The Kansas City Chiefs lost what they felt was a winnable Week 3 game against the Indianapolis Colts.
There is plenty of blame to be shared in the Week 3 loss — coaching, offense, defense and special teams — they all earn a piece of it. When asked about the loss after the game on Sunday, Patrick Mahomes shouldered a lot of the blame himself. He felt like he left a lot of opportunities on the field and that the offense didn’t execute well as a whole.
“We just didn’t play good enough, especially on the offensive side of the ball, starting with me,” Mahomes said. “Obviously, we missed some kicks and stuff like that, but at the end of the day, we had multiple opportunities to score. So we have to find ways to get the ball in the end zone. That starts with me, we can’t just get yards, we have to get in the end zone when we’re down there.”
After a slow start in the first quarter, they got things rolling with a Travis Kelce touchdown and a Clyde Edwards-Helaire touchdown. The team carried the lead into halftime, but the Chiefs only managed to score three points in the second half of the game. Those three points came after the offense stalled out in the red zone in the third quarter.
“We’ve got to gel altogether,” Mahomes said. “It starts with me. There were certain throws I was putting on the guy’s back hips instead of in front of them. There were certain situations where we were just off. A D-Lineman got around my feet and I missed Justin Watson. Or if it was a throw at the end of the game where I could have maybe tried to put it in front of JuJu (Smith-Schuster) and it gets tipped up for a pick. It’s just little things like that, whenever you’re playing a tough game like that you have to execute at a higher level.”
Beyond some of the misses that Mahomes pointed out, the team had several opportunities to score touchdowns in the second half. They stalled out within the 25-yard line three times, including Ammendola’s field goal. One opportunity led to a missed field goal and another a turnover on downs on a fake field goal attempt.
Had the offense executed in those situations, Mahomes felt the result of the game would have been much different.
“For us as an offense, we’ve got to make it to where those little mistakes don’t cause a loss,” Mahomes said. “I mean we had multiple chances to get in the end zone, if we get in the end zone one time and don’t stall out in the red zone the second half, the game is over.”
The Chiefs will turn their attention to Week 4 and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after the plane ride back to Kansas City. Mahomes is hopeful that they’ll learn from this experience and get better from it.
“We have to learn from it,” Mahomes said. “Our schedule doesn’t get any easier. We have a hard game, ‘Sunday Night Football’ against Tampa, with a great defense. So, we’ve got to get better quickly and if we don’t, we don’t want these L’s to start piling up. We want to make sure we get back on that winning train.”
