Admittedly, the Chiefs looked nothing like a Super Bowl team on Christmas Day, but they lost for the fourth time in six games, dropping their record to 9-6, and their offense only made 14 points against the Raiders. All I could do was score.
There was a victory cigar in the visitors’ locker room at Arrowhead Stadium.
Patrick Mahomes lamented the Chiefs’ flow of “one good game, one bad game, one good game, one bad game.” That won’t last until the postseason.
Kansas City turned that low point around and won five straight games, including three in the postseason, to earn a spot in Super Bowl III vs. the 49ers on February 11th in Las Vegas.
It’s a different path than past postseasons. However, a variety of factors came together to enable the Chiefs to make a late-season comeback, securing their spot in the league’s final game for the fourth time in five years.
Introducing Laci Rice
The first hint came on Nov. 26, when Rice caught eight passes for 107 yards and a touchdown in the Chiefs’ win over the Raiders. He added nine more catches for 91 yards on Dec. 17 against the Patriots.
Those two games were part of nine games in which Rice, a second-round rookie, caught six passes of eight or more and had five receiving yards of 70 or more. He reached both standards twice during Kansas City’s winning streak.
When the Chiefs drafted the former SMU star, Rice joins a receiving group that already returns Travis Kelce, Skye Moore, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Justin Watson. But he finished the regular season with the most yards by a Kansas City wideout not named Tyreek Hill since Jeremy Maclin in 2015 (1,088 yards) and surpassed JuJu Smith-Schuster’s 933 in 2022. exceeded the yardage.
During these five games, Rice has emerged as the complement to Kelce that Mahomes needed.
Isiah Pacheco’s consecutive touchdowns record
Near the end of the 2022 regular season, as the Chiefs won 10 of 11 games and made it to the playoffs on a tear, Jerick McKinnon scored in six straight games and had a receiving touchdown in all but one of those games. Recorded. Andy Reid’s offense, dating back to Jamaal Charles, has always been friendly to the Chiefs’ running backs, and MacKinnon benefited from that during that stretch last year.
Pacheco will be playing in the Super Bowl this season in his second year after scoring in seven consecutive games. He also missed games, with a two-week hiatus and a week-long rest in Week 18. Pacheco’s running style made him difficult to tackle, converting 205 carries into 935 rushing yards in 14 games. He added another 254 points in the Chiefs’ three postseason games.
Steve Spagnuolo’s defensive improvement
The defense, commanded by the Giants’ former defensive coordinator, hasn’t been an issue at all this season. But Spagnuolo’s unit has only allowed an opponent more than 20 points once during the winning streak – to the Bills in the AFC Divisional Round. The Chiefs haven’t allowed more than 27 points on offense all season, giving up the second-fewest points per game (17.3 points).
Despite being without starting linebacker Nick Bolton for half of the regular season, including a five-week absence after wrist surgery, he led all defenders with 27 tackles during the playoffs and 40 during a five-game loss. Recorded a tackle. Bolton, like most of Kansas City’s key starters, did not play in Week 18.
Vintage Mahomes and Kelce Connection
Kelce denied rumors of retirement in press conferences and on his New Heights podcast, reiterating why he has no plans to stop playing after the season. But the reason the chatter surrounding the topic was amplified was due to his intermittent struggles in 2023.
Although he came close to missing out on his eighth straight 1,000-yard season, Kelce’s touchdown count dropped from 12 to five, including zero in the final six games of the regular season. But in the past two postseason games, Kelce has caught three touchdowns from Mahomes.
The pair passed Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski for the most playoff touchdowns thanks to their tight end tandem with the quarterback. A week later, Kelce passed Jerry Rice’s all-time postseason reception record of 151.
Even though the Chiefs had won three straight entering the divisional round, they needed a vintage version of Kelce to survive their past two wins over the No. 1 and No. 2 AFC seeds.
Correcting offenses where early attacks stagnate
Mahomes and Kelce connected midway through the first quarter of the AFC Championship Game, marking the eighth consecutive postseason game in which the Chiefs scored on their first possession. All three touchdowns, field goals and touchdowns this postseason, and all four times Mahomes started during the streak (Blaine Gabbert started in Week 18), happened.
But that’s not what their early-season offense was like before this recent stretch. Kansas City started 7-2, scoring just one touchdown in six games.
