Patrick Mahomes Gives Take On Frustration With KC Chiefs’ Offense

With time running out for the offense to improve, Mahomes is still confident in the work the group is putting in.

As it has all season long, the Kansas City Chiefs' offense remains the focal point of most discussions centered around the team. Fifteen games and 16-plus weeks into the 2023-24 campaign, things haven't improved a ton. In some ways, they've managed to get worse. Everything boiled over in a Christmas Day loss to the Las Vegas Raiders, with quarterback Patrick Mahomes having perhaps his worst performance of the season.

At times this year, Mahomes has been caught by broadcast cameras looking visibly upset during games. Those moments have grown more frequent as the season's gone on. Monday's outing was one of those instances. 

Speaking to the media on Wednesday, Mahomes touched on his frustrations with the offense and chalked them up to merely being competitive. 

"I just don't think I like losing," Mahomes said. "I think anybody can be frustrated when they lose. It's just about how you respond."

Despite the buzz that the mini blow-ups have generated, Mahomes doesn't see it as a negative thing. He thinks that when he or someone else (tight end Travis Kelce, for example) isn't happy with how things are going, it only shows that they desperately want to win.

"I think people see frustration and they think it causes controversy," Mahomes said. "I see it as a way of showing that people care. They care about their profession, they care about trying to do whatever they can to win games. So when I see stuff like that happen — obviously, we want to be in a positive light and everything like that — but I see someone that cares about the game and someone that wants to be better. Not better for themselves, but better for the team." 

Mahomes knows he has to improve. Emphasizing a need to be critical of himself when watching tape, the reigning NFL MVP noticed that his pocket presence was out of whack in Week 16. The Raiders' defensive front got home four times for sacks, with the quarterback also bailing from the pocket quite often or drifting too far back when he stayed in it. Mahomes said it's something that's been a focus dating back to his college days at Texas Tech.

It's been a rough year for the Kansas City offense outside of Mahomes, too. Winning Super Bowl LVII earlier this year, Andy Reid and Matt Nagy's unit doesn't have anywhere near the same floor, ceiling or consistency it used to. Aside from Mahomes, elements like poor wide receiver play or offensive line mistakes have crept up at various points in the year or been mainstays for weeks at a time. Monday saw everything fall apart in one game, leading to an embarrassing loss to a division rival. Even if it's just one player not doing his job, it can derail an entire play, series or game. This is the Chiefs' new reality — they have to do the small things more consistently to win. Mahomes gave a vote of confidence that everyone can and will keep working on a solution. 

"In order for offenses to work in this league, it takes everybody," Mahomes said. "And it starts with me and then it kind of goes throughout everyone else, and everybody has to be on the same page. This last week, we weren't on the same page in some critical moments and that hurt us. But I believe in these guys, man. We work our tail off and I know we say it every week, but we go out there and we're going to put everything we can on tape. Everybody's putting whatever they have in this game, during the week and during the game. I trust these guys are going to continue to work."

This is the first time in Mahomes's career that the Chiefs' offense hasn't seemed to put things together with the playoffs approaching. This year, the postseason being just a few weeks away is a bad thing rather than a good one. Kansas City needs more time to iron things out but is left with a very finite amount of it instead. The message has been the same for a while, and it's beginning to grow stale in the eyes of many. Mahomes is aware of that, citing this week of practice as essentially time to put up or shut up.

"We have two games left to prove it," Mahomes said. "At the end of the day, we can talk about it all we want, we have two games left to show that this work we're putting in every single week is going to pay off. I know we're not going to be the one-seed and everything like that, but we can still win the AFC West, we can get into the playoffs and once you get to the playoffs it's open for everybody to go out there and win it. I think that starts with today's practice [and] how we practice. We know Cincinnati, we know them well. They're going to play hard, they have a great football team, a great defense and it'll be a great challenge for us as an offense to go up against." 

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