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Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs are aiming to win their third successive Super Bowl.Photograph: Jay Biggerstaff/USA Today Sports
The Kansas City Chiefs have been living a charmed life all season. Coming into Sunday night’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers, the two-time defending Super Bowl champions had already set an NFL record with victories in 14 straight one-score games. And their point differential of +54 was the worst of any 11-1 team in pro football history.
Sunday night was more of the same. The Chiefs got out to a 13-0 lead, and it seemed for a split second that, for once, they would win a game comfortably. Then, the Chargers came back, and there were three lead changes in the fourth quarter – all on field goals. The game-winner was entirely typical for the Chiefs this season: a 31-yard attempt by backup kicker Matthew Wright, who is in for the injured Harrison Butker. Wright’s attempt hooked left, and looked for all the world that it would keep hooking left, leaving Andy Reid’s team on the wrong end of a 17-16 score.
But because this is the 2024 Chiefs, the ball doinked off the left upright, rebounded to the right and the Chiefs won 19-17.
Per OPTAStats, Wright was the third Chiefs kicker this season to make a game-winning field goal as time expired in a game – Wright here, Butker against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 2, and Spencer Shrader against the Carolina Panthers in Week 12. No other NFL team has ever had more than one kicker do so in a regular season in NFL history.
Now, the 12-1 Chiefs have the worst point differential for any team ever with that record (+56), and they’ve extended their all-time streak of 15 straight wins in one-score games.
If the Chiefs were as good as you’d expect a Super Bowl champion to be, this would still be ridiculous – the kinds of thing Bill Belichick’s New England Patriots got away with (legally and otherwise) for the better part of two decades. But, at least on the surface, this Chiefs team is…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/chiefs-15-straight-wins-one-100017289.html
Author : The Guardian
Publish date : 2024-12-10 10:00:00
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