Kansas City Chiefs: Missed Opportunities and an Imbalance Define 2014 Season

A 9-7 2014 season is a tough pill for Kansas City Chiefs fans to swallow.

After a dreadful 2-14 record in 2012, Andy Reid was brought in as head coach of the franchise, and the Chiefs were the final team to suffer a loss in 2013, getting off to a 9-0 start, which revamped Kansas City’s fanbase.

After a bitter postseason loss to the Indianapolis Colts, it only made Chiefs fans want the 2014 regular season to get underway soon.

Despite an 0-2 start this year, Kansas City turned the season around under Reid’s guidance. The Chiefs went on to win seven of their following eight games, reaching the 7-3 mark and were labeled as one of the hottest teams in the NFL.

At 7-3, the Chiefs had yet to play the then-winless Oakland Raiders, and it was assumed Reid would have those games against the Raiders locked up as wins for the Chiefs. Throw in one more win and the Chiefs would have had 10 and more than likely got in the playoffs.

Charlie Riedel/Associated Press/Associated Press

But after the Chiefs picked up an impressive 24-20 win over the Seattle Seahawks, the defending Super Bowl champions, the season went south.

On Thursday Night Football, in front of a national audience, Kansas City’s five-game winning streak was snapped and the Raiders gave the Chiefs their first loss of a three-game losing skid. Kansas City dropped out of the playoff picture and found themselves scrambling for wins and needed help from Cleveland and Jacksonville in Week 17.

The fact is, the Chiefs did this to themselves. At 7-3, there is no excuse to allow your team to fall apart and miss the playoffs.

In all seven of Kansas City’s losses, the team was held to 20 points or fewer. The Chiefs never suffered a blowout loss—their biggest deficit was 16 points in the 26-10 defeat to the Tennessee Titans on opening week. Kansas City’s defense was the only one in the NFL to not allow a team to score 30 points or more in a game this year. The most the Chiefs surrendered was 29 points against the Denver Broncos in the second meeting between the two rivals.

Clearly, the defense was never the problem, given they allowed an AFC-best 17.6 points per game on average. The unit kept the Chiefs in every game, putting it in position to win.

The missed opportunities and imbalance came on the offensive side of the ball.

Had the Chiefs ran the ball more with Jamaal Charles against the Titans, maybe they wouldn't have allowed the Titans to steal a win in Week 1. What if Reid gave Charles more touches against the 49ers? Would the Chiefs still have lost that game? Had the Chiefs been focused against the Raiders in Oakland, perhaps they wouldn't have suffered an embarrassing loss on prime-time television.

Don’t forget, the Chiefs fell just short in road games against the Broncos and Cardinals due to bad offensive play. The offense failed to score a touchdown against Pittsburgh, even though the prolific trio of Ben Roethlisberger, Le’Veon Bell and Antonio Brown came away with just 20 points.

You hate to look back and play the “what if” game, but it hurts to see there were golden opportunities for the Chiefs to finish strong, but they let some wins slip away. If Kansas City had an offense that was consistent, how big of a playoff run could Chiefs fans have witnessed?

The only way we will know is if the entire defense returns and if the right adjustments are made to improve the offense. The lack of help from the offensive line in pass protection and dubious statistic of no touchdown passes to a wide receiver shows how limited the team was offensively.

When fans look back years from now, they will remember the Chiefs' 2014 as a season of missed opportunities because the offense never rewarded the defense for its hard work. Because of that, fans will forever wonder how far this team could have gone, as the team couldn’t live up to its potential.

The hardest part to accept is the fact the Chiefs defeated the No. 1-seeded teams from both the AFC and NFC in the New England Patriots and Seattle Seahawks. That has to count for something.

We will never know how far the Chiefs could have gone. But what we do know is that this was the best defense the team could have asked for. If the franchise is lucky enough to bring back all the key players on defense and make minor adjustments with the secondary, Kansas City needs to find ways to improve the offense to have a better season in 2015.

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