The Kansas City Chiefs’ Monday Night Football game ended in 31-28 loss to Jacksonville Jaguars. SportsBeat KC Podcast breaks down what went wrong & key moments. By Monty Davis| Randy Mason
Shortly after the Chiefs’ third loss of the season on Monday night, Patrick Mahomes made a statement that encapsulated the season to date.
“We’ve got to do better,” he said. “We’ve lost too many games already.”
And by Kansas City’s dynastic standards, it’s true.
Through just five weeks of the 2025 season, the Chiefs already have more losses than they had all of last year — and things need to change quickly if they hope to compete for home-field advantage in the playoffs.
After Monday’s game in Jacksonville, and then two days later — on Wednesday at the team’s practice facility — Mahomes repeated a new two-word mantra four times in a seven-minute news conference.
“Winning plays.”
The Chiefs’ early-season results have to be maddening to those in the building at One Arrowhead Drive.
At 2-3, the Chiefs currently occupy third place in the AFC West, one game behind both the Chargers and Broncos. Here in October, Kansas City sits 10th in the conference, out of playoff position.
So where does “winning plays” come from? In two of the Chiefs’ three losses — against the Eagles in Week 2 and the Jaguars on Monday night — they outgained their opponent in net yardage.
Particularly against the Jaguars, the yardage disparity was glaring. Kansas City moved the ball well enough Monday night to put up 476 yards of offense, 157 more yards than the Jaguars at 319.
The positive is that the offense is improving, but that doesn’t matter when the Chiefs commit an historic number of penalties and throw a costly interception at the goal line.
“There’s positives on how we’ve progressed as an offense, but like I said, I think more than anything it’s about making winning plays,” Mahomes said Wednesday. “In years past, we might not have had so much success offensively, but we’ve made those winning plays whenever it’s counted.
“And so I think that we have to get back to doing that. We want the offense to continue to progress, but when we get in these high-leverage, high-intense moments, we’ve got to execute at a higher level. And that starts with me and it kind of feeds throughout the rest of the team.”
Early on this year, on the back of a rebuilt left side of the offensive line, Mahomes has returned to the top 10 in the league in yardage, touchdowns and quarterback rating. Back in May, oddsmakers opened with Mahomes at third in the MVP race. As of Wednesday morning, he sits second, trailing only Bills quarterback Josh Allen.
But perhaps the best part about Mahomes is that he would trade all the yardage and accolades in the world to be 5-0 instead of one game under .500.
“Our guys moved the ball effectively, but the stat part doesn’t matter,” Chiefs head coach Andy Reid said, echoing his quarterback’s sentiment. “Points matter. You’ve got to score more than the other team, and we didn’t.
“But there were good things — the line and backs did a nice job. We just had a couple self-inflicted wounds, and you can’t do that.”
Mahomes and Reid’s messaging has reached other players in the locker room, such as veteran receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster, whom Reid has entrusted to lead the receivers room.
“It’s very impressive for us to go 400-plus yards, almost 500 yards, but those penalties — they’re drive killers, they’re momentum killers and it hurts us as a team,” Smith-Schuster said. “And it goes vice versa — offense, defense, special teams. For us, I felt like we did great as far as, you know, having that pick-six but still coming back through adversity, putting points on the board and putting us in a better position to help the defense.”
In fairness to Mahomes and the offense, the Chiefs could have folded after the Jaguars went on a 21-0 run capped by Devin Lloyd’s 99-yard interception return touchdown. They didn’t, using a short field to tie the game and later putting together a methodical 86-yard drive to apply pressure on the Jaguars.
But Mahomes’ message isn’t exclusive to the KC offense. On special teams, that final kickoff needs to stay in bounds. A defensive pass-interference play can’t erase an interception, and a defensive leader like Chris Jones has to play through the whistle to seal the game.
The quarterback sees the growth; now he wants to see consistent victories.
“We’re getting better,” Mahomes said. “That’s all you can do — we’re getting better and better. Obviously, we’ve got one more week that we’ll continue to add (suspended receiver) Rashee (Rice), so just get him into the offense as well.
“But at the end of the day it’s all about winning. I think if we can start making those winning plays, that’s the last step we need to take the offense to the next level.”
It may not seem like it, but the Chiefs have been 2-3 with Mahomes at quarterback on one other occasion — in 2021, when they dropped early games to the Ravens, Chargers and Bills.
From that point forward, they rallied back to win 10 of their remaining 12 games, securing the AFC’s No. 2 seed. That seeding allowed them to host the AFC Championship Game after the Bengals knocked off the No. 1-seeded Titans in the Divisional Round.
With the season still in its early stags — it’s still just early October — nothing is out of reach for the Chiefs. The challenge is that a turnaround will have to start Sunday night against a Lions team that leads the league with an average of 35 points scored while surrendering just 22 on defense.
“I mean, it’s a great defense — a dominant team,” Smith-Schuster said. “I’m excited to get out there with those boys, but at the same time, like Pat said, we’ve got to make our winning plays.”