The Kansas City Chiefs turned in a 22-17 win against the Cleveland Browns on Sunday, earning the right to host the AFC Championship against the Buffalo Bills this Sunday.
Here are five things we learned from the Divisional round:
1. The Chiefs — and their fans — are now facing the ultimate fear
Ever since Patrick Mahomes became the NFL’s Most Valuable Player in his first season as a starter — sometimes I still pinch myself, wondering if the whole thing was a dream — we’ve all had the same worry in the back of our heads: that our young quarterback would get hurt in the playoffs.
Even the possibility that Mahomes could be injured in a mere regular-season game was almost too much to bear; on balance, we didn’t handle it very well when Mahomes missed time in 2019. We dared not even speak the name of this all-consuming terror, for fear that we would somehow make it come to pass.
Well... now it’s happened.
We may yet learn that Mahomes will be able to play in the coming AFC Championship game, which will kick off in Arrowhead Stadium against the Buffalo Bills at 5:40 p.m. this Sunday. Or it’s possible that Kansas City will have to figure out a way to get to the Super Bowl with 11-year veteran Chad Henne under center.
Playing in relief against Cleveland, Henne showed us that he’s capable of making solid plays, committing excruciating mistakes — and sometimes, coming up with incredible heroics, too.
In other words, he’s just like any other NFL quarterback — and that’s OK. Nobody can reasonably expect for the Chiefs to have a backup quarterback who is as good as Mahomes.
But the rest of the team is going to have to be prepared to take more responsibility than usual in order to win the penultimate game of the 2020 season. They may not be able to pull it off. But if they can, no one will be able to say that without Patrick Mahomes, the Chiefs amount to nothing.
That seems like a worthy goal.
2. Rest vs. Rust: Rest for the win... for now
When an NFL coach makes the decision to rest starters in a so-called meaningless NFL game, it’s always controversial. (I say “so-called” because there are some games in which there are no postseason implications — but no NFL game is ever truly meaningless).
Some will criticize a coach for resting his starters, saying that players cannot stay sharp for the all-important playoff games that are to follow; without their weekly practice and training, they will not have the competitive edge they will need.
Others call that poppycock, pointing out that in such an arduous, physically demanding sport, players need rest to recharge and refresh themselves before the season’s most important challenges.
The real problem is that both the Rust and Rest camps can provide anecdotal evidence supporting their positions. Unfortunately, the evidence itself is often in dispute. So the debate continues.
But there can’t be much doubt that after head coach Andy Reid chose to rest his starters in Week 17, the Chiefs didn’t show much rust as Sunday’s game opened. So for the moment, let’s put this anecdote in the Rest column.
And then in a year or so, we’ll revisit the whole argument again.
3. Daniel Sorensen keeps earning his way with the Chiefs
The undrafted seventh-year safety out of Brigham Young continues to be one of the team’s most polarizing players. Pick your argument: too old... not athletic enough... too slow... makes too much money.
And yet... in game after game, Sorensen makes big plays. In the Divisional round game against the Texans a year ago, it was Sorensen who made the key special teams plays that led directly to two touchdowns, lighting the fuse on the Chiefs’ 51-7 run that turned a 24-0 deficit to to a 51-31 victory. Without his contributions, the Chiefs might not have made it to Miami for Super Bowl LIV — much less win it.
Now in another big Divisional round moment, Sorensen made another such play.
Without the fumble that Sorensen forced late in the second quarter — as Browns wide receiver Rashard Higgins was trying to stretch the ball “beyond the plane” into the end zone — the Chiefs might not be returning to the AFC Championship. Sorensen managed to force it before the ball crossed the goal line — which meant that when it rolled out of the end zone, it became a Kansas City touchback instead of a Cleveland touchdown.
I’m not going to argue about whether Sorensen deserved a penalty for leading with his helmet. Maybe he did — and maybe he didn’t. But since it wasn’t called, it doesn’t matter. What does matter is that without this play, the Browns would be playing the Bills in Buffalo this Sunday.
You’re OK in my, book, Dan.
4. Lamar Jackson was born in the wrong generation
If I may digress into another of the weekend’s Divisional round games...
For the third consecutive season, the Baltimore Ravens have been considered one of the AFC’s top contenders. Now they’ve been eliminated from the postseason — although at least this time, they first managed to notch a playoff win.
But it occurs to me that John Harbaugh’s team has the same problem that Marty Schottenheimer’s Chiefs teams had: it just isn’t constructed to succeed in the playoffs.
Even in the modern, pass-centric NFL, you can rack up a lot of regular season wins with a good defense and a strong rushing attack. But as the Ravens have once again demonstrated, that’s a strategy that will tend to fall short in the playoffs, where you don’t always have the luxury of playing your game against every opponent.
But what if Lamar Jackson had been born 26 years sooner, allowing him to be drafted in 1992 — instead of... say... the Chiefs’ second-round pick that year: quarterback Matt Blundin?
To his credit, Schottenheimer tried very hard to change his stripes. He brought in quarterback Joe Montana and offensive coordinator Paul Hackett to get “chunks” of yardage with his offense — but it always seemed like his heart wasn’t really in it. Perhaps he’d have been better off to just go all-in with his own instincts, using his quarterback’s legs as the extra dimension his offense needed.
In other words... getting four yards with each cloud of dust — rather than only three.
It’s impossible to say that during the last decade of the 20th century, it would have worked any better for Marty. But it’s becoming increasingly clear that here in the third decade of the 21st, it doesn’t work for the Ravens.
5. The Chiefs’ Revenge Tour is still alive
Longtime Chiefs fans are happy now.
The Bills will play the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium — rather than in Buffalo — creating ideal circumstances for a rematch of the 1993 AFC Championship, in which the Bills defeated the Chiefs 30-13.
Should the Chiefs emerge victorious, there’s still a chance the Super Bowl could be against the Green Bay Packers, giving Kansas City (and its fans) the opportunity to avenge the 35-10 defeat they suffered at the hands of the Packers in the first AFL-NFL Championship back in January 1967.
But I’ll be honest: as time goes on, I find myself caring less and less about these kinds of things. When your own team hasn’t won a championship in five decades, it’s really easy to hold a grudge against a team that dashed your hopes of winning one 27 (or 54) years ago. Not that anyone is counting, but in the 351 days since Damien Williams went around left end on a 38-yard touchdown run, I’ve found myself to be quite a bit more forgiving.
Besides... where does it end? Couldn’t the Bills have considered that 1993 game as their proper revenge for the 31-7 pasting the Chiefs applied to them in the 1966 AFL Championship on the way to face the Packers? (I remember that game. It was not nearly as close as the score indicated). Was there no satisfaction to be found when the 5-8 Chiefs defeated the 13-0 Packers in 2011?
Seriously... at what point are the accounts finally square? This could go on forever.
But hey... I’m the guy with all the 63-times-around-the-Sun takes. If you want to continue to hold a grudge against an NFL team for some long-ago loss, it’s fine by me. But speaking for myself, I have found the Super Bowl LIV victory to be quite liberating. Its just not as easy to be mad about things like that any longer.
Just the same... if I encounter John Elway in a bar, that dude is getting a piece of my mind!