Why KC Chiefs’ latest victory over Chargers is a microcosm of who they’ve become

With their 17-10 slog over the Chargers on Sunday at SoFi Stadium, the Chiefs won their 10th game in a row over two seasons. They improved to 4-0 and won for the 49th time in 57 games against an AFC West opponent.

The defense again demonstrated that it’s the most dynamic and dependable thing this team has going for it. Travis Kelce flexed for the naysayers with seven catches for 89 yards.

In his first game back with the Chiefs since 2018, a theoretically fading Kareem Hunt generated nearly identical rushing stats (14 carries for 69 yards) as he did in his last game with them (14 for 70).

And Patrick Mahomes connected with Xavier Worthy on a 54-yard touchdown pass, on which Mahomes said he told the rookie receiver he would “pretty much” throw it as far as he could and let him go catch it.

So there seems to be a whole lot that’s well and good with the Chiefs on a day marked by such milestones as Kelce becoming the franchise’s career leader in receptions (surpassing Tony Gonzalez) and Mahomes making his 100th regular-season start.

But nothing more momentous happened Sunday than the distressing injury to receiver Rashee Rice, the most essential part of the offense around Mahomes in the first month of the season.

How the Chiefs bristled their way back after the bizarre and deflating play on which Rice suffered what figures to be a long-term knee injury, a play that soon left them down 10-0, was fresh testimony to what we should now accept as fact …

Both for its reassuring upside and unsettling downside.

As much as the Chiefs might be the glamour team of the NFL as they seek to become the first to win three straight Super Bowls, they are distinctly more gritty than pretty. They often seem unable to bear prosperity and appear bent on making every game a harrowing experience.

In certain ways, this is nothing new: Of the NFL-record 78 wins they’ve enjoyed in the first 100 of Mahomes’ starts, 40 of those have been by one score (eight points) or fewer.

It’s just that, more and more over the last two seasons, that’s been because of the defense setting the baseline and the offense providing a fine complementary role.

There’s little doubt of the benefits of this capacity, including an ever-cascading “we’ll find a way” belief in themselves to a certain paranoia that mystique must embed in opponents.

And you can make the case, as Mahomes did Sunday, that these sorts of games gird them for the playoffs — in which Mahomes is 15-3 and the Chiefs have made it to four Super Bowls in five seasons.

“In the playoffs, you’re going to be in one-score games,” he said.

Quite correctly noting the parity of the NFL, he added, “These are games that we have to find ways to get a win.”

So ... they do, now having won these last 10 games by a total of 61 points.

But Mahomes was also right when he joked that he sounds like a broken record saying the Chiefs’ offense isn’t playing its best.

Meanwhile, it keeps getting depleted.

With the injury to Rice, the Chiefs now will be without a third key offensive player for the foreseeable future. Receiver Hollywood Brown (clavicle) and running back Isiah Pacheco (fibula) are expected to be out for months.

All of which only diminishes their already slim margin for error.

So even as it needs to stabilize to gel, the offense keeps being dealt more flux — not to mention cranking out self-inflicted issues, such as turnovers on the first two drives and some drive-ruining holding penalties Sunday.

The flip-side, though, is that what doesn’t kill them somehow keeps seeming to make them stronger.

And that trend sure feels like much more than a Band-aid or a crutch or a blip.

It resonates as a trait.

An identity, even.

You could see that anew in the response after Rice’s injury, flukily inflicted in part by Mahomes as he was trying to tackle the Chargers’ Kristian Fulton ... after Fulton had picked off Mahomes on an overthrow to Kelce.

“If I just don’t turn the ball over …” Mahomes lamented, “that never happened.”

With Rice down on the field for several minutes before having to be helped off and later carted to the locker room, the play felt like it could have a ripple effect.

Because it was the sort of play that can leave a team drooping, both because of the circumstance it set up — a Chargers first down at the Chiefs’ 20 with a chance to go up 14 — and the jarring impact of an evident major injury to a vital player.

“I didn’t know exactly what happened, because obviously I was trying to make the tackle,” Mahomes said. “But I know Rashee and how tough he is. So him being down like that, I knew it wasn’t good.”

So … next man up, Mahomes said.

But he acknowledged that this is sometimes easier said than done.

“I think more than anything, it’s just trying to get everybody kind of settled back down, including myself,” he said. “I think at the beginning of the game in general, we were trying to do too much. And that’s why we had the fumble and the interception.

“But guys stepped up and filled, as good as they can, the role that he has in our offense, which is a big one.”

Buoyed by the defense holding the Chargers to a field goal, the offense finally clicked a few series later, when Mahomes hit Worthy to cut the lead to 10-7.

Dreadful start notwithstanding, the Chiefs tied it 10-10 on a Harrison Butker field goal in the third quarter and put together the game-winning touchdown excursion midway through the fourth quarter.

It’s telling that the winning six-play, 60-yard drive featured three runs and a pass to Hunt and a 2-yard touchdown run by Samaje Perine — neither of whom were in the Chiefs’ plans before Pacheco was injured against the Bengals two weeks ago.

It also bears mention that their game-tying drive featured Mahomes’ third-and-2 completion to a diving Worthy for 4 yards and his third-and-11 pass to Justin Watson for 17.

After all, with Rice out “it was a lot of personnel switches,” Worthy said. “It was a lot of stuff to just kind of figure out.”

As usual, the Chiefs did just that.

How they can sustain it after another substantial personnel loss is another matter.

But it starts with scrubbing up the blunders that have left them trailing by at least a touchdown early in every game.

Because unless and until they do that, the Chiefs will be both steeled by their late-game magic and vulnerable because of it.

“I think it’s (just) a matter of cleaning it up …” Mahomes said. “I know some Chiefs fans are probably annoyed by it. But that’s all you can do in this league, is keep pushing and pushing to get better.

“And I think it’s going to pay off in the end.”

It certainly has for a lot of ends that so far have justified the means.