Jon Gruden blames decision to play for a field goal against the Dolphins on Patrick Mahomes

The Chiefs, by extension of living rent-free inside Jon Gruden’s head, eliminated the Raiders from the playoffs on Saturday without even playing in the game. 

It’s gotten to the point where Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs don’t even have to play in order to win.

Saturday’s finale of a football triple-header featured a classic between the Las Vegas Raiders and the Miami Dolphins, one that saw four scores in the final three minutes and one mind-boggling decision.

Guess who made the mind-boggling decision?

With the score 23-22 and under a minute left in the game, Jon Gruden decided to take a knee at the Dolphins goal line rather than try to punch in a touchdown. He played for the field goal, which backfired when the Raiders ended up allowing the Dolphins to go on a game-winning drive with less than twenty seconds left in the game.

“We wanted to give the Dolphins the ball back with as little time as possible, we thought we did that,” Gruden said after the loss.

But that’s not the big takeaway here, not by a mile.

Gruden’s follow up comment to that was explaining that Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs were the reason he played for a field goal rather than going for the kill shot from the goal line.

Jon Gruden’s postgame explanation confirms the Chiefs have broken him

“We did that against Kansas City and we scored with [1:15 seconds left], and Mahomes went down the field and beat us,” Gruden said when asked why he decided to run clock out rather than score a touchdown. “We felt the play was to eliminate all the clock  and all the timeouts and put them with their backs against the wall.”

Gruden remains so utterly broken by what Mahomes and the Chiefs did to the Raiders that it affected his decision-making in a key spot of a critical must-win game five weeks later.

Because of that, Las Vegas will miss the playoffs for the third-straight year under Gruden.

Perhaps worst of all, he just confirmed that his team’s biggest rival is living rent-free inside the decision-making part of his brain.