After Another Close Win, Patrick Mahomes Says Chiefs Must Live Up to 'High Standard'

The Kansas City Chiefs barely did enough to win once again, but Patrick Mahomes knows this isn't the brand of football the team wants to play.

Nov 29, 2024; Kansas City, Missouri, USA; Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes (15) greets Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby (98) after the game at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Denny Medley-Imagn Images / Denny Medley-Imagn Images

Another week, another close call for the Kansas City Chiefs in a game they very well could've – or perhaps should've – lost. Even after building a 16-3 lead over the Las Vegas Raiders in the third quarter, the reigning Super Bowl champs began shooting themselves in the foot and resembling a team that did this same thing against the Carolina Panthers in Week 12.

Kansas City found a way to hold off an inferior opponent and emerge on the other side with a victory, albeit in the ugliest of fashions. It did lock up a postseason spot, though, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes believes it feels the same as any other clinching scenario.

“Not necessarily," Mahomes said. "I think when you clinch a playoff spot – that’s your first goal is to get into the playoffs and give yourself a chance to go for that Super Bowl. We know we have a long way to go. We have to continue to work to get better to continue to be a better football team going into the playoffs.”

In their last five games, the Chiefs are 4-1 with their lone loss being against a good-to-great team in the Buffalo Bills. With that said, the context of those outings paints the picture of a club that's just treading water at the moment. Week 9's victory over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers went into overtime, and then Week 10's 16-14 win versus the Denver Broncos required a game-winning blocked field goal. Next up was the Buffalo game in which Kansas City got outclassed, then back-to-back narrow margins against teams with a combined record of 5-18. At no point should anyone have walked away from viewing any of those games feeling supremely confident in the ability of Andy Reid's team to dominate.

Still, scraping together wins is better than losing and having to play the catch-up game. Kansas City still holds an advantage for the top playoff seed in the AFC, which could help its path to the Super Bowl more than what the team learned in the middle portion of the season. Either way, Mahomes knows the Chiefs need to get closer to their peak if they want to do real damage. He thinks they're better than what they've shown.

“We just hold ourselves to such a high standard that we don’t feel like we’re playing our best football all together," Mahomes said. "It seems like every game it’s [the] offense does good [or the] defense does good – kind of vice versa. We have to find a way to build up so we can play great as a full, entire team. It’s awesome that we’re finding ways to get wins. At the end of the day, that’s what you’re going for, but our goal is to get to that Super Bowl, so we’re going to try to continue to get better and better so that we’re playing our best football hopefully by the end of the year.”

Luckily for the Chiefs, they've been here before and had even worse results. On Christmas Day a season ago, that same Raiders squad came into Kansas City and handed Reid's group its fourth loss in six games. The eventual champs were 9-6 at the time but somehow strung together some improved performances once the calendar flipped to January. Reid's group is a late-game and late-season one with championship DNA, which supplies built-in advantages in tough games.

There's an argument to be made that of the Chiefs' 11 wins this season, as many as six or seven of them could've gone the other way had one play changed. Winning one-score contests isn't a predictor of future outcomes, yet that seems to be their brand at this point.

The Chiefs have now won 14 consecutive one-score games, the longest such streak in NFL history, per @ESPNStatsInfo.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) November 29, 2024

The Chiefs now have just over a month to cut down on self-inflicted wounds on defense and stop disrupting their own offense. That will be the difference between a disappointing playoff exit and the league's first three-peat of championships.

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