The Kansas City Chiefs are winning despite Patrick Mahomes — not because of him

When you're the defending AFC champions, even winning doesn't necessarily cure all ills.

After edging past the Green Bay Packers 13-7 on Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs have won back-to-back games for the first time this season.

Yet concerns about Patrick Mahomes & Co. have only seemed to deepen as the Chiefs jumped from 3-4 to 5-4. Most of those concerns lie with Mahomes, who appears to be nowhere near the MVP-level quarterback the league saw the past three seasons.

For instance, Mahomes finished 20-for-37 for 166 passing yards, one touchdown, zero interceptions and a 74.8 passer rating against the Packers. 

While that zero in the interception column is a positive step — he had thrown a pick in seven straight games and had 10 on the season coming into Sunday — it was an otherwise uninspiring performance from the 26-year-old quarterback.

His completion rate of 54.1% was the third-lowest mark in his regular-season career, and his 166 passing yards were the second-fewest in his career as a starter in the regular season. 

Those paltry numbers have been a trend for Mahomes this season, too. Coming into this year, he had just one stretch of three games with fewer than 300 passing yards in each in his regular-season career. He has now done that twice this season.

As Greg Jennings laid out on Monday's episode of "First Things First," Mahomes has become the "greatest weakness" for the Chiefs.

Mahomes' two biggest weapons, wide receiver Tyreek Hill and tight end Travis Kelce, are struggling by extension, too. 

Hill had 11 targets against the Packers but just four catches for 37 yards. A season ago, he had four games without a touchdown catch. So far this season, he has five.

The story is similar for Kelce, who converted his eight targets into five grabs for 68 yards and a touchdown against the Packers. In 2020, Kelce had just five games without a TD catch, a mark he has already reached this season.

As a result, the Chiefs sit 15th in the league, with 24.6 points per game, after finishing in at least the top six since Mahomes became the starter in 2018.

Recently retired running back LeSean McCoy, who won the Super Bowl with the Chiefs in 2019, explained what he believes is amiss with the team on Monday on "Good Morning Football."

McCoy also pointed out that Kansas City's defense, which has been much maligned this season, has stepped it up in recent weeks. In their back-to-back wins, the Chiefs held the Giants to 17 points and the Packers to seven.

Granted, those wins came against the 3-6 New York Giants and the Aaron Rodgers-less Packers, but it's still something for a team that yielded an average of 29 PPG the first seven weeks of the season.

There might be room for optimism on the offensive side of the ball, too.

Desperate to hang on to the win in the fourth quarter against the Packers, who had just scored their first TD of the game with 4:54 left, Mahomes milked the rest of the clock with an 11-play drive.

His biggest moment came after the two-minute warning, when he scrambled to his right on third-and-10 to find Hill with a game-sealing, 13-yard completion.

For Nick Wright, an unapologetic Chiefs fan and host of "First Things First," that completion was enough to breathe life into what looked like an offense on the brink of extinction.

"He was awful, truly awful, for the vast majority of this game," Wright said of Mahomes on Monday. "I was despondent. But then, there was the moment. … And that final play. Guess what? That was Patrick Mahomes getting back to being Patrick Mahomes. … And that, my friends, is how you get over the yips. That, my friends, is how you snap out of a slump."

Even with Mahomes in a funk, the Chiefs are right in the thick of the AFC West race.

Each team in the division has five wins, with the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders sporting three losses apiece and the Chiefs and Denver Broncos sitting with four.

If Mahomes can rediscover his old form, as Wright believes he might have to close out the Packers, now is the perfect time for confirmation, with the Raiders awaiting in Week 10.