The Chiefs are 3-0 and they haven't even started playing well yet

ATLANTA — In most cases, when a team hasn’t played well in any of its games, when its quarterback is down on his own play, when the team allows two red-zone drives in the final five minutes, that team is struggling toward a losing record.

Then there are the Kansas City Chiefs, who are suffering through all of that … and are still 3-0, one of five remaining undefeated teams in the league.

The two-time defending world champions played juuuust well enough to win on Sunday night, beating the Atlanta Falcons 22-17 in a game that was in doubt until the final 56 seconds. Lacking its star running back, facing a Falcons team that alternated between lethal and self-destructive, Kansas City leaned hard on its experience to escape Atlanta with a win that would have eluded most teams.

“Yeah, we got a ton of things to work on,” head coach Andy Reid said after the game, without elaborating.

He praised the work of his defense, which forced Atlanta into two turnovers on downs inside the Chiefs' 13-yard line and inside the game’s final minutes. But he left Kansas City’s struggles unsaid, like the continuing difficulties in getting the ball to Travis Kelce, or miscues like a three-and-out late in the fourth with the game on the line. Reid surely noted them, but he’s not about to tip his hand on KC’s weaknesses in a public forum.

Patrick Mahomes, on the other hand, doesn’t hold back.

“We haven’t played good, I mean, really, all three games,” he said after Sunday night’s game. “We’ve been able to win, [and] that speaks to the character of the team, the grit, how we’ve been in these situations before. But I’ll speak — especially offensively and me, myself, I feel like I haven’t played very well.”

Mahomes finished with 217 yards passing on 26 of 39 attempts, with two touchdowns and an interception. He had little trouble moving the ball in bite-sized chunks; Kansas City doubled up Atlanta on time of possession for most of the game, and finished with nearly a 10-minute advantage, 34:57 to 25:03.

But Mahomes struggled to hit the long passes. His longest was a 27-yarder to Rashee Rice. He floated an ugly interception in the end zone to perpetual nemesis Justin Simmons on Kansas City’s first drive. The Chiefs leaned hard on Harrison Butker’s toe, kicking three field goals across four possessions in the second and third quarters. Mahomes had little trouble finding the open man, but he had a very un-Mahomes-ian vibe to his game.

He knows that “vibes” don’t show up in the box score, or even in advanced metrics. But he knows something is off.

“That’s not a stats thing,” Mahomes said of his frustrations. “I just feel like I'm missing opportunities whenever they're out there and not throwing the ball in the exact spot I want it to be at.”

“He's the greatest quarterback I've ever played with,” Rice said. “So, you know, whenever he feels like he hasn't had a great game, I feel the same way.” (For the record, Rice led all receivers with 12 catches for 110 yards and a touchdown.)

The defense held up its end of the deal, halting the Falcons on charge after charge. Linebacker Nick Bolton made the stop of the game, catching Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson in the backfield on fourth-and-1 with less than a minute remaining to snuff out the Falcons’ final hopes. Afterward, he put all the credit on the Chiefs’ weekly preparation.

“Two minutes, four minutes, whatever we have, man, go out there and execute,” Bolton said. “Just trust the work.”

The Chiefs have won three games by a total of 13 points. But the key thing in that sentence isn’t “13,” it’s “won.” The NFL right now is in chaos. Teams predicted to be Super Bowl contenders are 1-2. Teams predicted to struggle are undefeated. But the Chiefs, and Mahomes, remain the constant, the standard, the target.

The Chiefs have two of 2024’s most unpredictable teams — the Chargers (2-1) and Saints (2-1) — on the docket before their bye week, and then comes a Super Bowl rematch with San Francisco. Playing like they have so far could cost them all three games, or could win them all three games … but they probably won’t post any blowouts anytime soon with this kind of good-enough-is-good-enough ball.

“Luckily for me, I'm not playing my best football and we're still getting wins,” Mahomes said. “I gotta get better to make the offense better.”

The fact that Kansas City is, by its star’s own admission, struggling — and yet still winning — ought to be a hell of a warning sign to the rest of the league. If the Chiefs suffer through this rough stretch and still win games, well, a three-peat might be the least of the league’s problems with Kansas City.