Typically I like to give it about 12–18 hours before sitting down and penning the weekly overreactions. Partly because it allows for some of the emotion to wear off and the **ration** to set in after watching whatever version of the Kansas City Chiefs decides to show up each week. Partly because I am a world-class procrastinator. I jumped on this one pretty immediately, as it felt like it would be borderline malpractice to remove emotion from any reaction to [the Chiefs’ 31-28 loss to the Dallas Cowboys](https://arrowheadaddict.com/chiefs-winners-and-losers-from-week-13-prove-this-team-is-in-serious-trouble-01kb0c4q6g48) on Thanksgiving Day. It was a loss so disheartening that the Hall of Fame–level bird I had smoked to perfection just a few hours prior felt like it never even existed.
Stop me if you've heard this before: the Chiefs struggled all day with penalties and inconsistent playcalling from the offensive coaching staff. The 2025 season has been a roller coaster, without question, and after losing 3 of its last 4 games, Kansas City appears to have taken this ride off the rails. Literally speaking, that's a very dangerous proposition, and it's becoming just as dangerous metaphorically. The Chiefs are now firmly on the outside looking in at the AFC playoff field, and at this point, the team’s margin for error is about as slim as it can get.
Yes, at this point the Chiefs realistically need to win out to even have a chance at making the playoffs.
Thursday afternoon was supposed to be reserved for unbuttoning your pants after exorbitant caloric intake, kicking back in a recliner, and watching the Chiefs move to 7-5 and put some heat on not only the team in the AFC West, but also the three teams sitting in the current Wild Card seats in the AFC. Instead, we witnessed a culmination of almost every major issue that has plagued the Chiefs in their five losses prior, and ultimately brought them to a 6-6 mark on the season while still having way more questions than answers.
Penalties on both sides of the ball. Losing track of assignments on play-action passes. Dropped passes. A deviation from running the football when it's being done at a high level early. Injuries to the offensive line. All of these things happened today. It's been building all season, but today felt like an embodiment of what this whole season has turned into: the roster is talented enough to stay in any game, but the decision-making and mental lapses that plague this team are enough to lose them.
Many things stood out as negative in this one. In fact, it takes an amount of effort that I'm currently not willing to exert to dig in and find glimmers from this game. I guess Patrick Mahomes made a very sweet play on the falling-to-the-earth pass downfield to Xavier Worthy and ended up with four TD passes on the day. That's cool. But only if literally everything else didn't go wrong.
The Chiefs offensive staff need some drastic changes
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Kansas City Chiefs v Las Vegas Raiders | Brooke Sutton/GettyImages
I, like many football guys, saw _Wicked: For Good_ last weekend. I enjoy a good musical, and as someone who had never seen the Broadway show or read the book, there were a ton of “Aha!” moments for me when it came to the origin story of _The Wizard of Oz_. In _Wicked_, there is a character named Fiyero whose fate ultimately leaves him in an eternal existence as a brainless scarecrow. I'm beginning to wonder if the character is loosely based off of Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy.
This conversation is the ultimate “chicken or the egg" quandary for Chiefs fans. Is it the guy “calling” the offense (Nagy) or is it the guy who concocted the thing in the first place (Andy Reid)? This has been debated when the Chiefs offense has excelled and when it has sputtered. Even on a day like Thursday, when the offense at times looked great and at times looked like Nagy and/or Reid had completely forgotten that they could do anything but line up in shotgun and force Patrick Mahomes to work through progressions on routes run by poorly coached wideouts behind an offensive line that was missing three starters — an All-Pro guard and both starting tackles.
Whether it is truly on Nagy, partially on Reid, or a combination of the two, Andy Reid isn't going anywhere and something needs to change. That leaves Nagy in the line of fire, and rightfully so. The Chiefs offense over the course of the last three seasons has become progressively more frustrating to watch. Previously it was lack of talent, but at this point the Chiefs have more than enough talent on the offensive side of the ball and are frankly wasting it.
The complete disregard for running the football may be baffling, but I guess at least it's consistent. After last week, there was a budding optimism that maybe Reid and Nagy could lean into that aspect of the offense. This week they had Isiah Pacheco back, after all, and maybe, just maybe, they could experiment a little more with Brashard Smith in a Jerick McKinnon–adjacent role. Did they do that? Of course not. Instead we got 20 sporadically called designed run plays and Smith got zero offensive snaps.
The inconsistent playcalling, inability to make adjustments, and complete disregard for playing to strengths has created an offense that 12 games in has some things to hang their hats on, but no real identity. Add receivers coach Connor Embree to the list of coaches who are culpable in the malpractice we're seeing in the Chiefs offense. Kansas City has arguably its most talented and complete wide receiving corps ever, and it appears that the integration of those players into the Chiefs system has been half-assed at best. That lands on coaching; Embree's fingerprints are all over this.
Football players should be allowed to play football during football games
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Green Bay Packers v San Francisco 49ers | Lachlan Cunningham/GettyImages
Last week I lamented that the NFL should consider [replacing the officials](https://arrowheadaddict.com/overreacting-to-a-stressful-chiefs-win-that-buys-kansas-city-a-little-time) it employs with a more accurate and likely more cost-effective alternative. This week I am investing in every AI company that I can find on the Charles Schwab app to do my part in helping make this a reality. Pump some cash into them so someone can figure out a way to solve the NFL's officiating shit-show pandemic.
The Chiefs were flagged 10 times for 119 total yards on Thursday, much of that on extremely questionable pass interference penalties. It felt like at times Cowboys receivers CeeDee Lamb and George Pickens were a protected class, unable to be so much as breathed on by Chiefs defensive backs without penalty flags flying. On one of Lamb's first-down catches in the fourth quarter, I jokingly said, “Gotta be PI, right?” before seeing an actual flag fly toward Trent McDuffie once more. There was nothing there — that was the joke. But in all reality, the joke itself is how poorly the game of football is being officiated across the board at the game's highest level.
Part of the issue lies in the fact that the league, in an effort to “clarify” rules every offseason, ends up complicating things further and further. It's almost as if the old “What’s a catch?” question can be applied to nearly every rule at this point. At this point it appears NFL referees are far removed from being rules experts and are now just shooting from the hip. One thing is for certain: it is impossible for games to be decided on the field of play when the folks dictating the flow of the game aren’t allowing the game to be played.
Kansas City's pass rush is nonexistent, and it's affecting everyone
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Kansas City Chiefs v Dallas Cowboys | Stacy Revere/GettyImages
The Chiefs defense sucked today. Trent McDuffie was getting burned, linebackers were losing track of assignments on passing plays all day long, and the defensive line did nothing to help anyone. That is becoming a recurring theme with the 2025 Chiefs.
Kansas City has now gone 11 consecutive quarters without registering a sack. I have a better chance of being mistaken for Glen Powell than the Chiefs’ front four has of getting to an opposing quarterback at the moment. What's that doing to the rest of the defense? Only completely handicapping every level of the field. Corners and safeties better get good at the “cover forever” drills in practice, because that is what every Sunday looks like for those guys at this juncture. Great cardio, though.
The linebacking corps and secondary, at times, are being called upon to generate some pressure with Steve Spagnuolo's blitz packages. The problem with that? Opposing teams now know they're coming and have seen almost everything the Chiefs can throw at them. Numerous times today the Chiefs brought pressure, and almost every time (sans the early interception) Dak Prescott was able to find someone nearly wide open in the empty void in the field left by a blitzing Chiefs defender.
Corners and safeties on islands and linebackers constantly out of position or trying to fill zones that are being vacated by other players is a great recipe for allowing teams to pick you apart in play-action, and that is exactly what is happening time and time again to the Chiefs defense. It's like the Chiefs studied the things they were able to take advantage of against other teams in winning one-score games last year and decided to make those mistakes themselves this season. That obviously wasn't the strategy, but the outcome that's been produced now mandates a “do or die” outlook for every game remaining on the schedule. Only time will tell how this plays out, but the inconsistency of this team through and through has put them on the brink of irrelevance in 2025.