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The Kansas City Chiefs kept their season rolling in a positive direction with a 19-17 win over the Las Vegas Raiders, moving to 11-1 on the year and clinching their playoff berth.

Once again, the defending champs’ performance was far from good, but they managed to do enough to outlast the Raiders, who, on that infamous final drive, could easily be called the masters of their own downfall.

But the Chiefs keep not winning, and perhaps in what is a little insight into Kansas City’s mentality, quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who is usually upbeat about winning when the team doesn’t play well, wasn’t that thrilled with how the offense played.

“Just too many mistakes at the end of the day,” Mahomes said. “I felt feel like there was times offensively we moved the ball, didn’t execute in the red zone, didn’t execute enough on third down. Too many mistakes we got to clean that up if we want to get to where we want to go.”

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes throws agains the Raiders on Nov. 29, 2024.

In the win, Mahomes’ offense was seven-for-16 on third down which isn’t too bad, but looking at the red zone stats and the issue is glaring.

The Chiefs would go two-for-five in the red zone, which had a few more been cashed in, so the scoreline might have looked vastly different.

 

With playoffs now confirmed for yet another year, the Chiefs can have one eye toward January, but there can be no denying that there are some issues that the defending champs have to fix.

They can only scrape by in one-score games for so long before they are on the wrong side of the result.