Vahe Gregorian: Chiefs' fiasco at Tennessee might have been predictable. But it's still unsavory.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — At this time a year ago, the Kansas City Chiefs were consumed with a quest: to become the first team to win three straight Super Bowls. They arrived at that rendezvous point having won 23 of the last 24 games started by Patrick Mahomes.

You could call that the pinnacle of motivation — even if it was pulped out of them with a 40-22 loss to the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LIX.

Flash forward to Sunday at Nissan Stadium, and the dynamic could not have been more the opposite for what became a grim 26-9 loss to the Tennessee Titans — one of the worst teams in the NFL.

Because for the first time in their 237 games under head coach Andy Reid, the Chiefs played a game after being eliminated from a postseason bid. Heck, even in 2014, the last time they failed to make the playoffs, the Chiefs entered their final regular-season game with a chance (they won that day but didn’t get the other results they needed to make it in).

Given the abrupt reversal of fortune we’ve seen this year, no wonder there was a lot of talk last week about seeking meaning in this game.

Reid pointed to nothing less than striving to win as an American ideal — even if it were a game of Yahtzee. As a rationale for why they’d be competitively motivated, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo suggested even a 3-on-3 basketball game would bring out the best in his players.

Defensive lineman Chris Jones alluded to playing for the jersey, both in what it represents for the team and each individual’s name. And tight end Travis Kelce figured even playing in a Walmart parking lot would make for an ample cause — and spoke eloquently to the integrity of playing to the end.

But however each individual may have felt or heeded that call, however much they may have been trying just to convince themselves, all the talk rang hollow with the collective fiasco that punctuated their plummet as they look to reset in the offseason.

Against a Tennessee team that had lost 11 straight home games and entered the day tied for the NFL’s worst record (2-12), the Chiefs were further humbled in this comeuppance of a season.

At 6-9, they are assured of their first losing record since Reid took over after the 2-14 2012 season.

Sure, you could say it was only human nature for it to go this way, especially given the soul-draining absence of the injured Patrick Mahomes among a number of other injuries, and that the game essentially was irrelevant.

And it became all the more so since Reid and Co. perhaps overestimated the intrinsic motivation of trying to win over using it as an opportunity to cultivate — or at least learn a lot more about — a number of seldom-seen rookies: Most curiously, the likes of Brashard Smith, Jeffrey Bassa and Jalen Royals played sparingly.

You could also say that they were better off losing as they look toward the future.

The farther they sink in the standings, the more they can replenish themselves with a substantially better slot in the NFL draft order — a benefit that has eluded them through the previous seven seasons of playing in the AFC Championship game, going on to five Super Bowls and winning three.

Just the same, this was some unsavory stuff from a team that began the season in Brazil with Reid chastising his players for their effort in an opening loss to the Chargers.

“You fight through that and you make yourself better,” he said then. “Whatever situation that you’re in.”

Now, it’s hard to imagine Reid could have foreseen this situation when he said that. And the bookends easily could be seen as uncomfortable coincidence than a telling pattern.

Because it didn’t seem to me Sunday that this was about lack of effort so much as an absence of the sort of synergistic urgency it takes to win in the NFL. The difference might be nuanced, but it’s significant.

Still, I was surprised afterward when one of Reid’s opening remarks was that he appreciated the effort under the circumstances.

On a follow-up question about the energy, he said “I didn’t think that was an issue,” and made a point of praising Jones, Kelce, Nick Bolton, Creed Humphrey and Trey Smith in particular for “pushing through” when they “very easily could take a day off.”

He wasn’t wrong about that, really.

But no doubt the overall juice just wasn’t there on a day when the Chiefs also lost for now-familiar reasons: a spree of penalties (10 for 59 yards); another Harrison Butker missed field goal; and the offense sputtering (133 yards) — albeit with Mahomes’ backup, Gardner Minshew, injured early in the game and Chris Oladokun throwing his first NFL passes.

Alas, maybe that’s just how it’s going to be down the stretch in between one of the greatest runs in NFL history and trying to reboot the magic this coming offseason.

So it’s tempting to think and say that what happens in these next two games is a statement about the culture. But I think it’s really more a reflection of the circumstances — an unsightly reminder of both where the Chiefs were only a year ago, and what it looks like when an empire declines.

The Chiefs obviously can revive it before it falls altogether. But between now and the offseason overhaul, best brace yourself for this vibe to be hovering over it all.

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