Mahomes: Lack of Execution Caught up With Chiefs vs. Bengals
In the Kansas City Chiefs' Sunday loss to the Cincinnati Bengals, there wasn't one single play or player that led to the defeat. It was a team effort, and one filled with both minor and major mistakes all afternoon long. By the end of the fourth quarter, it was the home team that ended up minimizing those errors and capitalizing on the visitors' shortcomings.
For the Chiefs, one of those shortcomings came via a ball falling out of the hands of tight end Travis Kelce. After recording a reception, the 33-year-old star pass-catcher fought for extra yards before ultimately having multiple Cincinnati players converge on him and the football being pried out of his grasp. The crucial turnover eventually led to a Bengals touchdown on the other end of the field, which then ended up being the final score of the entire game.
Afterward, however, quarterback Patrick Mahomes told the media that he'd live with that process from Kelce every single time despite the lackluster result.
"I was just telling him to continue to be himself," Mahomes said. "We've seen Travis do that many times — get all those extra yards. Those are hard-fought yards in this league. Obviously, they made a good play and they stripped the ball out right at the very end there, but I'm taking Travis fighting for extra yards every single time because that's the type of competitor that he is."
Being willing to run things back as-is wasn't all too common on Sunday, though. Outside of a productive run game and some slick connections from Mahomes to wide receivers Marquez Valdes-Scantling and JuJu Smith-Schuster, the Chiefs' offense wasn't the same dominant unit it had been at other points against top competition this season. As always, the blame falls on several different people and in several different areas.
With that said, everything kept coming back to one word: execution. While Andy Reid and Eric Bieniemy's unit went 6-for-11 on third down and converted both of its fourth-down attempts, there were many questionable decisions sprinkled in over the course of the game. Reid's play-calling choices in relation to field position, Mahomes missing an open receiver and Kelce's fumble all played roles in "just" a 24-point output. Kicker Harrison Butker's missed attempt in the fourth quarter didn't help matters, and Mahomes said all of that snowballed into the end result of a narrow loss.
"They have playmakers all over there, they're well coached and have a good defense," Mahomes said. "At the end of the day, they just executed at a higher level in the critical situations. We started off slow, we got back in the game and the flow of things, then we had a turnover late and then the missed kick. If you just try to take away those two things in the fourth quarter... if you're playing good teams and you make those turnover-on-downs, basically, in the fourth quarter, those are the things that bite you in the end."
The margin for error for the Chiefs isn't wide, especially against teams like the Bengals or the Buffalo Bills. In contests against the AFC's elite (or even intra-division bouts with the Los Angeles Chargers), Kansas City has either won by a slim margin or lost under those same circumstances this calendar year. Cincinnati is now 3-0 against Mahomes and Co. dating back to Jan. 2, including a win in the AFC Championship Game.
Mahomes thinks he and the Chiefs did better this time around, but he also knows there's room for improvement in order for a potential fourth matchup to end differently. If that happens, it'll be a byproduct of execution in key moments and overall consistent play.
"We definitely executed at a higher level than we did in the playoff game," Mahomes said. "I thought our guys did a great job blocking there. It got us that one at the very end — we wish we could've had a little more time but at the same time, they had a good game plan. I thought we executed at a higher level at some points in the game but if you're going to beat a good football team, you've got to execute throughout the entire game."
