Of all the uncharacteristic moments from Kansas City’s start to the NFL season, the final touchdown the Chiefs allowed Oct. 6 was among the most baffling.
Jacksonville quarterback Trevor Lawrence stumbled and fell to the turf, twice, appearing to be an easy tackle. Instead, Lawrence got to his feet, evading Chiefs tacklers en route to a touchdown that secured a 2-3 start to Kansas City’s season.
The moment appeared ominous. The Chiefs couldn’t stop a player flat on his back — and just six days later, they would be facing Detroit’s league-best offense. Then, to begin “Sunday Night Football,” the Chiefs promptly allowed a field goal, on a play that would have been a touchdown if not for a penalty, and a touchdown on Detroit’s first two drives, allowing more than six yards a play while being pushed around.
They looked flawed and unable to hang with a team that had established itself among the NFL’s best teams.
Yet Detroit went on to score on just one of its final six drives Sunday. It failed to convert either of its two fourth-down attempts. And for the first time since Week 1, the Lions failed to rush for at least 100 yards, as their NFL-best backfield of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs were held to 89 yards.
In Kansas City’s 30-17 win that improved it to 3-3, dropping Detroit to 4-2, it wasn’t unexpected that Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes found success poking holes in the coverage, throwing for 257 yards and three touchdowns without an interception, while running for another score. Injuries had knocked out five of Detroit’s top six defensive backs. Yet the biggest surprise Sunday was the performance of Kansas City’s defense. By showing it could hold an offense that had scored 34 or more points in four straight games to half that, it made a case that it could replicate it against any opponent.
In the race to the playoffs, Kansas City is just one game behind the Broncos and Chargers in its division, with seven of their eight divisional games still to be played. Suddenly, in a deep but hardly dominant AFC, the Chiefs appear right back in the Super Bowl chase — if it can continue.
It’s a considerable caveat. The superpower of Kansas City’s three Super Bowl-winning seasons in the Mahomes era wasn’t its highlight-producing offense, but a defense that, led by edge rusher Chris Jones and coordinated by Steve Spagnuolo, had a knack for making plays when needed, even if their rankings were rarely among the league’s best.
Entering Sunday, Kansas City’s defense was coming off a game in which it allowed a season-high 31 points to Jacksonville and ranked around league average in many statistics. It had allowed more than 100 yards rushing in four straight games, and more than 200 passing yards in all five. Detroit couldn’t eclipse either of those thresholds, and often because of their own errors, such as a fourth-down drop by star receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, and the procedural penalty that negated their first-drive touchdown, leading to a field goal.
“In the first half there was three plays in there that we make any one of them, and the game is really a lot different in the first half,” Lions coach Dan Campbell said. “We didn’t do it.”
That first drive signaled Detroit’s intent to maximize its time of possession, limiting how often Mahomes would touch the ball. The tradeoff is that such a strategy leads to fewer drives. In the second quarter, and again in the third, Detroit built eight- and seven-play drives, only to be eventually stopped by a defense that had “bowed up,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said. Those two drives accounted for nearly nine minutes of clock without points to show for it.
“Finishing those drives with touchdowns is what it came down to,” quarterback Jared Goff said. “They did it, we didn’t.”
In the fourth quarter Jones, who had been criticized for his lack of effort on Lawrence’s game-sealing score six days earlier, was noticeably more energetic, his pressure leading to a sack of Goff as Kansas City was nursing a 10-point lead.
Detroit converted three of its first four third-down attempts during its first two drives that resulted in 10 points, then went on to convert only two of their final seven third-down attempts.
The defensive rebound was part of a larger, more encouraging performance. One week after committing 13 penalties, the Chiefs had zero accepted penalties. On quick passes thrown in under 2 ½ seconds, Mahomes completed 14 of his 15 passes for 147 yards and two touchdowns, per NFL tracking data. An offense that had been trending upward for the past three weeks now adds an additional threat when receiver Rashee Rice returns this week after serving a league suspension for street racing.
Campbell, the Lions’ coach, detailed a number of Detroit’s own uncharacteristic mistakes Sunday as factors in the loss. Yet he kept circling back to the offense that had carved up the rest of the league for the past month, but sputtered against the Chiefs.
“Really, the offense man, we knew we needed to show up and we weren’t able to do it,” Campbell said. “Seventeen (points) is not enough.”