CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The second-best play of the Kansas City Chiefs’ last-second win in Charlotte began with Patrick Mahomes identifying the Carolina Panthers’ defensive coverage and calling it out at the line of scrimmage — like a teacher offering answers to the test before placing it on your desk, as his receiver would later say.

The best play of the Chiefs’ last-second win in Charlotte began with Patrick Mahomes identifying the Panthers’ coverage again, except, well, this time he got it wrong. Oops.

Although the two snaps had completely contrasting starts, they shared a vintage conclusion:

Whether you think you’ve got Patrick Mahomes fooled or not, in the end, he’s got you.

Mahomes played his best football of the 2024 season in the Chiefs’ 30-27 win Sunday against a Panthers team that gave them all they could handle — the kind of football we used to characterize as routine for this offense. But it’s been a minute.

He threw for 269 yards and three touchdowns, compiling his best passer rating (120.2) and second most expected points added (14.5) in a game this year. You can find a chunk of the latter in those two plays.

The first: On a third-down snap with less than a minute remaining in the opening half, Mahomes alerted tight end Noah Gray that the Panthers were bringing the house, even though they’d yet to bring the house all game.

Mahomes was right. Gray adjusted his route after learning of the alert, and the two connected for the Chiefs’ first touchdown in the final minute of either half of a game this year.

“That’s just the blessing you have of playing with a quarterback like that,” Gray said.

So, the second: After the Panthers drove the field with inexplicable ease to tie the game late in the fourth quarter, Mahomes put the Chiefs in range for a game-winning field goal not with his arm but with his legs. We’ve seen that before, right?

A 33-yard run served as the most valuable play of a game in which he threw it better than he has in awhile. Guess what? It only happened because Mahomes thought the Panthers would run man-to-man defense, and he found out after the snap that they instead were in a matchup zone.

He improvised. Made a play.

“It’s not like I pre-plan that stuff,” he said.

That’s what made it feel so familiar.

The end result fell in Mahomes’ favor anyway. Everything else is just noise.

The Chiefs injected 2018 vibes into a season interrupted by offensive frustration. They’re 10-1 with the 11th-best scoring offense in football, so this is certainly all relative, but the Chiefs got anything they wanted offensively Sunday afternoon.

Heck, they actually made some plays down the field. Mahomes completed 7 of 10 passes that traveled at least 10 yards past the line of scrimmage, per Next Gen Stats. All three of his touchdowns fell into that category, and it’s the first time he’s had three of those in a game since 2020.

The outcome of a NFL Week 12 game could easily have been lopsided in Kansas City’s favor. The Chiefs reached Carolina’s 13-yard line or deeper on six of their eight possessions, something they hadn’t done all year. They scored 30 points in regulation, and they hadn’t done that in 363 days.

363!

In 2018, for comparison, they once spanned 21 days between 30-point outings. But just once.

There’s a caveat to everything here, though, because Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense weren’t the only ones providing the 2018 vibes.

The defense did, too.

A date in Charlotte felt as though it could have been cut and pasted into Mahomes’ first year as a starting quarterback — back when he might have felt inevitable, but Bob Sutton’s defense did, too. Back when Mahomes played great, but also back when Mahomes had to be great because, well, what other option did you have?

Truthfully, I don’t know if this version of the Chiefs’ offense will stick around — there is certainly much better competition waiting on their remaining schedule, after all — but it’s increasingly worrisome that the Chiefs need it to stick around.

The Panthers’ passing game had been absolutely miserable this season, the worst in football and by a pretty wide margin. On Sunday, it looked as though Bryce Young was guiding Peyton Manning’s Colts.

Young threw for a season-high 263 yards, and I’ll remind you that it was going so bad earlier this year that Carolina — a rebuilding team — benched the former No. 1 overall pick. The Panthers averaged 5.8 yards per play Sunday, the second most the Chiefs have allowed this season and the second most the Panthers have averaged over their 11 games.

Good teams — good units, offense, defense, special teams, whatever — have bad days. Sometimes they have a bad couple of days. Consistency over four-plus months is hard to find. You can’t be embarrassed to win in the NFL. The division-leading Texans lost at home Sunday to the two-win Titans. The division-leading Steelers lost Thursday to the two-win Browns.

You’ll take some lessons in a win, because those all count the same.

But the Chiefs have relied on their defense as much as their offense over the last two seasons, and it’s starting to show some flaws. It’s understandable, really, because some of those flaws are in coverage, where cornerback Jaylen Watson was having a pretty darn good year before his season-ending injury.

It’s a misinterpretation to look at the opposition’s passing numbers and surmise that shoddy coverage comprised the entirety of the problem. The Chiefs cannot generate pressure without blitzing, and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo seems to be acutely aware of it. He brought extra pass rushers on 40% of the Panthers’ offensive snaps Sunday, per NGS, and Young crushed him for it, completing 11 of 14 throws for 123 yards and a touchdown.

But what choice did Spagnuolo have? His front four aren’t forcing the quarterback to move.

It’s a conundrum, and that conundrum is why Mahomes’ best day this season comes with a qualification. It’s a two-game bad stretch for the defense, and two games could wind up being just that. But the Chiefs’ defensive coordinator has been exhausted of answers for those two weeks.

You know, same as the defensive coordinator who faced Patrick Mahomes on Sunday.

You know, same as this all went in 2018.

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