Patrick Mahomes and Co. are heating up in late December once again
In a pure box score sense, the Kansas City Chiefs are winners on Christmas Day, while the Pittsburgh Steelers are losers. But after the league’s first Wednesday afternoon slate of games, we also want to take a look at some of the bigger-picture winners and losers.
Winner: Kansas City’s offense
Just like last year, the Chiefs appear to be kicking into gear at just the right time. Just like last year, they have a rookie wide receiver (Xavier Worthy) coming into his own and becoming a major part of the offense as we head into the stretch run of the season. Just like last year, Travis Kelce is not showing any signs of slowing down any time soon. Just like last year, the rest of the league should be very, very worried about what this means for a potential playoff push. With their third win in 11 days, they have now clinched the No. 1 seed and home-field advantage throughout the AFC playoffs. It will be 24 days until they play another meaningful game, so they’ll have plenty of time to get Kelce and Patrick Mahomes and Chris Jones, among others, healthy enough for a run at a third consecutive Super Bowl. That is very bad news for anybody else hoping to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in February.
In Pittsburgh’s previous few games, Wilson’s backslide in performance could at least somewhat be attributed to the absence of George Pickens, the team’s primary (and often only) deep threat. But Wilson had Pickens back on the field Wednesday, and had one of his worst games of the season, continuing his recent trend of poor games. He went just 23 of 37 for 205 yards (5.5 per attempt) and an interception, while also taking five sacks. And much of that production also came in garbage time. He ran for 55 yards and a score, but we continued to see the limitations of Pittsburgh’s offense when he isn’t running hot on the moon ball completions to Pickens. Pittsburgh is just 26th in the league in offensive success rate — tied with the lowly Giants.
Winner: Travis Kelce
We already covered Kansas City’s offense as a whole, but we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention Kelce specifically, because he became the Chiefs’ all-time leader in touchdown catches, breaking a tie with Hall-of-Famer Tony Gonzalez.
That was the 77th regular-season touchdown grab of Kelce’s spectacular career, and his 54th from Patrick Mahomes.
Loser: Steelers pass rush
Mahomes was sacked exactly zero times in this game, and barely seemed to feel the pressure the Steelers did get in his face. He was totally unbothered by T.J. Watt and Co., who need to be dominating games if the Steelers want to make a real playoff run.
