Kansas City Chiefs put together the elusive complete game against the Raiders

Does everyone realize what we saw on Sunday at Arrowhead? The Kansas City Chiefs played a complete game. I can come here and talk about the offense playing well with Alex Smith stretching the field or the defense playing well getting to Derek Carr or even special teams doing its part with four field goals.

In recent weeks the Chiefs offense would play great but then the defense would give up 38 points to the Jets. Or the defense would hold the Giants to 12 points or the Bills to 16 points and the offense wouldn’t show up. It was frustrating not seeing a complete game.n recent weeks the Chiefw

“One thing I thought, everybody rallied together and supported each other,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said after the game. “Not that they haven’t before, but if something didn’t go quite right they were all in there. They made a point to do that. It’s hard to lose in the National Football League. Sometimes you get into that washing machine where you’re going round and round and you’re hoping for something good to happen and when it doesn’t you get a little bit down. There was none of that. They just pounded all the way through. If there was a completed ball, they pounded through. If we got one yard on a run, they pounded it through the next time. Both sides of the ball were supporting each other. I thought that was good.”

Are the Chiefs out of the washing machine? I’m not sure that we can say definitively that they are. Yes, they played really well on Sunday. But they also had a stretch of a couple of months of not playing very well. I need more evidence they’re back to being the “don’t beat ourselves and do the little things right” Chiefs of old.

The most encouraging sign from this game for me was the pass rush. The Chiefs were able to affect Derek Carr and get after him. Chris Jones was a maniac out there and Justin Houston got pressure too (and Tamba!). That’s the biggest missing piece for this defense.

“Anytime you can hit the quarterback the way he was hit early, that affects him,” Reid said. “Then we rallied to the ball as far as the run game. The first series set the tempo, yes, but we found out last week there was more than that, you have to follow up on it. It was really all three phases. We’ve been up and down, offense one week, defense the next week, special teams here and there. They all played together.”