Rich Found a Few Silver Linings in the Kansas City Chiefs’ Week 8 Loss to the Broncos

The Chiefs have lost two in a row. Rich wanted everyone to look at who beat them before writing the obituary: last year's defending champs and last year's regular season AFC champs. "So, it's no slouch that they lost two in a row," he said. Then he went looking for silver linings, "cuz there are some."

Start with Patrick Mahomes. A week earlier in Seattle, Rich said, Mahomes looked "lost and erased," with 165 passing yards and not a single red zone trip, the worst game statistically he has ever had as a Chief. Against Denver, Mahomes came up with his 49th career game with three or more passing touchdowns. That broke a tie with Dan Marino and Peyton Manning for the most by any player in his first 10 seasons in NFL history.

So the idea that Mahomes has nobody to throw to? Rich isn't buying it. Rookie running back Emmett Johnson had two big catch-and-runs while Kenneth Walker was held in check again. Watching number 10, Rich said, you think of Pacheco, and you think of Tyreek Hill when he's running away from people. Johnson's 128 receiving yards included a 73-yard touchdown in the second quarter, the fifth most receiving yards by any rookie running back in a regular season game since the merger.

Rich's point was that Mahomes isn't washed and this offense can still put up numbers. It's just that Denver's defense belongs in the conversation with Minnesota's on a really good day, and it was able to mimic what Seattle did. "I'm being positive," Rich said. But he also thinks the Chiefs need to go into the wide receiver market over the next eight days to kick a tire and get some help, even with Rashee Rice back.

What bothered Rich were the late mistakes, which is "not usually their MO." These are the Chiefs who win one-score games and make you pay for your mistakes. This time, Mahomes took a six-yard sack at the Denver 30 on third and two. Instead of a 48-yard field goal for Butker, it became a 54-yarder, and Rich said Butker "needs all the help he can get right now." Convert that third down instead, and Denver has to burn timeouts while Kansas City potentially wins without giving the ball back.

Then the defense let Jonah Coleman run and catch on them "like he's Terrell Davis." Coleman became the third Broncos rookie to lead the team in both rushing and receiving yards in a game, joining Devontae Booker in 2016 and Davis in 1995.

And then there was the goal line. How many times in the Mahomes, Reid and Kelce era, Rich asked, have you seen the Chiefs at the one-yard line and thought it was a wrap? Walker ran it from the four down to the one on first and goal. They tried to throw it in, and Mahomes ran for his life and threw it away. Walker got another try from the one and didn't make it. After a timeout, a false start by the right tackle backed them up, and the studio noted it looked like Rice would have caught a touchdown on that play. Five more yards, then a Denver sack wrapped it up.

Mahomes said afterward he had not seen the false start, that it didn't surprise him, and that "you have to go with whatever is called. But a lot of times in those big moments the little stuff doesn't get called like that." Former Chiefs offensive lineman Mitchell Schwartz was harsher on social media, calling it "an absolute embarrassment" not to get a yard from the one with a timeout and refusing to sneak the ball. "Well-deserved loss," he wrote. As someone in the studio put it, this was one of those calls "that come from inside the house."

So where do the Chiefs go from here? A home date with the Jets, who have lost back-to-back games to the Dolphins and Raiders. A visit to Atlanta. Home for Arizona. Then the stretch where, as Rich put it, "the rubber is going to meet the road": at Buffalo, at the Rams, at Cincinnati, home for New England and home for San Francisco. Those five games decide whether Kansas City is a division champ, a conference champ or a wild card team.

Rich believes they can win those games. They are still the Chiefs, with playmakers, and he imagines Brett Veach adds somebody. "I believe they should," Rich said. Hold on to the ball and make that field goal, and they could have wrapped up the division. Instead, the Chiefs made the mistakes in the last two and a half minutes and the Broncos did not. "The division's open and so is the conference," Rich said. "But Kansas City has a chance."