NASHVILLE, Tenn. _ The saddest, angriest, most frustrated and stunned locker room in the NFL has been open for 14 minutes and Damien Williams is not moving. Tears slide down his right cheek. The mechanics of a sports failure play out in front of him.
The Chiefs had this thing won, wrapped tight, right up until the moment they gagged it up and lost 35-32 to the Tennessee Titans at the gun here Sunday.
The loss could end up a footnote, could simply be the placeholder for the "adversity" every team loves to talk about after an ultimate success. Right now, though, it feels like something bigger. Something worse. The structure of this season was supposed to include improvement down the stretch, both from a defense gaining familiarity and an offense gaining health.
The Chargers are getting better. The Raiders, too. The Chiefs have lost four of their last six, and now they can't even blame their quarterback's knee injury. They can only blame themselves. With a select few exceptions, every guy in this locker room can blame himself for something.
The Chiefs have lost some whoppers, many in bigger moments, but none quite like this.
"(Expletive)," defensive lineman Tanoh Kpassagnon said. "It still doesn't make sense for me."
Football is controlled chaos and guys process at different speeds. That's never as apparent as after a brutal loss. Some guys small-talk. Some scroll through their phones. Some, like center Austin Reiter, politely ask for more time before answering questions.
"I need to cool off," he said.
In the moments during the 20 or so minutes the media was allowed inside the Chiefs' postgame locker room, two pairs of teammates talked animatedly toward each other.
Nobody wore the frustration more obviously than Williams. He started for LeSean McCoy _ who fumbled last week _ and took a career-high 19 carries for 77 yards. But he also fumbled, the ball picked up and returned 53 yards for a touchdown by Titans linebacker Rashaan Evans.
It was a crucial moment in the second quarter, but there were lots of crucial moments. Too many penalties. A field goal snap that caught the holder off-guard. Missed tackles. Whiffed blocks. Dropped passes. Questionable play calls. A blocked field goal.
At one point, the Chiefs used four right tackles in four consecutive snaps. Chaos. And still, they should have won.
"It's still kind of hard to process all that happened," lineman Andrew Wylie said.
Really, just about everyone screwed something up. Quarterback Patrick Mahomes was great in his first game 24 days after his right kneecap slid to the side of his leg. The offensive line protected him well, somehow, despite at one point playing just one original starter at his original position. Tight end Travis Kelce was terrific. Trainer Rick Burkholder is earning his pay.
Other than that, woof, they all had a hand in it, and the emotions could be most clearly seen on Williams' face. Every once in a while, he ground his teeth together, his temples bubbling. He blinked. His mouth squished together, the muscles in his jaw and temple bubbling. That was it. No other movement for what felt like forever.
He sat two stalls in from the bathroom in the visitors' locker room, his eyes red and fixed straight ahead. His right hand locked into his left, his grass-stained jersey still on long after some teammates had changed and gone to the bus.
"You played your ass off," defensive lineman Chris Jones told him on the way to the shower. "You hear me? You played your (expletive) ass off."
Ten minutes or so passed. Jones came back from the shower. Williams still hadn't moved.
"Head up, dog," he said.
That the Chiefs lost is not stunning on its own. The Titans are tough, their strengths an awkward matchup for the Chiefs' weaknesses.
The way the Chiefs lost was stunning. They led by nine in the fourth quarter and by five when their defense created a turnover on downs with 1:48 left. At that moment, computer projections gave the Chiefs a 92% chance at victory.
Notably, those computer models do not account for the Chiefs boasting one of the league's best offenses.
From that moment, the Chiefs stage a clinic on how to cough up a lead: a three-and-out that included a third-down screen call against a run defense that was wearing down, a bizarre moment when long-snapper James Winchester started the sequence for a field-goal attempt before holder Dustin Colquitt was looking, the defense giving up 61 yards in 58 seconds for the go-ahead touchdown, and the special teams allowing a blocked field goal that would've forced overtime.
You can blame, literally, anyone.
The coaches for weird calls. The offense for giving up the fumble return and not converting at the end. The defense for not getting one more stop. And, especially, the Chiefs' special teams unit for failing on those last two kicks.
This loss changes the tone of the season. It has to. The Chiefs have enough talent to get through it, but this is something they'll have to deal with. Not all teams do.
This is the moment the season was supposed to start taking off, because Mahomes is healthy and the schedule now lightens. Instead, the Chiefs face a crisis of their own creation.
A week ago, a clear path existed for the Chiefs to earn a first-round bye in the playoffs. Now, their division lead will be gone if they lose to the Chargers in Mexico City and the Raiders beat the winless Bengals next week.
This loss will stick with the Chiefs. You could feel that in the moments after. You could hear it in their words, see it in their tears and know it by looking around the room. Regular-season losses don't often carry this kind of instant profile.
So, yes. This one will stick. It could stick in a good way, a group of players that (for the most part) genuinely care for each other further bonding to make sure they don't feel this way again. Or it could be in a bad way, the NFL's tiny margins now turning the other way.
That part is up to them.
