A wild game in Kansas City went down to the final play today, as the Chiefs beat the Bengals 26-25 when Harrison Butker hit a 51-yard field goal as time expired.
Butker’s field goal represented the fifth lead change of the second half in a game that had plenty of mistakes, penalties and turnovers, but that turned into an exciting one.
The Chiefs are 2-0 and the Bengals are 0-2, and Kansas City has to feel very good about where it is positioned in its attempt to get back to, and win, a third consecutive Super Bowl.
Among the biggest mistakes was one made by Bengals wide receiver Ja’Marr Chase, who got a costly 15-yard penalty in the fourth quarter when he screamed at the referee, thinking he had been the victim of a hip-drop tackle. Replays clearly showed that Chase was wrong and the tackle was not illegal.
Joe Burrow also had a big mistake, a fumble that Chamarri Conner scooped up and returned 38 yards for a touchdown.
It wasn’t all bad for the Bengals, as cornerback Cam Taylor-Britt, who talked some trash about Chiefs wide receiver Xavier Worthy last week, backed up his talk with a spectacular one-handed interception when covering Worthy.
But in the end, the Chiefs made one more play. Patrick Mahomes finished with mediocre numbers -- 151 yards, two touchdowns and two interceptions -- but a late fourth down throw into traffic yielded a crucial pass interference penalty that got the Chiefs into range for the winning field goal.
No one should count the Bengals out two weeks into the season, but the Chiefs are putting some space between themselves and the rest of the AFC contenders. Two games into the season, they have two wins against two teams that were expected to threaten them for AFC supremacy. The Chiefs are sitting pretty.