Last year Mahomes put up 40 in Foxboro and lost. Then in the AFC Championship he put up 31 and lost. This year the Chiefs defense held the Patriots to 16 points. Mahomes got to shake Brady's hand for the first time as a winner. And then the Chiefs got to celebrate their division title in the Patriots locker room. That's a fun flight home.
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By the way, that's 4 straight AFC West Titles. Before this streak, the Chiefs had never won the division in back to back years.
Andy Reid inherited a 2-14 team that was in complete disarray. The next year he went 11-5.
7 seasons with Reid. 7 with a winning record.
He won the division twice with Alex Smith and now twice with Mahomes.
The last time the Raiders won the division was 2002. If you're a 21-year-old Raiders fan you have no memories of ever winning the division, but you've seen Big Red win it four in a row.
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This game played out very similar to last week's Patriot loss. They dig themselves a huge first half hole and in the second half come close to coming all the way back. But the early deficit was too big. The Patriot home crowd was booing their own team down 20-7 in the first half.
So clearly the story here is how the Chiefs went in to Foxboro and won, shifting the balance of power in the AFC and setting up some intriguing playoff games. No?
Ah, the Patriots got robbed! The Refs stole two touchdowns.
It's really tempting to just ignore it completely. But I'm game. I'll take the bait.
On the Kelce fumble, the Patriots do get the ball but weren't given the chance to return it. It wasn't going to be a touchdown as the Chiefs had 3 players back, but it cost the Pats about 20-25 yards of field position. Just a bit more than the Patriots benefited from after they shoved Mahomes out of bounds into a Gatorade cooler and no personal foul was called.
Then ensuing drive a Patriot appeared to score but was called out of bounds at the three. Upon slow-motion replay, you could tell the runner stayed in bounds. However, Belichick had already used his challenges. So the result of the play was (checks notes) 1st and Goal from the 3.
There's a case to be made that in the 3rd quarter of a close game, some coaches might not even challenge there because you might want to save the challenge for the 4th quarter, if you're wrong you lose another timeout, and you have 1st and Goal from the 3. (Sure, I'd challenge. But that's why you don't challenge a 1st down spot early in the 3rd quarter that rarely gets overturned.)
The Patriots end up kicking a field goal.
So what are people saying?
Ah yes, the Patriots missed out on two touchdowns. In a game where they lost by 7. What injustice!
But let's think about this. The fumble was on the drive preceding the bad pylon call. So if the Patriots did scoop and score that, they wouldn't have had the chance for the pylon score. If the pylon score was called correctly, the Pats would have ended up with 7. Instead they got 3.
So all told, the calls affected the score by 4 points.
If it was Andy Reid that ran out of challenges, people would be blaming Reid. Classic Reid, can't manage the clock or his challenges!
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The Chiefs were the better team yesterday and won the game. It's pretty likely that the Chiefs will have to go back to Foxboro in January and do it again.
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In fact, it sure looks like Baltimore will be the #1 seed, the Patriots #2, and Chiefs the #3.
For the Chiefs to get the bye, we need to win out and have the Pats to lose to Bengals, Bills or Dolphins. Even if the Pats lose one, I could see the Chiefs blowing a fluky game.
As the #3 seed, the likely path would be:
home game vs Titans or Steelers, road game at Patriots, road game at Ravens
Not easy. That's why blowing that Titans game earlier was so big. If the Pats get the bye, they get two weeks to prepare for the Chiefs and get healthy. The next game won't be as easy as yesterday.
You wrote exactly what I was thinking, that if it were Reid who was out of challenges, he'd be getting crushed, but Billy B gets a pass.
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