The Super Bowl rematch on Monday Night Football between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles delivered on the hype. Once again, the title hopefuls needed the final minutes to determine the outcome of a tight battle.
The 21-17 loss will sting the Chiefs considering they had a 10-point lead at halftime. They failed to score in the second half, allowing the Eagles to come back and win the game.
Which Kansas City players to to blame for the outcome?
3. Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce
It's tough to truly blame Patrick Mahomes or Travis Kelce when they are the Chiefs' offense. But it's tough to win when your two most important players make the big mistakes in the red zone.
Two promising Kansas City drives ended with zero points because of red zone turnovers. Mahomes threw an interception in the endzone in the second quarter with the game locked at 7-7. He just put the ball in the wrong spot and made it easy for Eagles DB Kevin Byard to nab the first interception in an Eagles uniform.
At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Kelce fumbled at the Philadelphia 14-yard line. The Chiefs led 17-14 at that point.
KC could have run away with a victory with two touchdowns on those drives. Even if they had settled for field goals, that could have changed the outcome of the game.
2. Justin Watson
The Chiefs have a wide receiver problem. Anyone with eyes can see that. The stats also back it up as the team leads the league in drops. That's a collective bad effort from the unit, which seems to trade off who will have the biggest negative impact each week. One week it was Kadarius Toney. The next, it's Justin Watson or someone else who needs talking about.
Watson got 11 targets against the Eagles. He caught just five passes. That's an awful catch rate, even if you account for some of those misses not being his fault. There were definitely drops.
At least one of them may have cost the Chiefs the game. We're talking about the fourth-down play that would have kept Kansas City's hopes alive.
On fourth-and-25, Patrick Mahomes did everything he could. He zipped the ball to Watson's hands like it was on a string. The receiver flat-out dropped the ball in the biggest moment of the game.
A serious question can be asked about why Watson is the go-to guy there, or why no other receivers made themselves available enough to warrant 11 targets. In the end, Watson is still expected to make the play when it's needed.
Speaking of...
1. Marquez Valdes-Scantling
Justin Watson's drop kept the Chiefs from extending the game, but Marquez Valdes-Scantling legitimately had a game-winning touchdown in his hands and he dropped it. That's worse.
Valdes-Scantling is on the field to beat defenses over the top. And he did that to perfection, blowing by Bradley Robey on what could have, should have been the biggest play of the game.
Once again, Patrick Mahomes put it in the perfect spot. That deep ball could not have been thrown better. Then it was on the turf, incomplete.
Valdes-Scantling has spent his career catching passes from two of the best quarterbacks in the league: Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes. If you're wondering why he hasn't been able to break through to be anything more than a middling receiver, that's why.
Of course, it feels like every receiver on the Chiefs has the opposite of the clutch gene.
Brett Veach has done an incredible job building Super Bowl-level squads in Kansas City, but this year's receiving corps might be a Super Bowl-losing unit.
Chiefs fans have got to be wondering which receiver will pop up to directly lose a game next...