Did the Chiefs Win, or the Chargers Lose?

As eluded to, it pained my eyes to see the Offense completely abandon the deep shots, even mid-level passing routes, for that matter. It was there in the first half, and it was working! Look at what Mike Williams was doing! He had 80+ yards in the first half alone! And yet, the only time we returned to it was late in the fourth, when we were desperate for points. The funniest part? It also worked then, too! The DeAndre Carter catch across the middle was fantastic! Palmer’s TD was a mid-level route. It was one of my keys for us to win the game, and I truly believe we could have if we kept taking shots.

Chargers Offensive Tempo

To put it plainly, the tempo was off all game. We couldn’t tell if we wanted to hurry up and play fast, or take it nice and slow. Take, for example, the end of the game – when there were two plays where guys failed to get out of bounds. One of which where Joshua Kelley deliberately stayed  in-bounds, for the sake of 1-2 extra yards.

Zero Pressure on Mahomes

When dealing with an all-world QB, you need to bring the heat. Look at the GOAT, Tom Brady, how do teams stop him? The bring the pressure up the middle. Shoot, look no further than Mahomes himself – the Bucs beat him in the Super Bowl by getting in his face! And yet, even with our all-pro level edge rushers, we utterly failed this. One sack. I repeat, one sack. That is an outrage. We saw it worked for us against the Raiders high-powered passing attack – and with the historical evidence on Mahomes kryptonite. We couldn’t have expected another 3 sacks from Mack, but what we saw was… bad.

Failed to Capitalize on Stops

Again, just like last week – this is unacceptable. That is not what Super Bowl contenders, let alone winners do. It’s imperative! That’s how you rack up the points, and put the nail in the coffin. Especially against the good teams. The whole time we were up, I knew we wouldn’t stay up if we didn’t keep adding on to the lead. It’s inevitable against the powerhouse teams. The worst part was, it wasn’t just that we didn’t score – it was like our energy was sucked right out of us. You need to have urgency. You need to understand the importance of the game. You need to do whatever it takes, and we didn’t.

Conclusion: The Chargers Lost

To me, even as a lifelong Chargers fan, I think it’s clear that all of the evidence points to the Chargers losing this one. That’s no slight to the effort the Chiefs put forth – but you expect that from them. As we move into a new era with sky-high expectations, playing like this won’t get us where we want to go. Furthermore, injury was literally added to insult – Justin Herbert is all bruised up and on a day-to-day status. And on that same token, Herbo’s injury really puts things into perspective. At that moment he went down, I (like the rest of us, I’m sure) couldn’t help but think, “well, there goes the season”.

And yet, things appear to be not as bad as they could’ve been. It’s one loss. Sure, it hurts – but there’s a whole season ahead of us. The injury showed us that it could be worse. We needed that win. But we need our saving grace at QB more. Let’s keep our head up, Bolt Fam. There’s still 15 more games. Hopefully, Brandon Staley learns, and adjusts – and if we can, there’s a bright, bright future ahead.