LAS VEGAS — The thought has been bouncing round in Brett Veach’s thoughts for per week now, the what-ifs that lingered after a late-season loss left the Kansas Metropolis common supervisor wrestling with a actuality he wasn’t used to.
“You see it yearly,” Veach says, “a group will get off to a sizzling begin and doesn’t make the playoffs.”
5 weeks in the past, the fear was actual.
That could possibly be us, Veach remembers considering.
Positive, it’s simple for Veach to concede this now, standing on the sphere at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas six nights earlier than the Chiefs play of their fourth Tremendous Bowl in 5 years. However the GM is satisfied with out that Christmas Day humbling — an unsightly, 20-14 loss to the Raiders at dwelling — there’s no manner his group is 60 minutes from cementing itself because the NFL’s modern-day dynasty with a 3rd Lombardi Trophy since 2020.
“If we discovered a solution to win that sport … possibly the wakeup name comes within the playoffs,” Veach acknowledges. “I feel we not solely wanted to lose however wanted to lose in that vogue.”
That vogue, Veach defined, was what bothered him most on Dec. 25. It was a snapshot of a struggling group, one which hadn’t been proper for the higher a part of a month. The Raiders owned the Chiefs up entrance that day — “We bought dominated bodily at our personal place,” was how Veach put it — and Kansas Metropolis’s offense was sloppy and disjointed, the identical because it had been for a lot of the second half of the season. The protection, which had been glorious a lot of the afternoon, couldn’t get the cease it wanted late.
Chiefs common supervisor Brett Veach is grateful the group’s wakeup name got here earlier than the playoffs. “I feel we not solely wanted to lose however wanted to lose in that vogue.” (David Eulitt / Getty Photographs)
The Raiders pounced, turning two Chiefs’ second-quarter blunders into touchdowns seven seconds aside. Then they cemented the win with a six-play, 61-yard drive late within the fourth quarter that saved Patrick Mahomes caught on the sideline, unable to steal a victory within the closing seconds.
These forms of wins — the kind of wins the Chiefs had been getting away with amid a 7-2 begin — have been merely “deodorant,” Veach would name them, camouflaging the very actual flaws that had been lurking for the reason that center of the season.
The loss didn’t camouflage something. The loss laid naked a defending champ that was all of a sudden weak, eminently beatable and skidding into January a shell of its former self. It was Kansas Metropolis’s fifth defeat in eight video games, overseas territory for a perennial Tremendous Bowl contender, and the Chiefs’ sixth of the season, essentially the most since Mahomes turned the starter in 2018.
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They have been 9-6 as December crawled to an in depth. The AFC playoff image was coming into view. The Ravens have been beating everyone. The Payments have been crimson sizzling.
And the champs have been coming unglued.
Veach remembers the frustrations, months of bottled-up feelings, erupting on the sideline that afternoon. Mahomes berating his offensive linemen in full view of the cameras. Travis Kelce spiking his helmet close to the bench, it ricocheting excessive into the air. Coach Andy Reid forbidding a group staffer from giving it again to Kelce a second later, then bumping into his star tight finish after some selection phrases.
Mahomes is giving his line the BUSINESS pic.twitter.com/l1Jg731yn6
— NFL on CBS 🏈 (@NFLonCBS) December 25, 2023
After it was over, the Chiefs’ prime decision-makers, together with proprietor Clark Hunt, Veach and Reid, gathered for a postgame assembly within the coaches’ locker room, as they all the time do. Most of their heads have been down, Hunt remembers, staring on the flooring.
One thing was off. One thing had been off for weeks. What nobody in Kansas Metropolis knew on the time: if this was the low level that might swerve a season in one other path, or an omen that signaled a painful playoff loss coming in a number of quick weeks.
Or, Veach frightened, the unthinkable: no postseason journey in any respect.
To that time, the Chiefs nonetheless hadn’t clinched a factor.
“Definitely a type of offers the place it was now or by no means,” the GM says. “Simply since you gained the Tremendous Bowl (final 12 months), simply since you had some success, doesn’t imply you’re gonna win earlier than the ball is kicked off.”
“We’d like(ed) just a little kick within the tail,” Reid acknowledged. The loss, he mentioned later, was a stark reminder to his group that “issues aren’t simply going to fall in our lap.”
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After the sport, the coach was agitated however undeterred. Within the locker room, Reid stood in entrance of his group and shouldered the blame. All of it.
“I’ll take this one on the chin,” Reid informed his gamers.
That, in keeping with some, caught with the gamers. This wasn’t on the coach, they keep in mind considering. This was on them. They hadn’t been able to play.
“All of us being grown males,” rookie receiver Rashee Rice mentioned, “we didn’t like that.”
Rice acknowledged some have been distracted.
“Plenty of us weren’t utterly in sport mode as a result of it was Christmas and stuff like that,” Rice continued. “Plenty of us weren’t able to play on Christmas.”
A win would’ve clinched an eighth straight AFC West title, what’s grow to be an annual ceremony of passage in Kansas Metropolis. As an alternative, Mahomes was sacked 4 occasions and staggered to one in all his worst passer rankings of the season, ending with simply 235 passing yards on 58 dropbacks.
“When you could have a chance to win the division and also you come out and lay an egg like we did, it definitely resets you, fuels you and allows you to know, ‘Man, we’re not near the place we have to be,’” mentioned linebacker Drue Tranquill.
“It was a poor reflection of who we have been as a group,” added guard Trey Smith. “However at the moment, that’s who we have been as a group.”
And who they have been, by the point the common season wrapped: a group outlined by its protection however hamstrung by a middling offense that was arguably the worst of the Reid period. The Chiefs completed 14th in scoring this season, one spot behind a Colts group that scraped out 9 wins principally with a backup quarterback in Gardner Minshew, and 4 spots behind a Browns group that employed 4 beginning quarterbacks in 2023.
In truth, of Reid’s 5 Tremendous Bowl groups in Kansas Metropolis, this 12 months’s group ranks on the backside in regular-season document (11-6), factors per sport (21.8) and level differential (plus-77).
“Greater than every other 12 months, we’ve been challenged placing factors on the board,” Kelce mentioned this week.
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So late within the season, the GM mentioned, the coach stepped again. Reid took a macro view of every part that was going unsuitable on offense. (It was greater than only a league-high 44 dropped passes.) Reid realized the coaches have been attempting to do an excessive amount of with the offense, looking for a spark that wasn’t going to return.
“For those who observe motorsports, typically it’s such as you go on the market within the race and each pit cease, there’s just a little tweak,” Veach explains. “And also you make a tweak and it’s a nasty change, and I feel we had just a little little bit of that this 12 months. The automotive wasn’t good. We went in, made some changes and really made it worse.”
Reid challenged not solely the gamers however the teaching workers. “Let’s get all the way down to the fundamentals,” he informed them. “Let’s be who we’re. We’ve bought an ideal protection. We’ve bought greater than sufficient on offense, and we don’t want to take a seat right here and sport plan to attempt to rating 60 factors a sport.”
He condensed the playbook. He simplified the sport plan.
The Chiefs haven’t misplaced since.
The Chiefs, led by Travis Kelce, second from left, Chris Jones and Patrick Mahomes, have come a great distance since their embarrassing dwelling loss to the Raiders. (Emily Curiel / The Kansas Metropolis Star / Tribune Information Service by way of Getty Photographs)
Reid has gone out of his manner in latest weeks to credit score the group’s management — Mahomes has regained his all-world kind and Kelce has been revived for the reason that begin of the playoffs. The offense, in flip, has finished sufficient. The problem appeared to invigorate them, having to climb again to the Tremendous Bowl with out being the heavy favorites this time round. They trounced Miami within the frigid chilly, outplayed the Payments in snowy Orchard Park, then upset the Ravens in Baltimore within the AFC title sport.
Now they’ve an opportunity to grow to be the league’s first repeat champion in 20 years.
“We knew we have been gonna be in dogfights,” cornerback Trent McDuffie mentioned. “We knew have been gonna must do it on the street. We knew everyone was gonna be doubting us.”
No extra. Not after this run. During the last month, the Chiefs have reminded everybody who they’re and why they’re such a tricky out this time of 12 months.
Ask the Dolphins. Ask the Payments. Ask the Ravens.
Veach, who together with Reid put this roster collectively, nonetheless marvels at how shortly it occurred — and the prospect they’ve earned themselves come Sunday.
“If we didn’t have that second in time the place it was a realization of, ‘We’re not a superb soccer group’ … however we’ve it in there,” the GM says, pausing for a second, staring out on the discipline.
No matter that was — no matter was lacking — Veach’s group discovered simply in time.
(High photograph: Denny Medley / USA At this time)