The Kansas City Chiefs are back at 2-0, and the Miami Dolphins have been awful at 0-2.
The Kansas City Chiefs are back, but they have a big problem coming up, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes knows it. The Chiefs are playing the Miami Dolphins, and if this isn’t the definition of a trap game, it’s hard to find a more glaring one on this week’s schedule.
The Chiefs are currently 2-0, and they’ve won their first two games in completely different ways. They pounded the Denver Broncos into submission in their season opener as Denver pulled a no-show, and the Chiefs were able to outlast the Indianapolis Colts on Sunday night by doing just enough offensively to get a lead in overtime and allow Mahomes to win the game.
Mahomes is well aware of what could happen here, as his comments to the media this week indicated. His operative phrase for the week is “just staying hungry” when he talked about what the Chiefs will have to do to win this week. That means he knows just how bad the Dolphins are right now.
But the Chiefs went through their own version of this, and Mahomes also outlined that in his comments that were picked up by Myles Simmons of Pro Football Talk.
The Chiefs had to spend the entire offseason listening to the football world talking about how bad they were, and as a result Mahomes wasn’t the only one who came in hungry to put last year’s ugly 6-11 campaign in the rear view.
Now the opposite is happening, as Mahomes noted. Everyone is talking about how amazing and great the Chiefs are, and it’ easy to forecast what could easily happen when that kind of mindset sets in.
Mahomes also knows how early in the season it is, and that played into his comments as well. He’s incredibly driven, so he automatically brings that mentality to whatever challenge is up next.
Tweaking the offense will be on the agenda this week. As the quarterback noted, the Chiefs had opportunities to score touchdowns against the Colts, and they wound up kicking field goals instead. Some of the execution was sloppy when the Chiefs had chances to finish drives, and Mahomes pointed to things like miscommunication, route depth, making the right read and so on.
The big question is whether Mahomes’ teammates will come in as focused and driven as he is. The Chiefs started reasonably well before they fell apart last year, and we’re about to learn a lot about the focus of this year’s team when they take the field against Miami on Sunday.
