With Mahomes on the Sidelines, Chiefs Lose to Aaron Rodgers - The New York Times

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — So, there was this quarterback playing at Arrowhead Stadium who zipped sidearm passes and evaded defenders and completed throws that peers wouldn’t even consider trying. And it vexed the Kansas City Chiefs.

“I would imagine that’s what it feels like when Pat’s on the other side for opposing defenses,” right tackle Mitchell Schwartz said.

Patrick Mahomes’s closest stylistic analogue is the Packers’ Aaron Rodgers, whose improvisational brilliance has captivated the N.F.L. since Mahomes was in junior high school.

As Rodgers shredded the Chiefs on Sunday night, summoning his superior powers of extemporization in a three-touchdown performance, Mahomes, out with a dislocated kneecap, loitered on the Kansas City sideline, hands in his pockets, powerless to alter the outcome.

The version of the Chiefs that lost, 31-24, to Green Bay is both formidable and yet a modest imitation of what they thought they were, and hope they still might become.

In place of Mahomes, the Chiefs (5-3) started a quarterback, Matt Moore, who in late August was coaching at a California high school. They also played without five other starters, including two on the left side of their offensive line. That group led the estimable Packers (7-1) at halftime and later tied the score with nine minutes remaining.

In the zero-sum N.F.L., there are no mitigating factors. Still atop the A.F.C. West, by a game-and-a-half over Oakland, the Chiefs (5-3) filed into their locker room silently, ruing their penalties, their drops, their inconsistency.

They recognize that they are far more turbocharged with Mahomes at the helm, but also that they must figure out a way to win without him. They know that Coach Andy Reid is one of the league’s foremost offensive masterminds, but injuries have hampered their continuity. They have foundational pieces for a stout defense, one that hit Rodgers 12 times Sunday and sacked him five times, but poor tackling and communication breakdowns render that possibility fleeting.

On a scale of major marvels, it registers between a fun size candy bar and fuel cell technology that the Chiefs’ season did not vaporize on Oct. 17, when Mahomes dislocated his right kneecap while converting a quarterback sneak at Denver. Somehow he returned to practice less than a week later, and before Sunday’s game, he flitted around a pretend pocket, dropping back and firing passes.

The Chiefs haven’t publicly assigned Mahomes’s recovery a timeline, but this regime does not want to be remembered for compromising the health of the most mesmerizing player in franchise history.

When he is ready to play, he will, whether that is next week against Minnesota, two weeks, three or more.

“We understand we’ve got a lot of talent in our locker room and it doesn’t necessarily matter who plays,” safety Tyrann Mathieu said. “As long as somebody’s playing, we feel like we’ve got a chance.”

That somebody at quarterback Sunday was Moore, in his 11th season, making his 31st career start. Just two months ago, Moore was coaching quarterbacks at his alma mater, Hart High School in Santa Clarita, Calif.

Then the Chiefs called.

No training camp, no preseason. Before replacing Mahomes in Denver, Moore had taken all of nine snaps this season. “Watching Pat, it’s easy to want to play like him,” Moore said last week. “Which I can’t.”

In fairness, few, at least on this planet, can. But what Moore can provide — what he did provide Sunday night — is a certain familiarity with doing what is asked of him, what is required. On the sideline, Mahomes aided him, sharing what he saw.

“He told me everything that came to his mind,” said Moore, who completed 24 of 36 passes for 267 yards and two touchdowns. “I told him, ‘Don’t hold anything back. You be you.’”

Moore was nervous early, he said, when the Chiefs’ offense evoked a rubber band stretched to its limit, filled with potential energy. They let the band go in a 17-point second quarter, when Moore fulfilled Kansas City’s base objective, regardless of the quarterback: Get the ball to the fast dudes.

Reid tried scheming players open with pre- and post-snap trickery, motions and shifts and all sorts of backfield action. On the Chiefs’ first touchdown, Moore lined up in the pistol, faked a shovel pass to Tyreek Hill sprinting in front of him, then lofted an arcing ball to Travis Kelce, who had slipped behind the Packers’ defense. On their second, Moore merely flipped the snap into the hands of speedster Mecole Hardman, who darted 30 yards for the score.

Unlike the N.F.C., where Green Bay is one of three teams with seven victories, the A.F.C. lacks depth and quality, and midway through the season the Chiefs are one of only a few teams — Baltimore? Houston? — at all capable of toppling New England in the playoffs.

If that were to happen, a more delicious matchup might await, that delayed first meeting between Rodgers and Mahomes, marquee quarterbacks on marquee franchises who represent neither the past nor the future of the league but its very present.

The Packers are certainly a contender. The Chiefs think they are, too, but they will start to get a better sense when Mahomes returns, whenever that is.

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