If one thing is clear from the first nine games of the Kansas City Chiefs‘ season, it’s that they are far from a finished product. Sunday’s 28-21 loss to the Buffalo Bills made the need for improvement glaringly obvious.
Both sides of the football struggled, relatively speaking, in a one-score defeat. For most of the second half, however, things seemed to be in control on the home team’s side. With quarterback Josh Allen playing uber-efficient football, running back James Cook moving the chains and the defense pressuring Patrick Mahomes, it was a recipe for success.
The result is Kansas City dropping to 5-4 on the year. As Mahomes and company head into a bye week, what’s the most pressing issue?
Patrick Mahomes Doesn’t Hold Back Before Chiefs’ Bye: ‘Got to Learn From It’
Speaking to the media on Sunday, the two-time NFL MVP said finding consistency is No. 1 on the list.
“We’ve had great moments, we’ve had bad moments,” Mahomes said. “We have got to be more consistent as a team, I’ve got to be more consistent at quarterback [and] we’ve got to be able to battle. We’ve been in a lot of these tight, close games in our history, but they’re not going our way now. How can we deal with that adversity? How can we be better and learn from it? You can only learn from so many losses. You’ve got to learn from it fast. It’s going to be an uphill battle when we get back, but I think our guys are up to it.”
Mahomes makes a fair point. Thus far, the Chiefs have had some high highs and the lowest of lows. They stumbled out of the gate, kicking off the 2025-26 campaign with an 0-2 record. They then rattled off five wins in six weeks, including a stretch that saw their offense soar back to elite form. Once momentum seemed established, it slowed all the way down against a premier foe.
The Chiefs scored on just one of their five second-half possessions in Week 9. As the second half of the season arrives, Mahomes believes it’s time to respond.
“Like I said, we’ve got to learn from it, but you’ve got to do it now,” Mahomes said. “There’s no easy game coming up. There are no more chances that we can really take losses. You’ve got to learn from it fast. We’ve got to be better as a team. Offensively, we’ve got to be better, especially on some of those big drives we had in the second half. I think we’ll just continue to push away and learn on this bye week, and then come back and be ready to play our best football coming off of it.”
Mahomes Not Thinking Ahead to Postseason Rematch Against Bills
This is somewhat uncharted territory for Kansas City. The last time they were 5-4, it was the 2021 season. They finished 12-5 that year, only to lose in the AFC championship game against the Cincinnati Bengals.
Now, Andy Reid’s group finds itself with the same 5-4 record. This time around, though, they’re out of the playoffs if the season ended on Sunday. They’ve also lost games to the three teams directly above them in the conference rankings: the 5-3 Jacksonville Jaguars, the 6-3 Los Angeles Chargers and 6-2 Buffalo.
Not only is the race for the one-seed in the AFC on, but the Chiefs have legitimate competition in their own division. Losing to the Chargers in Week 1 gives Jim Harbaugh’s crew a head-to-head tiebreaker for the time being, and Sean Payton’s Denver Broncos won in Week 9 to rise to 7-2 on the year. If Kansas City is to claw its way back into the driver’s seat for the AFC West, it would start with taking down Denver in Week 11 after the bye.
Some believe the conference is a two-horse race between the Chiefs and Bills. Considering their timeless playoff battles, it’s hard to fault that logic. With that said, Mahomes isn’t thinking ahead to that point.
Kansas City has to do some soul-searching first and simply qualify for the postseason with a great post-bye stretch of play.
“I mean, we’ve got to get there first,” Mahomes said. “We’ve got a lot of good teams in our division that are playing really good football. We’re down there in third place right now, so we’ve got to get back and get ourselves right. We’ve got to play better football and right after the bye, we’re playing Denver. That’ll be a huge game for us, so how can we respond to this bye week? [By] getting ourselves better and self-scouting ourselves so we can be better and go up against a tough division opponent.”
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