HOUSTON, Texas — Well, that was dicey.
Against the, checks notes, Houston Texans.
The Chiefs won 30-24 in overtime here at NRG Stadium, a game they were favored to win by more than two touchdowns. And let’s be clear: The Houston Texans (1-12-1) are not a good football team, no matter which metric you use.
So either this was a one-off for the Chiefs, or maybe they just aren’t who we think they are. They are stock-piling too many of these games together.
Let’s start there with our five observations from immediately after the game:
1. The takeaway
Over the past few seasons, we’ve tended to see the Chiefs take off in November and December — they like to “build,” as Patrick Mahomes phrases it.
This feels more like springing a leak.
The team that we’ve seen over a three-game road trip — in Cincinnati, Denver and Houston — looks more like one that hasn’t made much progress.
The teams that stick around deep into January, and even early February, are those who play well over four quarters, not just spurts here and there.
It’s been more than a month since we’d classify a game in those terms.
2. The trust in the kicker
For the second time in three weeks, the Chiefs fourth-quarter strategy became dependent on trust in one player.
The kicker.
The ongoing slump should send a signal to abort that mission — at the very least, until proven otherwise.
The Chiefs put the game on the foot of Harrison Butker at the end of regulation when they elected to kill clock and set up a 51-yard field goal try rather than trying to gain more yardage for a closer look, time on the clock be damned.
He missed.
Overtime.
And that’s not a new discovery — Butker missed a key kick in Cincinnati; and he missed an extra point earlier in this very game. Heck, overall, Butker has the lowest field goal percentage of his career, and the second-lowest extra-point percentage of his career.
If he’s not performing at the same level, the Chiefs shouldn’t make decisions as though he is.
3. The worry about the defense
A week ago, the Chiefs allowed the Broncos to score a season-high 28 points. On Sunday, the Texans matched a season high with 24 points.
True, the Texans were aided once by a short field. True, Willie Gay made a terrific fumble recovery to secure the final possession in overtime.
But the defense also had a chance to make it really hard on the Texans in the fourth quarter — or at least allow Patrick Mahomes and the offense a chance to push it to a two-possession game — and instead they allowed the Texans to drive 65 yards for a game-tying field goal.
4. Turnovers
Having said that, this was a game mostly for one reason.
Well, two of them.
Turnovers.
Isiah Pacheco and JuJu Smith-Schuster each fumbled the ball, and the Texans would score touchdowns on the ensuing drive following both recoveries.
This has become a theme — the Chiefs have turned it over in nine straight games — which is ironic, because when an offense moves the ball as well as the Chiefs do by every other metric, turnovers are generally not good indicators of future problems.
Guess we’ll call this the outlier?
We saw this last year, and it took awhile to correct itself, but eventually it did just that, and the Chiefs went on a late-season roll. Still waiting on the end of this streak.
5. The deep shots
The Chiefs don’t get many opportunities to throw it deep — been that way for awhile now — which only underscores the importance of capitalizing on the chances they do get.
Mahomes is going to want a couple of throws back.
On the opening drive, he had Marquez Valdes-Scantling all alone in the secondary, but either threw an errant pass or expected Valdes-Scantling to bend the route toward the sideline. Instead, an incompletion ended the drive. One quarter later, firing out of his own end zone, Mahomes had Justin Watson streaking down the middle of the field. Watson could have corralled the pass, but a better throw concludes in a touchdown.
Only 9.7% of Mahomes’ pass attempts travel at least 20 yards in the air, 29th most in the league.
When you have ‘em, you gotta connect.
To be fair, they have more than the narrative would suggest. Mahomes has a completion percentage of 46.9% on passes that travel at least 20 yards in the air, per PFF, which is the fifth-highest mark in the league on those attempts.
