FOXBOROUGH — As they walked off the field toward the visitors’ locker room the Chiefs were surprisingly casual.
If they weren’t wearing uniforms, the defending Super Bowl champions would have seemed so nonchalant that they could have been coming in from a practice or a walkthrough. Their 27-17 win over the Patriots that snapped a two-game losing streak inspired no emotion at all. The players reacted like they’d finished an errand instead of accomplishing something significant.
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Playing the Patriots used to be an event. Beating the Patriots used to mean a locker-room celebration. For everyone. The Chiefs were one of the few teams who fought in their weight class. In 2023, for a good team, New England is simply a hurdle to clear and not a terribly high one.
The old swagger has been replaced by a team that doesn’t have answers. Bill Belichick is a sad shell of the wizard who had teams second-guessing themselves before kickoff.
The Chiefs weren’t great on Sunday. They didn’t have to be. They were simply good enough. Patrick Mahomes played closer to a mild-mannered manager than a superstar at the peak of his career. He threw two interceptions and didn’t add to his career or season highlight reels.
Travis Kelce got more attention for noticing the poster of his girlfriend in the Gillette Stadium hallway than for anything he did on the field.
For the Patriots, last week’s encouraging effort in their 21-18 win over the Steelers now looks a one-off anomaly. How badly the Steelers got whomped by a middling Colts team on Saturday indicated that the Patriots’ win was likely less about New England’s prowess and more about the decay of the Steelers.
It could have been worse. Bailey Zappe was nearly picked off near midfield at the start of the fourth quarter which could have set up another score.
The Chiefs had first and goal on the Patriots’ 6 on the final drive, Andy Reid took a knee rather than run the score up on his embattled friend and coaching colleague, a move that delighted and infuriated fantasy football players and gamblers in equal measure nationwide.
The big winners were the NFL and broadcast officials who made the decision to flex the game off of Monday Night Football for the first time in history. The floundering, offensively-deficient Patriots are no longer a primetime draw. Will anyone watch on Christmas Eve next week?
A month from now the only thing anyone will remember from the game was that Taylor Swift was there. That might actually be better. This game and this season are better off forgotten.
New England went from being a team that opponents had to be at their absolute best against to one an opponent can catch their breath against. Low-hanging fruit is still edible. The Chiefs snacked and moved on.
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
