DENVER - The AFC West got a whole lot tighter on Sunday, and the Chiefs are the ones feeling it most after a 28-24 loss to the Broncos in Denver that ended with a goal-line stop as time ran out.
Kansas City had its chances. It had the ball.
It had the lead. It even had the game within reach at the very end, down to a final sequence that turned messy fast.
But the Chiefs came up short, and the details of how they got there told the story.
The finish was the kind that stings twice. The Chiefs got to within 1 yard of winning, and at one point believed they had crossed that line before a faint false start flag wiped it away.
There were, as the game unfolded, a few circumstances that likely didn’t sit well with Andy Reid. Still, the broader issue was familiar: another late-game comeback that never quite became one.
That’s the part that keeps showing up. Last year, the Chiefs had 14 possessions with less than 8 minutes left while trailing by one score, and they scored zero touchdowns on those drives. That used to be the magic trick for this dynasty - the ability to close games like this, to win the kind of contest they just lost.
The decision before the miss mattered too. With three minutes left and Kansas City up by three, Reid sent Harrison Butker out for a 54-yard field goal attempt. Butker missed it, his fifth miss in three weeks.
The miss was the headline, but the choice came first. The numbers, as Eric Eager provided at the time with PFF, have shown that stretching a three-point lead to six late in the fourth quarter can create more problems than it solves.
It can push the other team into a more aggressive approach. In this case, the Broncos got a short field, and the Chiefs never gave themselves the chance to finish the job on offense.
They had an opportunity to put the game away and instead handed the moment to a kicker who could only have extended the lead to six.
And then there was the final drive, where the Chiefs lost on the last possession after having a chance to win it on the one before. One more note from that sequence: Patrick Mahomes can’t take a sack on third down there, either.
The best offensive moment for Kansas City belonged to a rookie on the other sideline. Emmett Johnson’s first career touchdown was a 73-yard strike, and it came with Andy Reid’s fingerprints all over it.
Johnson sold the idea that he might chip or curl around the edge, then slipped through the gap and burst upfield. It was a clean blitz-beater, with Mahomes releasing the ball before Johnson had technically crossed the line of scrimmage.
Johnson had open grass, made one move, and stumbled into the end zone for his first touchdown. He finished with 143 yards, including 128 receiving.
The Chiefs also made life harder on themselves with a problem at center. Creed Humphrey’s shotgun snaps have become an issue, and on the opening third down, the offense never had a real shot. The eventual incompletion was worth minus-1.5 points, according to the RBSDM model, but that was almost the best-case outcome after Mahomes had to scramble just to secure the snap and then wisely throw the ball away.
That matters even more because the left side of the line is already unsettled, with Josh Simmons on injured reserve and Kingsley Suamataia benched for the second time in three games. In that kind of setup, the center has to be the steady piece. Instead, the Chiefs are dealing with uncertainty in a spot that’s supposed to be dependable.
And in the standings, this one landed hard. Before the week, Ben Baldwin’s model gave the Chiefs an 84% chance to win the division if they beat Denver, but only a 38% chance if they lost. That 46% swing was the biggest of any team in Week 8.
It’s a significant loss, and the remaining schedule only adds to the pressure. Per DVOA data, the Chiefs have the eighth-hardest remaining slate, while the Broncos sit at 27th. The Raiders and Chargers have, for all practical purposes, turned this into a two-team race.
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For Broncos fans, every on-air aside or social media needle feels like another reminder of how tense that relationship became. Wilsons comments have kept the conversation going around a pairing that never fully clicked in Denver, with Payton still on the sideline and Wilson now using his new platform to revisit the dynamic from a distance. [Read more 🡒]