What do the brief examples we’ve seen from each team tell us about Thursday night’s AFC West showdown? Well, a lot of what we already knew. Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense are yet again as dynamic as any in the league. Even without Tyreek Hill, Mahomes put up otherworldly numbers in the season debut and the train appears to be firmly on the tracks in Kansas City. Defensively the Chiefs look to be a much faster unit than they have been in the past. For the Chargers, Herbert and co. can say the same offensively. They also appear to have the same mentality on defense – create pressure, and generate takeaways. Many teams try to emulate this result each year, but the Chargers have done it well thus far under Brandon Staley.
For the Chiefs, though, the goal for this game is something that has become routine for them over the course of the past 6 seasons – winning games inside the division. With Patrick Mahomes at QB1, or at least at QB1 on the depth chart, the Chiefs are 21-4 against their AFC West counterparts. That includes 9-0 against the Denver Broncos, 7-1 against the Las Vegas Raiders, but a more mortal looking 5-3 against the Los Angeles Chargers.
This is simultaneously telling and misleading. The first 4 times Mahomes played the Chargers, Justin Herbert was still the quarterback at the University of Oregon. The Chiefs did, however, go 3-1 in those games against the Philip Rivers-led Chargers. We’ll get to that loss in a minute, but since Rivers left town and Herbert has taken over the reins in LA, the Chargers have split with the Chiefs 2-2 over the course of the past two seasons. Herbert and Joe Burrow are the only two QBs in the NFL with multiple wins over KC in that timeframe.
Of course, we have to take one of those with a grain of salt, as Herbert knocked off Chad Henne and a group of predominantly backup players in Week 17 of 2020. The 14-1 Chiefs had clinched everything heading into the AFC playoffs and sat Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and many other starters on both the offensive and defensive sides of the ball to ensure the team was healthy heading into their run for back-to-back Super Bowl championships. While they may have been good going into the playoffs that year, the injury bug would hit the offensive line at the worst time and ultimately doom the Chiefs’ chances at a repeat.
But since we’re boiling things down to very specific circumstances, let’s take it a step further and look at how the Chiefs have played the Chargers at home in recent years. In the Andy Reid era, the Chargers are 4-5 in Kansas City. While it may seem like they split every year, they have picked up 3 of those 4 wins in the past 4 seasons. In the Patrick Mahomes era, with Mahomes on the field, the Chiefs are 1-2 against the Chargers at Arrowhead Stadium, 1-3 overall. While some of this history can’t repeat itself because of personnel and coaching changes, some of the maladies that have plagued the Chiefs could again set them back in their effort to win the West for a 7th consecutive season.
2018: Week 15 Chargers (10-3) at Chiefs (11-2)
The loss we said we’d get back to in a second? Well, the last time these two teams met on Thursday Night Football in Kansas City it ended with a completely deflated crowd at Arrowhead Stadium. The Chiefs looked dominant early, holding leads of both 14-0 and 21-14 before the Chargers began their second-half comeback. The Chargers needed rookie Mike Williams to step up with Keenan Allen out, and he did in a big way. Williams scored 3 times, once on the ground and twice through the air. It was a 29-28 final score, with Rivers finding Williams in the endzone for both the gap-closing touchdown and the game-sealing, two-point conversion with just 4 seconds left on the game clock.
The Chiefs’ red zone defense let them down big time in the second half in this one, and could certainly do the same this week with Herbert and a potent Chargers offense coming to town.
2019: Chargers (5-10) at Chiefs (11-4)
Not much to write home about from this one. The Chargers stunk and would draft Herbert the following April. The Chiefs, with some help from the Miami Dolphins, clinched the 2 seed in the AFC and a first-round bye on their way to a Super Bowl title. Mecole Hardman took a kickoff 104 yards to the house and Damien Williams scored on an 84-yard run. This is, however, the only time Mahomes has beaten the Chargers at home in his career.
2021: Chargers (1-1) at Chiefs (1-1)
This game is without question the blueprint to the Chiefs falling flat against the Chargers on Thursday. Last year, coming off of a heartbreaking loss at Baltimore, the Chiefs wanted to come out strong against the Chargers. The exact opposite happened. The first four Chiefs possessions looked something like this:
Drive 1: 10 plays, 63 yards culminated by a pass from Patrick Mahomes off the hands of Marcus Kemp into the hands of Asante Samuel, Jr. (wrong team) for an interception at the Chargers 3-yard line.
Drive 2: 5 plays, 36 yards resulting in an 8-yard pass from Mahomes to Tyreek Hill, who subsequently fumbled the ball back to the Chargers on their own 14-yard line. Mike Davis would return the ball 20 yards to the LA 34, and there would be an additional 15 yards tacked on after Clyde Edwards-Helaire went low on a Chargers defender on the return. The Chargers would punch in their first touchdown of the afternoon off of this turnover. The short field (51 yards) made it easy for LA.
Drive 3: 6 plays, 42 yards resulting in another Kansas City fumble, this time with the ball squirting out of the hands of running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire before Chiefs fans had a chance to recover from his fumble that essentially cost the Chiefs the game against Baltimore the week before.
Again, the Chargers would punch it in for a score on a short field, making the score 14-0. The Chiefs’ next drive would go for -4 yards with an emphatic Joey Bosa sack of Mahomes on third down to bring the K.C. punting unit onto the field. The Chiefs would manage a field goal before the half, but trailer 14-3 at the break. 2 turnovers in the red zone, and one that allowed another scoring drive, in a game that was ultimately decided by 6 points.
While the Chiefs did make a strong push and tied the game up with a chance to win in the fourth quarter, Mahomes uncharacteristically threw a terrible interception intended for Travis Kelce with 1:55 left in the game with the score knotted at 24. The Chargers scored with 32 seconds remaining to seal the victory. Unforced errors were the demise of the Chiefs in this one and would drop them to a 1-2 record on the year.
The one negative from Sunday’s win over the Cardinals brought back some not-so-warm-and-fuzzy feelings for Chiefs Kingdom. We saw glimpses of the sloppy play that plagued the Chiefs throughout the first half of 2021 on Sunday. Dropped balls and fumbles by wide receivers. An interceptable ball that had to be broken up by an offensive player. Little things that the Chiefs got by with against the Cardinals that it does not appear they can get by with against an obviously game Chargers defense.
With that said, the Chargers will need to prepare for a much tougher fight in the trenches than they had against the Raiders as they head to Kansas City. Mahomes was knocked down a few times against the Cardinals, but overall the offensive line protected him for what seemed like forever- even when he was hit, it was after he had gone through his entire progression of receivers. Khalil Mack and Joey Bosa will not experience the same relative ease they had against a Raiders offensive line that used a confusing rotation of pieces against one of the league’s most talked about pass rushes on Sunday.
The Chiefs need to ride the wave that began on Sunday with their successful introduction to a running back by committee. Edwards-Helaire, Jerick McKinnon, and Isiah Pacheco created a formidable change of pace out of the backfield, and all three were extremely effective. If K.C. can eliminate the “shots to the foot” that plagued them last year and at times against Arizona, and establish the run game behind a dominant offensive line, they should fare well against this highly touted Chargers defense.
The best way to keep them off of the Mahomes, and to keep the Chargers from officially becoming the Chiefs’ Achilles heel, is to keep them on their heels. If the Chiefs can achieve that, we could be discussing the curse that never was on Friday.