KANSAS CITY, Mo. — If you’re willing to squint and suspend disbelief and fully embrace the notion that you make your own luck, there’s a smidgen of a case to be made that the Chiefs’ latest wacky win wasn’t so much because of a fluke as because of a nimble response to it.
And that they didn’t eke past visiting Las Vegas 19-17 on Friday just because of the slapstick act with 14 seconds left: Raiders center Jackson Powers-Johnson snapping the ball off quarterback Aidan O’Connell, who was looking away when it arrived, making for a fumble and a scramble from which Chiefs linebacker Nick Bolton emerged with the ball at the Kansas City 37-yard line.
After all, the Chiefs practice finding the ball in that situation — albeit in what Bolton called “little drills” that they tend to make fun of — and they’ve made a dynasty by staying poised amid mayhem and resolute when it looks like curtains.
All of that has just been infused into the franchise’s DNA, we know by now.
How else can you account for winning 17 of their last 18 games and improving to 11-1 and clinching a playoff berth a day after Thanksgiving while making virtually every game a distress signal?
How else do you explain setting an NFL record by winning the last 14 one-score games they’ve been in and having a meager point differential of 54 this season?
“Chaos. Chaos. No other way to describe it,” safety Justin Reid said. “That’s what makes football so fun, man. Anything can happen at any moment. You’ve just got to be prepared for the moment.”
While Reid was speaking specifically of the last play, the word “chaos” lingered in a broader way.
Because before that play, disorder and confusion were the prevailing signatures of their latest submission to the theater of the absurd.
Only last week, I felt like murmurs of their impending demise were greatly exaggerated and, essentially, that what wasn’t killing them was making them stronger.
In large part because that’s been a pattern for years now.
But you couldn’t watch this game and not be jarred by how off-kilter the Chiefs were against a now 2-10 team that gave them such a comeuppance late last season it should still leave an unsavory taste in their mouths.
For all the last-minute reprieves these Chiefs have conjured, including basically beating Baltimore by a toe’s length and a walk-off blocked field goal against the Broncos, this was the first time I remember feeling like they played a downright losing game and got away with it.
On offense, to be sure, where a beleaguered offensive line surrendered five sacks as it could only muster one touchdown against a Raiders team that entered the game giving up 28.5 points a game (28th in the NFL).
But particularly on defense against the Raiders, who came into the game 28th in yards a game (292.6), 29th in yards a play (4.71) and 32nd and last in rushing yards a game (74.6).
