Kansas City Chiefs again prove they’re a one-dimensional team

People have fallen in love with the Kansas City Chiefs this year. It’s not hard to see why. Casual football fans can never get enough offense.

Patrick Mahomes remains on another planet. He pushed his touchdown total for 2018 to 45, just 10 shy of the single-season record set by Peyton Manning. While he’s unlikely to break the record at this point, the fact he’s doing this in his first year as a starting quarterback is something special. The Chiefs remained the big play threats they’ve been all year, racking up 28 points on the evening. However, it wouldn’t prove to be enough.

Once again the supposed best team in the AFC proved they also aren’t the most complete. All season long the Chiefs defense has looked like the second-class citizen in Kansas City. While they have some individual studs like Chris Jones, Justin Houston, and Kendall Fuller the unit as a whole is average. They went into the game ranked 30th overall and 28th in points allowed and then proceeded to surrender 29 points to a Chargers team playing without Melvin Gordon.

Not to mention Keenan Allen left the game early with injury too. It wasn’t a statement game in any sense. Merely affirmation that the Chiefs are a flawed team. After all, they’ve lost both regular season games to the other top two AFC contenders in the Chargers and Patriots.

History says offensive powerhouses fall short in the playoffs

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Some will argue that there’s no reason to panic. The Chiefs have the #1 offense in the NFL. All they have to do is keep scoring. Therein lay the problem though. The playoffs are a different animal that tends to make demands of teams they weren’t used to in the regular season. Odds are a time will come in January where they need their defense to pick up the slack and more often than not, it doesn’t happen.

Just look at the top 10 highest-scoring offenses of all time:

1. Denver Broncos 2013
2. New England Patriots 2007
3. Green Bay Packers 2011
4. New England Patriots 2012
5. Minnesota Vikings 1998
6. New Orleans Saints 2011
7. Atlanta Falcons 2016
8. St. Louis Rams 2000
9. St. Louis Rams 1999
10. Indianapolis Colts 2004

Only one team on that list actually won the Super Bowl. That was the ’99 Rams. Want to know what separates them from the rest of the teams? They were the only one to field a top 10 defense, ranking 6th in the league. Their ability to get stops when it mattered was crucial to closing the deal in crunch time. Kansas City simply isn’t capable of doing that.