% of its snaps, by far the highest rate in the league. Most of the NFL is undergoing a return to the old-school press coverage of prior eras, where cornerbacks are manned up on receivers from the snap through the route, because there are so many more quick throws. And when you don’t have time to disrupt the quarterback, you had better disrupt the receivers.

Bucs offensive coordinator Liam Coen had certainly studied the Eagles’ passive coverage tendencies, and most likely believed that Mayfield could have a field day against Philly, which is exactly what happened. In a 33-16 Bucs win, Mayfield completed 30 of 47 passes for 347 yards, two touchdowns and no interceptions. Mayfield also had a rushing touchdown in the game, and when he was really dealing as a passer you saw how Tampa Bay’s passing game was able to exploit Philly’s preferences for playing their cornerbacks yards off the line of scrimmage.

Mayfield’s performance may have been a simple example of his taking advantage of an unprepared defense, but he’s never played better in his NFL career.

Video of the week

Speaking of the Eagles, they should have known they were in trouble before the game even started. At Raymond James Stadium, the Bucs are famous for shooting cannons as part of their pregame ceremonies, and that really spooked Philadelphia tight end Dallas Goedert.

Goedert did catch seven passes on eight targets for 62 yards in the game, but perhaps he would have done even more without the trauma.

Stat of the week

-7. That’s how many yards Denver Broncos rookie quarterback Bo Nix threw for in the first half of his team’s game against the New York Jets at a rain-sodden MetLife Stadium. Amazingly, Nix managed that total on seven completions. Nix wasn’t much better in the second half, completing 12 of 25 passes overall for 60 yards, a touchdown, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 67.9. And somehow, the Broncos beat the Jets, 10-9. Aaron Rodgers was hardly stellar himself, partly because he was sacked five times by Denver’s aggressive, hyper-blitzing defense.

Nix made some interesting history. Per Pro Football Reference, there hasn’t been an NFL quarterback since 1950 on the winning end of a game throwing 60 or fewer yards on 25 or more attempts.

Elsewhere around the league

– The 1992 San Diego Chargers are the only NFL team to begin their season with an 0-4 record and still make the postseason. Bobby Ross’s team back then is the only hope for head coach Doug Pederson’s Jacksonville Jaguars, who have that same ignominious mark after Sunday’s heartbreaking 24-20 loss to the Houston Texans.

The Jags collapsed spectacularly last season, causing them to spend decisively in free agency, and the decision was made to give alleged franchise quarterback Trevor Lawrence a five-year, $275m contract extension. “Make no mistake: this is the best team assembled by the Jacksonville Jaguars ever,” Jags owner Shad Khan said before the season began. “Best players. Best coaches. But most importantly, let’s prove it by winning now.” There’s been no winning so far. Pederson may have to mirror Ross’s improbable comeback to survive this mess.

-- One week after they demolished the Dallas Cowboys’ run defense, the Baltimore Ravens were at it again on Sunday night against the Buffalo Bills. In the first half alone, Baltimore ran the ball 14 times for 146 yards, including this Derrick Henry 87-yard touchdown run early in the first quarter.

Henry is 30 and had 2,251 career carries coming into this game, so all the age and workload warnings affected his value this past offseason. He wound up signing a two-year, $16m contract with Baltimore with just $9m guaranteed, but he is as ridiculously fast as he’s always been. Per Next Gen Stats, Henry reached a maximum speed of 21.29 mph on his touchdown run. Henry has reached or exceeded 20 mph 27 times as a ballcarrier since 2018, trailing only Tyreek Hill, who has 73 such plays.

Henry finished his day with 199 rushing yards on 24 carries as the Ravens evened their record at 2-2, dominating the formerly undefeated Bills in a 35-10 win. The combination of Henry, Lamar Jackson’s extreme threat as a runner, and Baltimore’s smaller backs like Justice Hill and Keaton Mitchell (who is soon returning from injury and was amazing in 2023) – not to mention an outstanding offensive line – make Baltimore’s run game tough to handle.

-- In their first three games of the season, Brian Flores’s Minnesota Vikings defense had allowed just 30 total points, the fewest against any NFL defense since 1998. It was a more mixed bag on Sunday as the Vikings held on to beat the Packers 31-29. But Flores has shown he is a fine defensive mind. Green Bay QB Jordan Love was in a nightmare in the first-half, thanks in part to Flores’s schemes, completing just 12 of 24 passes for 118 yards, one touchdown, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 43.4. The Vikings built up a 28-0 first half lead. Then, in the second half, Packers head coach and offensive shot-caller Matt LaFleur (also one of the best in the business) threw a shot at Flores with a ton of no-huddle plays, which forced Minnesota to play more base defenses with fewer wrinkles.

There isn’t one thing Flores adheres to at the expense of anything else. Flores prefers zone coverage to man, but how he gets to his coverage shells is especially devious. It’s the rare play when Flores’ cornerbacks and safeties don’t start in one spot in the formation pre-snap, and then charge quickly to dramatically different positions after the ball is snapped. As much as any defensive coach at any level of football, Flores has taken the NFL’s new preferences for pre-snap motion and difficult receiver distribution, and thrown those ideas right back in the faces of those offenses.

Is Flores the NFL’s best defensive coordinator? Right now, you’d be hard pressed to put anyone above him. Whether that gets him another shot at a head coaching job is debatable, given his lawsuit with the NFL and the aftermath of his difficult relationship with quarterback Tua Tagovailoa during his time in charge of Miami.

-- Anthony Richardson was ruled out for the rest of the Colts-Steelers game after two big hits in the first quarter. Richardson is a transcendent talent who, at this point in his career, veers sharply between the spectacular and the ridiculous. One thing he needs to solve is his proclivity for running straight into hard contact. Most mobile quarterbacks have learned when to slide and otherwise avoid hits; Richardson doesn’t seem to have gotten the memo yet.

In his rookie season of 2023, Richardson missed all but four games with a multitude of injuries, and unless something changes, the story may well be similar this time around.

The Colts turned to veteran backup Joe Flacco, who will celebrate his 40th birthday in January. Flacco completed 16 of 26 passes for 168 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 105.9 in the 27-24 win over Pittsburgh. Going back to his 2023 stint as Deshaun Watson’s injury replacement with the Cleveland Browns, Flacco holds the NFL’s longest streak of games with two or more passing touchdowns. You could have won a lot of bets with that titbit. Also, per Baltimore Ravens PR, Flacco has helped his team win games with Baltimore, the team that lost a team to Baltimore (the Browns), and the team that left Baltimore (the Colts). If you play in the NFL long enough, time is indeed a flat circle.

 

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