Diante Lee

It's been health and the fact that this defense has taken a bunch of steps backwards.

And now that you know that your quarterback is probably not going to be available for a while, you have to ask some serious questions about what exactly it is that they got accomplished this year, if anything at all.

I'm not there.

And I will say that, like, the reason why I'm not there is because I just continue to ask myself the same sequence of questions when it comes to these AFC contenders when they play against the Chiefs.

Right.

The first question is always like, what did I evaluate based off of what we actually saw between the lines?

And then based on that evaluation, does it materially change how I feel about this team and its pathway to beating Kansas City in the playoffs?

And to tackle the first question, I think they did exactly what you said.

They got pressure in a way that you don't usually see Patrick Mahomes be pressured in a lot of ways.

Actually, this game reminds me of their game last year, week nine or week 10, where they gave Kansas City their first loss.

And you saw the offense was moving the ball continuously.

controlling the line of scrimmage.

Josh Allen was a wizard on third down in that game.

I thought that he was great in obvious passing situations in this game.

And there really weren't even that many of them because they did such a good job on first and second down, managing the game situation in the down and distance.

But defensively, you force some turnovers.

You get some inconsistent play from Mahomes.

I would say this might be his most uncharacteristic regular season game that we've seen in I don't know how long.

And especially over the last month, month and a half where it looked like, oh God, this team is back to 2019, 2020, 2021 levels of efficiency.

It was a shock to see them play that way