The Carolina Panthers-Kansas City Chiefs game was a bit underwhelming, to say the least. Sorry Chiefs Kingdom and Patrick Mahomes fans but aren’t you worried about where the franchise is headed? Or are you complacent that your favorite team will win games anyhow? Imagine how bad the defense had to be to get sized up by a quarterback who was benched recently.

The Chiefs defense allowed more than 300 yards and 14 points to the Panthers and that’s a bit worrisome. Part of the reason is that their top defensive talent like Chris Jones and Nick Bolton aren’t making enough big plays. Those shortcomings were compounded by a lack of good corners like L’Jarius Sneed, who Brett Veach and the KC team traded this year.

Patrick Mahomes’ defense is a shell of its former self

This lack of defensive playmaking has got the co-host of Pro Football Talk and former NFL QB Chris Simms, a bit worried. He took to the Dan Patrick Show and talked about the dwindling defense why he thinks the Kansas City team might not be able to 3-peat this year. But this happened last year too where Patrick Mahomes wasn’t his usual self but the Chiefs still won the Super Bowl.

“The defense is not as good as last year,” Chris Simms told Dan Patrick. “You don’t see as many playmaking chaos, mess the play up type of plays from the people in the front seven. Chris Jones, Nick Bolton, whoever it may be. The biggest thing Dan, is there’s no L’Jarius Sneed, right? Last year, they had maybe two of the top three corners in football on the same team. So they could have go, ‘Hey you guys get on an island and we’ll do whatever we want with the nine other guys.’”

As it happens, Sneed played 16 games with the Chiefs last year. He recorded 60 solo tackles, recovered a fumble, had two interceptions, and defended 14 passes. Without Sneed, the Chiefs wouldn’t have made it to the Super Bowl. That’s because he made the Ravens fumble the ball in the AFC Championship game on a play where Zay Flowers nearly scored a touchdown. Imagine letting that guy go. Unfortunately, he’s on IR right now and has missed the last 5 games due to a quad injury. But let’s talk about the Panthers-Chiefs game.

You know things are bad when you allow a Panthers quarterback to throw for 263 yards and score a touchdown. None of the Chiefs receivers had more than 66 yards, but things were different for the Panthers. David Moore managed to gather 81 yards and scored a touchdown. The Panthers also managed to get 85 yards on the ground with Chuba Hubbard scoring a touchdown. An astonishing thing about the Panthers game is that Chris Jones didn’t record a single stat. No tackles, no sacks, nothing.

Per a report from FOX, the Chiefs have given up 215.5 yards per game on average and 15 touchdowns so far this season. They rank 18 in the league as far as the pass defense is concerned. However, they are doing well with stopping the run, ranking third in the league, giving away 85.3 yards and 9 rushing touchdowns. All this was apparent after watching them go against Carolina.

But defense isn’t the only problem here. Though Patrick Mahomes showed up in a big way, scoring 269 yards and 3 touchdowns in the game, there were still some issues to be considered as far as the offense is concerned. The O-line allowed the Carolina team to sack the 3x Super Bowl winner thrice! But that was just a momentary concern, compared to what Chris Simms had to say about the Chiefs’ offensive problems.

The Kansas City offense is in jeopardy

Let’s leave aside Travis Kelce’s declined form for a minute here. They have too many injured players on the offensive side of the ball. And the latest was Harrison Butker, who tore his meniscus. Even the backup kicker Spencer Shrader recently sustained an injury. They have also been marred with injuries to Rashee Rice, Isaiah Pacheco, and Hollywood Brown. In total, 8 of their offensive player are on Injured Reserve right now. And Xavier Worthy isn’t just cutting it alone. Simms was also vocal about some of the offensive concerns.

“The other aspect of it is, injuries on the offensive side of the ball and this time last year we saw Rashee Rice starting to go trend upwards and go, ‘Ooh, he could be a guy here for the future.’ I don’t see anybody like this one their offense right now where I go, ‘Oh, this guy, watch out.’ I think Xavier Worthy is far off from that and really Dan, 40 years of like football intuition, I would go ‘there’s no way they are going to go to the Super Bowl and win the Super Bowl this year,” Simms explained further.

Simms is correct about one thing, though. Xavier Worthy has a long way to go. Patrick Mahomes throws him risky passes, and he makes the catches, but he’s out of bounds on those plays. It has happened on multiple occasions. Talking about Rashee Rice, he tore his LCL in week 4 after Mahomes bumped into him in the Chargers game and isn’t likely to return this season.

The only silver lining here is that Isaiah Pacheco might return in the playoffs after healing from his fractured fibula. But kudos to the Chiefs, who are making do with the limited resources that they have right now. There’s no doubt that they will reach the playoffs this year. But can they make it to the Super Bowl and win it? Let us know what you think.