Why the Kansas City Chiefs are still the team to beat at NFL midseason, flaws and all

With just over a minute left on Sunday at Deutsche Bank Park in Frankfurt, Germany, Miami faced fourth and 10 at the Chiefs’ 31-yard line trailing 21-14. Anticlimactically and yet decisively, Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa dropped the shotgun snap.

Then he inexplicably pounced on it for a 13-yard loss, effectively ending the game, rather than seeking some desperate way to keep the play alive.

This was a remarkable break for the Chiefs, though it could be argued that the swarm of seven men heading his way rattled Tagovailoa.

But the point here isn’t to jab at the fine young Dolphins quarterback.

It’s to underscore a point about the Chiefs lost in translation as the standard for what constitutes success has been ratcheted up to a warped level after three Super Bowl appearances in the last four seasons.

The Chiefs absolutely are imperfect, even flawed, as the gaffes that led to that final opportunity for the Dolphins illustrated once again.

But they have that humanity very much in common with every other team and would-be threat to give them a comeuppance this season.

Just like they’ve been dealing with all along this path to what might already be considered a dynasty with a chance this season to dismiss any lingering denial of that stature.

Even if the dynamics so far this season are different than to what we’ve become accustomed, meaning that they’re being carried by a defense second in the NFL in points allowed (15.9), the Chiefs also so far have remained staunch enough to be able to compensate for any issues they have.

Enough so that you’d still rather be the Chiefs than about anyone else.

Entering the enormous challenge of playing host to the Philadelphia Eagles (8-1) in a Super Bowl LVII rematch on Nov. 20, the Chiefs are 7-2 and hold the AFC No. 1 seed that would give them both a first-round postseason bye and home-field advantage throughout the divisional playoffs.

Moreover, as the preseason presumptive favorites to challenge them in the AFC stand 5-4 (the Bills) and 5-3 (the Bengals), the Chiefs have enhanced their chances to win the AFC again from preseason implied odds of 20% to 29.4%, per Sportsbetting.ag.

For that matter, via BetOnLine.ag, Patrick Mahomes has gone from 5-1 after the Super Bowl to repeat as MVP to 9-4 now, despite the team’s offensive shortcomings.

So why does it feel so different than that?

Simply put, it’s about a certain attached self-consciousness of familiarity.

“Because it’s us; it’s ‘who I am’ as an identity,” said Overland Park native Dan Wann, a professor of psychology at Murray State who researches the psychology of sports fandom. “It’s ‘who I am as an important part of my identity.’ And so when you look in the mirror, when it’s your face, that’s the pimple that you’re going to notice. …

“When you’re reading about your team 25 times more than you read about the other teams, I mean, that blemish is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger.”

So it’s hardwired into those of us who watch the Chiefs the most to be fixated on glitches, such as the disconnect between Mahomes and this batch of receivers, third-and-short deficiencies and being on the wrong side of the turnover battle (minus-four) through nine games.

Not that those and other matters aren’t real points of concern. It’s just that they loom larger than we might logically process them.

Part of that skewed perception no doubt comes from becoming spoiled by the recent past. Maybe a bigger part parallels the myopic psychological pull to obsess over our own warts.

In this realm, that’s played out by fans who tend to see teams as an extension of themselves. As Wann put it in a phone interview Friday, we all have both our own personal life of individual traits but also a social identity — “a self-concept that is derived from” such engagements as being a fan.

Put that together with the sheer emotions understood to be tethered to fandom, and you get what we seem to have a lot of now: grumbling about the Chiefs’ shortcomings, with scant regard for the fact every team has deficiencies and vulnerabilities. And what seems to be an under-appreciation of where this team stands at the bye week.

Largely because if you are apt to obsess over your own flaws, Wann said, “it only makes sense” that you do the same when it comes to your social identity and group level.

“More so than other teams’ flaws, other fan bases’ worries, because those aren’t relevant to you,” he said. “’It doesn’t matter to me if Team X has the same flaw, because their flaw does not have the potential to negatively impact how I feel about myself (and) my overall self-esteem.’”

By way of example, he posed the situation where another team may have no All-Pro-caliber receivers.

“’That doesn’t faze me, because that doesn’t impact if I feel happy or sad on Monday morning,’” he said. “’My team however, (if) we don’t have any All-Pro caliber wide receivers … that flaw is so salient (because it’s) so in my face every day, because that flaw has a capacity to impact my sense of self-worth.’”

None of which means the Chiefs don’t have plenty to improve if they hope to contend for another Super Bowl. Could be that the Eagles will expose more issues, and maybe the Chiefs won’t play host to a sixth straight AFC Championship Game.

Lots of unpredictable stuff is ahead, and who knows what fortune will deal in terms of the sort of injuries and bounces and such that have contributed both to the Chiefs’ decades of postseason futility and their unprecedented success in the Mahomes Era.

But take a good look around: Every team has notable limitations and problems.

So, guided by one of the most accomplished coaches in NFL history, with Mahomes still an infinite fountain of promise and fortified by their best defense in years, it seems to me the Chiefs sure remain the team to beat — even if it might seem otherwise right now.