Through 5 games, the man with the golden arm, the architect of no-look passes and impossible angles, the QB who redefined the position, is the Chiefs’ leading rusher. Patrick Mahomes, with 190 yards on the ground, is pacing a room that’s supposed to have an actual RB in it.

When asked if he wanted to lead the team in rushing, Mahomes was brutally honest. “However we win football games, I don’t care how that looks, but it doesn’t look like that’s helping us right now. So, if other guys get running, and we start winning football games, I’ll take that.” That’s brutal honesty. The 28 rushing attempts for 190 yds and 3 TDs aren’t heroic flourishes; they’re frantic, necessary escapes.

They’re what happens when the machine around him sputters. With Kareem Hunt and Isiah Pacheco hovering at 164 and 163 rushing yards, respectively, the Chiefs’ ground game is coming from the one guy they pay to protect. It’s a concerning brand of football that has KC sitting at 2-3 after a gut-punch 31-28 loss in Jacksonville, a game that laid the team’s flaws bare.

Last season, the Chiefs were kings of the nail-biter, winning 15 straight one-score games. This year, they’ve already lost 3 of them. A thousand tiny failures have replaced the swagger. The paradox is that the Chiefs are still moving the ball, outgaining opponents by a hefty margin of 367.4 to 321.4 yards per game. But those yards feel empty.

It’s an offense averaging a respectable 120.0 rushing yds/g, yet its top 2 backs, Hunt (43 carries) and Pacheco (39 carries), have fewer yards individually than their QBs. That inefficiency is a quiet killer, and it’s part of a larger pattern of self-inflicted wounds.

“We crush ourselves with penalties and mistakes,” Mahomes admitted. “We’ve done that to ourselves all season long. It’s been one guy here or there.” Look no further than the 13 penalties for 109 yards against the Jags, the kind of sloppy play that turns wins into losses.

A cascade of small mistakes by Patrick Mahomes’ team

It started with a Jaylen Watson pass interference call on 3rd-and-15 that extended a Jacksonville drive. “I’ve just got to play better,” Watson said, “and not leave it in the ref’s hands.” But the defense’s struggles didn’t stop there. They let Trevor Lawrence get loose for a career-high 10 scrambles and 2 TDs, including the game-winning one.

The defensive line, a unit that prides itself on pressure, couldn’t maintain its rush lanes. “We let Trevor get out multiple times, especially in the red zone,” pass rusher Chris Jones stated. “That’s on the D-line…I take that personal.” That failure to contain the QB was compounded by a dropped INT that, by Nick Bolton’s own account, “definitely gave them life a little bit.”

The ball bounced off 3 different Chiefs defenders before falling incomplete, a perfect metaphor for a team that’s just a half-step out of sync. It all culminated in a final pass INT flag on safety Chamarri Conner, setting up Lawrence’s 1-yard plunge.

Right now, neither the defense nor the offense is holding up. “We’ve established that trust where the offense can lean on us in those [late-game] moments,” linebacker Leo Chenal said. “It really hurts that we didn’t hold up our end. Every single guy feels it.” So, it’s now or never for the Chiefs!