LAS VEGAS — Several members of the Kansas City Chiefs’ organization have talked this week about how the team’s 20-17 Week 16 Christmas Day loss to the Las Vegas Raiders as a turning point for the rest of the season. It was a wake-up call for a lot of people, not least a receiver group that had let Patrick Mahomes down more than once with iffy routes and infuriating dropped passes.
In that game, Mahomes couldn’t even trust Travis Kelce, his best buddy, who had two killer drops. Both were on simple short passes, and while both came on first down so they didn’t kill any drives per se, it would have been better if Kelce had caught them.
There was this drop with 11:21 left in the first quarter on an easy flat route…
…and this one with 10:38 left in the game, which probably prevented a touchdown.
The Chiefs were down 20-7 at the time, and were unable to get any points on the drive when Mahomes failed to connect with receiver Rashee Rice from the Las Vegas seven-yard line. There, cornerback Amik Robertson was all over Rice, but it could be argued that the rookie still could have taken the ball in.
This may have been the nadir of the Chiefs’ offense through the season, and those drops personified a serious problem that had reared its ugly head over and over. Per Fantasy Points Data, Mahomes had lost a league-high 386 passing yards to receiver drops in the regular season.
However, through the Chiefs’ three playoff games, the Chiefs have “robbed” Mahomes of just 40 passing yards on drops — which means that things have changed in the right way at the right time.
What’s changed?
“If you watch the receivers every single day, they’re catching on the side when the defense is up, they’re catching after practice, they’re catching before practice,” Mahomes said this week. “I remember I was walking to lunch one day and Skyy [Moore] was out there catching by himself. Those guys have that mindset that they’re going to continue to get better. That’s been throughout the whole entire team. We’re not wasting any moments in practice, guys are working on the side, we’re trying to get better, and we’re not going to let that slide this week either, we’re going to try to do the same thing going into the Super Bowl.”
Well, it’s trending up when the Chiefs need it the most.