PHILADELPHIA — The Eagles are not a good team. Maybe they’ll be good and maybe they’ll be good soon, but at the moment they’re a bad team in a bad division with one win over one of the worst teams in the league.
That’s the context for the rest of these words, because if the Chiefs consider themselves Super Bowl contenders — and they do, and should — then what we saw for most of their 42-30 win over the Eagles here on Sunday is not good enough.
That would be fine in another reality, one in which the Chiefs had not lost two in a row, and had not been sending signals that we would see something close to their best here.
The Chiefs looked disorganized, especially on defense. They had the wrong personnel on the field at times, and the right personnel lined up in the wrong spots at other times. Lucas Niang, the right tackle playing his first NFL season, had a second horrendous game in a row.
Andy Reid’s coaching staff failed to challenge a missed call on what should have been an Eagles fumble near the goal line in the first quarter. The Eagles could have made this a closer game, but Nick Sirriani botched a couple red zone decisions and Jalen Hurts is still working through his first full season as QB1, including a missed throw on a wide open receiver in the end zone.
The Chiefs’ tackling is still bad, and the defense continues to show problems containing mobile quarterbacks. A week ago, the Chargers’ offense used tempo and substitutions to put the Chiefs on their heels.
The Eagles did the same thing, with success, and the Chiefs can expect every opponent — starting with the Bills in a showcase prime-time game next weekend — to build on the trend until it’s proven ineffective.
The Eagles had third and goal from the 7 and had so little respect for the Chiefs’ strength that they ran up the middle. And scored a touchdown. Philly’s point total Sunday marked their most scored in a game since a season-opening blowout of the Falcons.
Look, the Chiefs won, and they did it by a lot, and no NFL team or fan base should spit on a win. This would be a much different conversation if the result went the other way.
But the Chiefs have earned the high standards of a team that felt like a failure for losing the Super Bowl.
Their ability to meet that standard is in here somewhere, but the Chiefs are still looking for it.
It should surprise nobody if the Chiefs are the best team in the AFC by the end of the season, but they don’t look anywhere near that level at the moment.
The least of the Chiefs’ problems is Mahomes, but this is three weeks in a row for a disturbing pattern — interceptions on forced third-down passes. It’s hard not to believe he feels added pressure from a defense spinning in the mud, and is back to going more Texas Tech than 2020 in his risk-reward calculus.
The most concerning development is the regression of the defense, especially considering this is coordinator Steve Spagnuolo’s third season with veterans at every level — Chris Jones, Anthony Hitchens, Tyrann Mathieu and Daniel Sorensen. The communication and organization appears particularly bad.
But the Chiefs would be a better spot if that was the extent of their worries.
The offensive line is still coming along, their tackling is poor and the pass rush isn’t anywhere near what it should be considering the resources spent up front. Frank Clark missed his third game on Sunday, and he’s the league’s third-highest paid defensive player.
The Chiefs have the answers to the test, but they’re not finding them. Not yet.
This group is talented, smart and accomplished enough to believe we might remember all of these problems as a mere slow start.
But we’re at the virtual quarter-pole of the season now and we still haven’t seen anything close to this group’s best.
