One Chiefs star should be taking way more heat than he’s getting

The Kansas City Chiefs might be the most heavily scrutizined 10-1 team in NFL history, and it's not hard to see why. Sunday's narrow win over the Carolina Panthers was just the latest great escape in a season full of them for Patrick Mahomes and Co., and while 10-1 is 10-1, this luck feels like it's bound to run out eventually. And for a team eyeing a Super Bowl threepeat, barely surviving games against the Panthers, Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders is hardly good enough.

The finger has been pointed all over the place during this recent nervy stretch. The offensive line has struggled mightily. A decimated receiving corps hasn't been much better, incapable of getting any separation downfield and forcing Mahomes to make magic out of short passes and scrambles. And even the defense, the backbone of this team all year, has started to wobble, with real questions at cornerback opposite Trent McDuffie.

But amid all the discourse about what exactly is wrong with this team and how exactly it can be fixed, one name has flown suspiciously under the radar. The team's second-best player has been all too quiet of late, and while Chiefs fans might not want to admit it yet, it could cost them come January.

Chris Jones hasn't been good enough for the Chiefs

To be clear, Jones is still one of the game's most dominant forces. He's less than a year removed from wrapping up another first-team All-Pro campaign in which he recorded 10.5 sacks and terrorized opposing quarterbacks all playoffs long. It's not as though the 30-year-old simply forgot how to play football over the last nine months.

And yet, it has to be said: Jones hasn't been his usual self in recent weeks, and it's begun to cost a Kansas City team that is in desperate need of some pass-rushing juice. Jones has just three sacks so far this season, well off his typical pace. Some of that is out of his control; players like Mike Danna and George Karlaftis, while sturdy against the run, aren't particularly explosive getting after the quarterback, and the lack of edge talent has forced Steve Spagnuolo to bump Jones outside more often than he has in the past. Jones is a special athlete as a defensive tackle, and it's a testament to his skill set that he can even be passable on the edge, but the going has been a bit tougher.

And even when he does get to line up inside, he hasn't had quite the same impact. Josh Allen's back-breaking touchdown run two weeks ago is a great example: Spagnuolo had the Chiefs in zone coverage, smothering the Buffalo Bills' receivers, but Allen managed to break contain — at least in part because guard O'Cyrus Torrence blocked Jones out of the play. It's the kind of thing we're simply not used to seeing from Jones, and it's a slippage that the Chiefs can't afford given how narrow their margin for error is right now.

We've seen Jones cruise in third gear for stretches, only to ramp it back up and start wrecking shop once the postseason rolls around. And it's entirely possible that happens again this season. But this Chiefs offense seems to be short on answers, and Spagnuolo's defense isn't quite as dominant as it was last season. If Kansas City is going to survive three playoff games anyway, it's going to need Jones at his world-beating best, and the longer this goes on, the more worried fans should get.