Kay Adams pushes back on perception Chiefs were 'bored' during regular season

The Kansas City Chiefs showed that they should never be counted out when it is playoff time. Even though the Chiefs were the defending Super Bowl champions, they had an uncharacteristically puzzling regular season. Specifically, the Chiefs went 4-4 after their Week 10 bye after starting the year with a 7-2 record. Those four losses after the bye included the Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, Green Bay Packers, and Las Vegas Raiders. With that, the Chiefs looked like a team destined for an early playoff exit.

Leave it to the Chiefs to prove everyone wrong and play relatively flawless football once it was playoff time. Despite those struggles, Kansas City is back in the Super Bowl after they beat the Miami Dolphins, Bills, and the top-seeded Baltimore Ravens in the playoffs.

There has been discussion as to why the Chiefs played as poorly as they did in the regular season. Were they "bored?"

While speaking with FanSided's Sterling Holmes on the Arrowhead Addict podcast, Up and Adams host Kay Adams discussed how the Chiefs were able to turn things around in the playoffs. Adams brings up that former NFL tight end Rob Gronkowski said on her show that the Chiefs may have been bored in the regular season.

"His take was 'I think that they're, it's like being a really smart kid in class and getting bad grades because you're bored. You need to be challenged,'" recalls Adams. "He thought that maybe the Chiefs team and I don't know if he might be speaking from his Patriots experience or whatever that was, but what that might have looked like. But his theory seems to be, and it's interesting that maybe this team, and we have seen over the years they play down to poor competition. They let bad teams hang around in these weird one-score games perennially, that maybe they weren't challenged enough and then they rose to the occasion."

Kay Adams pushes back on theory that Chiefs were 'bored' during regular season

While Adams shares Gronkowski's belief of why the Chiefs struggled, the FanDuel TV host credited their ability to flip the switch due in part to the adjustments from quarterback Patrick Mahomes and head coach Andy Reid, their focus on limiting turnovers, and relying on the strong play of their defense, as reasons why they were able to turn things around.

"I would just say that Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid adjust better than anyone or as well as anybody ever has," said Adams. "And they were able to find ways to make the game more manageable and limit those turnovers, and it might just be as simple as that. And it sounds simple, but I mean still for Patrick Mahomes, who can put it all on his shoulders, to not have to do that to let his defense carry him, to let the game come to him, to just protect the ball, for him to admit 'I'm Alex Smith-ing this, I'm managing the game,' can't be easy from a discipline perspective. He was able to do it, Lamar Jackson was not, and here they are."

Mahomes and Reid have become quite the quarterback-head coach pair since the duo started together in 2018. Four Super Bowl appearances in five years, they know what it takes to make it back to the big game with a chance to hoist another Lombardi Trophy.

Regarding turnovers, the Chiefs have just two throughout the playoffs -- a fumble by running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire in the Wild Card Round against the Dolphins and a fumble by wide receiver Mecole Hardman in the Divisional Round against the Bills. As for Mahomes, he hasn't had a single turnover this entire playoff run. That is truly impressive.

As Adams mentions, the defense has played so well and was, quite frankly, the reason why the Chiefs made it to the playoffs, Mahomes realized that he just had to play a safe game to win, aka game-manage. Kansas City's defense allowed an average of 322.7 yards (second-fewest among playoff teams) and 13.7 points (second-fewest among playoff teams).

The Chiefs now have the chance to win their third Lombardi Trophy in five years with a win over the San Francisco 49ers in Super Bowl 58 in Las Vegas. The big game is on Sunday, Feb. 11, at 6:30 p.m. ET on CBS.

Fans can tune in and see Kay Adams as host of this year’s P&G Battle of the Paddles streaming LIVE from Las Vegas on Overtime SZN.