The game was at two minutes, and it was time for Chris Jones.
He’d gone back and forth with his coaches on the idea, and he knew they were right. But the Kansas City Chiefs’ five-time All-Pro defensive tackle had also played in enough playoff games (17) and NFL games (140) to know that timing mattered, patience could pay off and, when the stakes were high, he’d be able to meet the moment when it came.
“The whole game, I was on the inside,” Jones told me in a quiet moment, with the victor’s locker room mostly emptied out. “The second down was a second-and-long. My coaches had been telling me to go outside and contain the outside the whole game. I was like, . It needed to be a critical situation because if I showed it too early in the game, they were going to be able to adjust to it. Later on in the game, I took that opportunity.
“I knew I had to contain him. I was fortunate enough to bull him into the quarterback.”
At the snap of that second-and-9, Jones was lined up on Buffalo Bills left tackle Dion Dawkins’s outside shoulder. There was no adjustment, or help. Jones walked Dawkins back into Josh Allen’s lap. Dawkins bumped into his quarterback just hard enough to alter the throw, and leave Allen’s bid to hit Khalil Shakir—coming open in the middle of the Chiefs’ end zone for what would’ve, maybe should’ve, been a 26-yard touchdown—a few yards short.
The play showed two things, and the first is the obvious. That on these sorts of stages, in those kinds of high-leverage moments, the edges are razor thin. In this case, simply where a defensive lineman was lined up created just enough of a matchup problem to prevent a go-ahead touchdown, setting the stage for Tyler Bass’s fate-sealing, 44-yard miss two plays later.
And there’s what it says about the Chiefs’ defense, a crew no one has quite paid enough attention to amid all the hand-wringing over the state of Mahomes’s skill-position talent.
Jones is in his eighth season, and he’s always been the type of smart, resourceful player he was on that particular snap, deep into the fourth quarter of a second-round playoff game. The difference this year is that just about every other player with him in that defensive huddle is that type of guy, too. And that made all the difference in what was billed as, and looked early on like, another Patrick Mahomes–Josh Allen playoff shootout.
Mahomes, to be clear, played great Sunday night. But he didn’t need as many Superman moments in this one as he has in the past against Allen. He hasn’t really needed as many of those all year. Because his defense is the best he’s ever had.
And that smart, resourceful, clutch unit that’s come to embody the qualities of its leader and best player—the same way the Chiefs’ offense has done with Mahomes when it’s at its best—showed up when it mattered most Sunday. Which, make no mistake, was the difference in a 27–24 win that puts Kansas City in its sixth consecutive AFC title game.
