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Three Takeaways from Chiefs-Raiders on Monday Night Football

Chris Mitchell

The Kansas City Chiefs are 4-1 after beating the Las Vegas Raiders on Monday Night Football. Here’s three takeaways from that ballgame:

Patrick Mahomes is playing DOOM and Travis Kelce is his BFG

Last night Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce did something they’ve never done before in their storied history as a dynamic duo – they connected on four touchdown passes, something no Chiefs TE has ever done in a single game.

The final statline for Kelce was also pretty funny: 7 receptions, 25 yards, 4 TDs. In a game where the offensive line had almost a night and day transformation from the first to the second half and the wide receivers really stepped up to make that offense roll, Kelce still made himself known as the top dog in this passing attack in the part of the field that matters the most: the red zone. It’s hard to categorize that level of dominance on levels of actual football, so let’s take it somewhere else: Mahomes and Kelce worked the red zone against the Raiders in the second half like you would clean out a room of bad guys in the hit video game series DOOM with the BFG 9000.

 

There’s a growing list of quarterback and tight end duos in the NFL that are getting close to being as potent a threat or have some serious upside to get there, but after last night Mahomes and Kelce more than earned their status as being number one with a bullet…or in this case number one with a BFG blast.

 

The Chiefs are really missing their injured players

We can spin this a few different ways, if we’re being honest. We can bemoan the absence of first round draft pick Trent McDuffie after Rashad Fenton spent four quarters in the torture chamber at the hands of Davante Adams and company. We can pull the lowlight clips of replacement kickers shanking field goals that you kinda take for granted when you’re so used to Harrison Butker being your kicker. We can analyze Trey Smith getting scratched from this game since he’s such an integral piece of that Chiefs offensive line and a big reason why they’ve got that big, physical, mauler-type reputation that was mostly absent until that second half where they got the challenge from Mahomes:

We can also take the news that the Carolina Panthers may be looking to clean house a little bit and cross reference that with Turk Wharton tearing his ACL and the worry about depth on the defensive line that comes with it.

No matter how you slice it, last night you could really feel the side effects of getting bit by the injury bug if you’re the Chiefs last night. Chiefs ended up winning that ballgame and are now 2-0 in division play so you can rest easy for now, but come 3:25 next Sunday you’re gonna wanna hope that the names I listed are willing and able to play ball.

 

The Raiders keep inventing new and exciting ways to lose

Listen, the Raiders aren’t a gimme by any stretch of the imagination. Even at their sorriest, they can dig deep and sucker punch teams that aren’t ready for it and snatch a win out from under them. They’re still an NFL team, and still closer to the talent level of their opponents than not, even at their worst.

With all that being said, sometimes it’s as simple as going back to the old Marty Schottenheimer maxim: Just wait for the Raiders to beat themselves.

It’s a weird sensation watching a team get punched in the mouth like the Chiefs did last night and go into halftime thinking, “Welp…how’s the puncher going to blow this one?” The Raiders could have just as easily kept their foot on the gas to make sure the Chiefs stayed buried, and to their credit they still found themselves in a position to steal the game or force overtime in crunch time…and then it happened. Actually, it happened twice.

For the Chiefs to go for two on their last touchdown, it made a fair amount of strategic sense: make it a two score game and make the Raiders score two touchdowns to beat you with the time left in the fourth quarter was a good enough gamble. The same could not really be said for Josh McDaniels to decide to go for two. At best it requires the Chiefs to march down the field to kick a field goal to maintain their distance, and then you’re still down two needed to march down the field one more time and score before the clock hits zero. That gamble almost paid off, and if it did I’d be looking at this tweet like some sort of lunatic wondering why the Chiefs didn’t wanna try and get three yards in a half that they were dominating the Raiders defense.

And then, on 4th and 1 with the game on the line, the Raiders did this:

If you wait long enough, the Raiders will just beat themselves.

 

Up next, the Chiefs host a mid-afternoon game against the Bills. Kickoff for that one goes down at 3:25.

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