Chiefs: 2 reasons for concern after ugly Week 15 victory over Patriots
While they came away with a win, the Chiefs didn’t play the cleanest game against the Patriots in Week 15.
There’s no such thing as an ugly win in the NFL as long as the word win follows the word ugly. With that being said, the Kansas City Chiefs‘ 27-17 win over the New England Patriots wasn’t exactly the most inspiring game they’ve ever played.
Patrick Mahomes played well; he completed 27 of 37 passes for 305 yards and two touchdowns. But he also threw two interceptions. He also got sacked three times.
The Chiefs were able to pull away a bit in the third quarter after a Harrison Butker field goal made the game a 17 point contest. But the Patriots were able to quickly capitalize off of Mahomes’ second interception of the day to cut their deficit back to ten.
The Chiefs will take the win, but they still have some work to do. Two areas of their team continue to plague them and allow other teams to capitalize.
WRs continue to ghost
It’s a good thing the Chiefs drafted Rashee Rice in the second round of the 2023 NFL Draft, because it’s hard to imagine where their offense would be without him. Teams continue to double team and focus all of their attention on Travis Kelce to dare the other Chiefs receivers to beat them.
Rice has at least seven receptions in each of his last four games and a touchdown catch in three of those games. Rice’s 334 yards in that span even beat out Travis Kelce’s 283 for the team lead
The Chiefs need all the production they can get from Rice and Kelce because they aren’t getting it from anywhere else. Remember how Rice has 334 yards in the last four games? Well, the Chiefs’ third-leading receiver on the season, Justin Watson, has 381 yards in 13 games played.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling has 312 yards on the season. Skyy Moore has 244 receiving yards in 14 games. Kadarius Toney has just 169 yards on the year and made yet another mind-numbing blunder on a perfect Patrick Mahomes pass that led to an interception.
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The Chiefs wide receivers sans Rice, especially Toney, continue to prove they can’t be trusted, and this has affected how the Chiefs and Patrick Mahomes play. Mahomes is averaging only 6.9 air yards per attempt this season according to playerprofiler.com. Before this season, Mahomes was averaging 7.5, 7.5, 8.3, 8.6, and 9.2 air yards per target.
The Chiefs still rank seventh in the league in EPA per drop back on offense, but they were first in the league in that metric a year ago. Someone else other than Travis Kelce and Rashee Rice has to step up for this passing game to truly take off. Until that happens, their offense won’t run away from any defense they go up against.
Defending running backs and tight ends
Last week, the Buffalo Bills exposed the Chiefs’ linebackers’ deficiencies defending the pass in space. They did that to the tune of James Cook catching all five of his targets for 83 yards and a touchdown while turning 10 carries into 58 yards.
Ezekiel Elliott did not have anywhere near as big of a game for the Patriots this week as what Cook did last week, but the Patriots found other ways to attack the Chiefs defense. That was with their tight end Hunter Henry. Henry corralled nine of his seven targets for 66 yards and scored a touchdown early in the second quarter.
All in all, the Chiefs defense has been very good this season, and arguably the strength of their team. But they rank second-to-last in defending the run in terms of EPA per rush allowed and have deficiencies defending running backs and tight ends through the air.
