The “what if” game can be played both directions, but it certainly looked like the Bengals were having an easier time moving the ball. No pressure on the QB, wide open receivers, poor tackling, etc. The Kelce fumble kind of sums it up. Even on a play that seemed positive for KC, the Bengal defenders were physical and found a way to rip the ball out.

They key in your post is: No pressure.

They doubled Jones and nobody else could win 1 on 1.

Yep, when in these type of games, the teams with the most turnovers normally lose. I believe that was the only turnover by both teams, unfortunatly the Chiefs had it. Sure, there were a lot of play calls that I questioned, but overall, when you play good teams, you've got to play mistake free football. It is what it is, on to the next opponent.

This guy gets it.

The most concerning thing for me; we have gone 1 - 2 against teams we will likely face in the playoffs, Buffalo, Cincinnati, and Tennessee. That ain't good math for a playoff run.

Counterpoint: you thought the Chiefs would lose 7 games this year during the regular season with a middling offense so have been down on and wrong about them all year long.

The defense gets unfairly punished when the offense fails. The defense wasn’t great but they made just enough plays to put the team in position to win and the offense failed. Now the offense does bail out the defense plenty but the dirty little secret is that in the majority of games we lose the offense has the lions share of responsibility. I put our last four losses much more on the offense than the defense and that is a big problem given Reid is an offensively focused coach.

I think we can put this one on the defense although I mostly agree the offense deserves plenty of blame. But it’s hard to put our two recent playoff exits on the defense. Our offense clearly lost us the Super Bowl. And our defense was actually pretty solid against cincy in the last playoffs. Until we see differently the D has done more than enough in crucial playoff games.

In general, if you can't get to the qb, your team will have a hard time winning against ANY qb, let alone a good one.

When your d coordinator sends pressure, but puts nobody on the safety valve back at such a rate that your defense surrenders the most yards to backs out if the backfield in football, you have to question wtf he's doing, oh and again, you're gonna have a hard time winning.

It's games like these, where ONE mistake by the offense costs you the game that you just can't have from the defense. We're bottom of the league in takeaways, our special teams are shaky as ****, and we have to rely on the offense to be spectacular with revolving doors at tackle.

Its a tough ask, and definitely ice skating uphill when it comes to playoff teams.

Only the stupidity of the Bengals on the part of their coach and wide open receiver that dropped the td kept that game anywhere close to watchable.

Cue the rigged WWE reeruns.

The offense was fine yesterday. They needed more possessions.

It’s always losses like these where Andy Reid gets aggressive about changes. With a softer schedule down the stretch I feel like we’ll see quite a bit.

We need to test prince wanagho out at RT. If not, then niang.
Brandon Williams needs to get ready to play significant playoff minutes
Make sure Toney is good enough to stay consistently healthy for the playoff stretch
Work melvin Gordon over and over again on ball security and begin testing him out on short yardage and red zone
Skyy Moore needs more reps the next few weeks
We need lots of reps from josh Williams and Bryan cook. These guys have plenty of time and upside to play better by the playoffs.
We need hammer over and over and over again getting gay ready to play spy. He becomes a crucial piece to playing josh Allen and burrow
There is still time to explore more depth. Particularly on the DL.

Trust in veach and Reid. And much as I grit my teeth until spags messes up in the playoffs (he hasn’t yet) trust that he will be better too. Including playing way better vs cincy in last years playoffs than he did regular season.

Fine is clearly not good enough against the Bills and Bengals. And that’s the problem. They far too often let these teams and the Titans also dictate how are offense plays and it’s always to their advantage instead of us taking advantage of what they are doing. Reid needs to figure it out or we won’t be winning the AFC.

I agree. It sucks but it is what it is.

Ok, they were really good, not fine.

They scored on 50% of their possessions. That's in pretty elite territory.

They definitely were not really good. Your first inclination was accurate. And the point remains that if in shortened games to other contenders we routinely lose then our offense is not playing good enough in those games and needs to figure things out.