The Chiefs’ wide receiver problem has risen from localized concern to public health emergency.
A gut-punched Arrowhead Stadium watched as Kadarius Toney lined up offsides, just before executing one of the greatest regular-season touchdowns we’ve seen in the past three decades (only, of course, to have it called back because he lined up offsides). Toney caught a potential game-winning legal lateral from tight end Travis Kelce, crossing the goal line high-stepping in a modified Deion Sanders impression. It took Toney about a full minute to realize that he was a full helmet’s length ahead of the receiver on the other side of the formation.
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From there, we were treated to slow-motion snapshots of Kelce unbuckling his helmet in disbelief, and Patrick Mahomes windmill slamming his helmet into the bench. CBS cameras captured Mahomes, quite uncharacteristically, dressing down an official while the Bills lined up in victory formation. It didn’t take a lip reader to realize that Mahomes was saying something along the lines of, we’re playing our you-know-what's off and you’re making that more difficult, specifically referencing the oddity of calling offensive neutral-zone infractions, even though the call has been made a dozen times this year. The Packers have been flagged for it twice. It didn’t take a therapist to realize that what Mahomes might have also been doing was a classic projection: He was taking a problem he had with one person (or, perhaps a small group of people) and taking it out on someone else.
The Chiefs have now lost multiple games this season directly because of miscues caused by their receiving corps. Against the Eagles, Marquez Valdes-Scantling dropped an open touchdown on a second-and-1 in the fourth quarter, with Kansas City trailing by four and 1:45 left to play. (Later on in that drive, a far more difficult, but still catchable ball slid through the hands of Justin Watson on a fourth-down conversion attempt.) Toney bobbled a pass that became a Lions’ pick-six in the season opener. Skyy Moore dropped a touchdown pass on a fourth down attempt midway through the fourth quarter of the Chiefs’ loss to the Broncos. And these are just the headlines. Dropped passes, and related-receiver miscues, are like a virus embedding itself into every aspect of the Chiefs’ game, providing the only counterweight to a season in which Mahomes is still playing brilliantly, and the Kansas City defense is playing better than it has at any point during the Steve Spagnuolo era. Drives halt like frightened guests at a haunted house. There is so little rhythm from one play to the next.
Kansas City came into this game leading the league with 25 dropped passes. The 49ers, by contrast, came into Week 14 with five. All but one of Kansas City’s losses this season have been by one score, and, obviously, the loss to Denver would have been a one-score game had Moore caught the touchdown. The team’s inability to catch Mahomes’s throws is the difference between a first-round bye and a first-round playoff game against an unpredictable, battle-tested AFC North powder keg that snuck in on a wild card, and then a conference title game on the road in Miami or Baltimore.
We have reached the point where the admirable experiment has passed its time for academic reasoning. Up until this point, you could try and convince me that it was a worthwhile usage of Mahomes’s working hours to break in a group of receivers with tremendous athletic talents but who would cost a fraction of players such as Tyreek Hill. Think the Patriots of the post–Randy Moss era (and, really, the Patriots of the pre–Randy Moss era). But at what point do the Chiefs allow this charade to progress without any consequence? Without making a statement by benching or releasing someone? What damage is caused by allowing the status quo to exist, and what message does that send to every other properly performing corner of a locker room? It seems as though the Chiefs are uniformly behind Toney given their collective animus toward the officials, and, after the Terry McLaurin situation, it’s an understandable path to take given how inconsistent officiating has been throughout the season. But it’s not like Toney’s play has not been costly throughout the season, and it’s not like he was only a little tiny bit offsides, either.
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Obviously, the time to act, from a personnel standpoint, has passed. Free agency and the trade deadline have come and gone. Now, the problem has been shifted into the lap of the head coach, who, one would assume, has the power to clean out a locker or two.
It sounds harsh, but a failure to act in any way only places a heavier burden on a group of maligned receivers who have consistently wilted under high pressure situations. We have seen great defenses try and stave off passive aggression toward their underperforming quarterbacks. We have seen goodhearted running backs try not to bury their porous offensive lines. It rarely ends with players who simply weren’t good enough turning into players who are. It rarely ends with a healthy atmosphere.
The rest of the AFC is dropping by the wayside, while the conference’s most consistent juggernaut is trying to just get by instead of grabbing hold of another Super Bowl berth. The 49ers and Eagles treat their windows of Super Bowl–caliber competitiveness as a last gasp of breath they must hold onto, like a moment they are trying to coddle forever. The Chiefs are treating the middle of Mahomes’s prime like an eternal fall, one in which it’s okay to lose games without the best players on the field it can possibly find.
But, we know how quickly collective greatness can tail off when a disproportionate burden is placed on just one player. Mahomes cannot fly with his passes like a support animal to ensure their safe destination. The Chiefs need to let him know, somehow, right now, that he shouldn't have to feel like he needs to.
