The part that nobody talks about is it is extraordinarily difficult to maintain focus from July to February. Hell the difference between being done in week 18 vs playing out the playoffs is substantial. That's one of a myriad of reasons it's hard to win consistently.

And it's not to say that we maintained focus through our run. We had bonehead plays and lack of execution sprinkled all throughout our run. And we'd get pissed off about it. The difference between then and now is we could fuck off for a few drives and then make some extraordinarily explosive plays and we won a lot of those games.

It's probably worth looking at our run.

2018 we had runs of 5 games, 4 games and 4 games

2019 we had runs of 4 games and 9 to close out the year. But we also lost 3 out of 4 and four out of 6 at one point. That's with healthy Fisher and Schwartz and prime Reek and Kelce.

2020 we ran the first 4 making the total run 13 games. Then we had a run of 10 games. Probably the most consistent football of the run.

2021 we had a run of 9 games to finish before the Bengals game (which mind you is the worst game Pat has ever played), but at one point we lost 2 out of 3 and 4 out of 6 at the beginning of the season. That's right. 7 weeks in we had a losing record.

2022 we had runs of 2 games, 2 games, and 6 games before 8 to win out.

2023 remember we had that dumbass Lions loss to keep the streak at 8. Then we had a run of 6 games, 1 game, and finished with 6 games.

2024 we started with 9 wins to make 15 total, the longest win streak of Pat's career and it had been 4 years since he'd been close. All while fighting some of the worst injury luck in the league, the pressure of a 3 peat, getting everybody's best shot because everybody hates us, and all the fucking miles of the last 6 years.

Given the history of best player of all time, it's pretty obtuse to sit here and say "ZOMGWTFBBQ THEY LOST FOCUS!!!!1123!!!!one" when they just ran through the best run of Pat's career while facing incomprehensible adversity. Further, the reality is that NO team maintains focus EVERY week. Belicheat was basically a movie bad guy and New England would shit the bed regularly (remember when they got their ass kicked in Arrowhead in September and Benched Brady?). If anyone could do it would be the dude that ran the franchise like a Nazi concentration camp.

Look, it would have been nice to win this one. It really would have set up the last half of the season.

I've said it before and I'll keep saying it. It's hard to win. It's doubly hard to win consistently. It is infinitely harder to do what we're trying to do. That's why no one has done it.
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But this is kinda why it was worthwhile to talk about this stuff even when they won.

Because it's not about winning or losing some random game in the regular season. It's about not really loving what you're seeing for the purposes of the post-season.

The team has been AMAZING at keeping their head down and winning games when the only goal they have isn't really something they can do about until January. The loss has nothing to do with it.

It's that we've been seeing the same thing since, IMO, week 2. He looked really sharp in Week 1 and really hasn't looked the same since. He was pretty sharp against the Raiders and pretty good against the Bucs and 49ers. But the Ravens game is still the only time this season where I felt like he was locked in from start to finish.

It's just...a little disconcerting.
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No doubt. But he's still playing better than when he had that stretch when we were 3-4 7 weeks into 2021.

I'm not up here pumping unicorns and rainbows, and I agree Mahomes hasn't been playing well. Which is inexplicable given how much of a Terminator he is. But it's not new and it's not the worst it's been. I don't have an explanation other than they're not robots and this shit is HARD.
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It was the staff letting Suamataia get fucked up against Hendrickson and the Bengals. Ain't that complicated. Get beat up that many times that quickly and have it happen over multiple games due to poor OT play and your QB is going to be skittish in the pocket with piss poor mechanics even when he doesn't need to be. Just have to hope he can unfuck himself mentally before January.
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What a coincidence. That's when he had that loaf Erving protecting his blindside.
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That was 2019
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You're wildly oversimplifying the OL play.

The entire OL is struggling. To continue to lay it at the feet of Morris (or Kingsley) is pretty odd.

This high-dollar blue chip OL is the brick wall in the middle it should be.
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Nonsense.

Mahomes was elite against Baltimore. Great against Saints, Raiders and Bucs.

He was passable against the Chargers and Falcons.

Meh against the 49ers until it mattered.

Bad against the Broncos, Bills and Bengals.

It's been a mixed bag due to the injuries and uncertainty at LT. They're figuring it out.
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Yeah the LT is a glaring weakness but Smith has NOT played well this year and even Creed has had a few games where he's not as dominant as he usually is.

Of all people Taylor has probably been the most consistent with Thuney.
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And Thuney's not holding up as well at the point of contact either. Looks like he's lacking a little bit of the strength he's had in the past.

Technically he's as good as ever, but either time away from the weight room while rehabbing OR maybe he's just at 95% instead of 100% has him playing with less power than we've seen previously.
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Boy.

It's almost like you deleting all but the line you wanted to blab about impacted the statement I actually made...

Do better.
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The LT play has been absolutely abysmal in at least 3 games.

Bengals
Raiders
Broncos

Like, game wreckingly bad. The other guys need to fix their shit, especially Trey Smith, but none of them were constantly fucked on like those two have been.
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It was a false statement and deserved to be called out.

There was nothing "disconcerting" about Mahomes play for a large chunk of this season.

His problem is consistency, not OH FUCK WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO MAHOMES!??!
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He's at an all time worst in every category........

So yes there is.
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