These Kansas City Chiefs are imperfect. Through 14 games, they fully know they are imperfect, too.
During Sunday’s 27-17 victory over the New England Patriots, the Chiefs further learned to accept their imperfections.
“You have to find ways to put games together,” Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes said from the podium inside Gillette Stadium.
Inside the Chiefs’ locker room, pass rusher Chris Jones used just three words to describe the team’s performance.
“It was OK,” Jones said. “We suffered two (consecutive) games, and we’re not used to that. Whatever we want to achieve, we’ve got the group in here to achieve it. We’ve got a lot of good veterans to lead the way and the young guys are eager to get better, eager to listen. We’ll be OK. There’s no panic in here. It’s just a sense of urgency to get better.”
Across the locker room was receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling, who expressed confidence that Sunday’s win — which was the first leg of a pivotal four-game stretch to end the regular season — can be the start of the Chiefs progressing toward the best version of themselves.
“This is the same group that we had last year that won a Super Bowl and helped Pat win an MVP,” Valdes-Scantling said of the Chiefs’ skill-position players. “I think guys kind of forget that because we lost one guy (receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster). We’ve all got faith that we’ll keep figuring this thing out.”
By beating the Patriots, the Chiefs averted their first three-game losing streak with Mahomes as their starting quarterback. The victory also kept the Chiefs’ slim hopes of earning the AFC’s top playoff seed — including home-field advantage and a first-round bye — alive. The Chiefs know the only chance they have of achieving that is to sweep their final four opponents, all of which are being led by a backup quarterback.
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