With Chiefs' Achilles' Heel Revealed, Pretender Label Now in Play

The Kansas City Chiefs were a pristine luxury sports car earlier in the season while rocketing to a 5-0 start. They felt flawless then, and the weekly routine of spraying champagne in the winner's circle came with championship aspirations and MVP chatter tied to their quarterback.

But gradually over the past several weeks, they've stalled and sputtered. First, there were a few minor spinouts that could be shrugged off, as the Chiefs lost games to the Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders by a combined seven points.

Now the chip in their windshield has grown to a gaping crack—one that was exposed by the Dallas Cowboys Sunday during the Chiefs' 28-17 loss.

Kansas City' weakness lies on a side of the ball that was a strength during its 12-4 2016 season. It's also a weakness the Chiefs been able to mask often in 2017, which includes a Week 8 win over the Denver Broncos aided by quarterback Trevor Siemian's inept play.

But eventually, the Chiefs' defensive struggles were going to chop them down at the knees during a litmus-test game against a playoff-caliber opponent. That happened Sunday against the Cowboys, and suddenly it's reasonable to wonder if the Chiefs could go from perfect to pretender.

That's a fear already beginning to spread, and one shared by Kansas City sports talk host Frank Boal from 810 WHB:

The Chiefs have now dropped three of their last four games. During that stretch, they've allowed an average of 24.3 points per game. That's up significantly from their 19.4 per-game average in 2016, which was then the league's seventh-best total.

The 2016 Chiefs defined the bending-without-breaking approach. They gave up plenty of yards (368.5 per game), but kept scores low while managing the damage. They lived dangerously, and now the yards are still piling up, along with the points allowed.

The Chiefs entered Week 9 with plenty of bright and obnoxiously loud neon warning signs hovering around their defense. They came into Dallas giving up 392.2 yards per game. Then Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott unleashed a steady barrage of launched footballs, and the Cowboys marched toward 375 yards gained, and more importantly, a decisive win.

There are a few ways to show just how deep the defensive pummeling went for the Chiefs. Let's start with the tale of Terrance Williams, the Cowboys wide receiver who now doubles as the canary in the coal mine for the Chiefs secondary.

Williams had been an afterthought for the Cowboys, and he'll surely go back to that status soon. But the Chiefs defense has a way of breathing life into forgotten role players.

Let's see if you can pick out the number that doesn't quite fit with the others here:

Week	Receiving yards
Week 5	14
Week 7	0
Week 8	36
Week 9	141

Williams did more than just snap out of a recent slumber. Over his seven previous games in 2017, he had recorded only 21 catches for 216 yards. His 141 yards against the Chiefs marked the 28-year-old's third-highest single-game total of a five-year career.

He was on the other end for two critical deep connections that set up touchdowns: a 27-yard strike in the first quarter, and a 56-yard bomb in the second quarter.

The veteran went to the locker room at halftime with 105 receiving yards, and as NFL Research noted, marked a major milestone:

The Cowboys scored four touchdowns, which brings the total allowed by the Chiefs in 2017 to 25. The comparison to 2016 gets ugly there, too. Over an entire season that ended with a division title, the Chiefs allowed only 33 touchdowns.

The touchdown total from Sunday afternoon tells only a partial story, though. The Chiefs could weather the outburst from Williams, but what really sunk their defense was an inability to get off the field.

The Cowboys converted on an astounding 58 percent of their 12 third-down attempts. For perspective, the New Orleans Saints had the league's best third-down offense heading into Week 9 with a conversion percentage of 49 percent.

One of those first downs came on 3rd-and-15 from the Cowboys' own 13-yard line. That should have been a time when the Chiefs defense stacked up at the line to gain and then pounced on the inevitable underneath completion they forced. Instead, Cowboys receiver Dez Bryant broke free for 21 yards.

That wasn't just an improbable third-down completion late in the second half with only 1:30 left. It ignited an 82-yard touchdown drive the Chiefs defense needed just 91 seconds to give up, capped by Prescott's scamper into the end zone.

The Chiefs surrendered two 80-plus-yard touchdown drives on a day when their feeble run defense also took a shot to the nose. The lethal combination of Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott went off for a combined 120 yards.

A once-stable red-zone defense crumbled too, with the Chiefs unable to hold the Cowboys to a field goal once on four trips.

The Chiefs still have a ball-hawking defense capable of creating turnovers. That alone can propel them to wins, which happened in Week 8 when they pounced on Siemian for three interceptions.

So there might be games when a growing concern is hidden and the Chiefs capitalize on mistakes, then hand the gift of great field position over to the offense.

The Chiefs can make the playoffs and win their division on the strength of that turnover creation, and a revamped offense. But playing deep into January is another matter, and a much taller hurdle, especially with chips turning into cracks already in early November.