The Kansas City Chiefs know all too well how hard it is to win in the NFL. You won’t catch anyone complaining about a win, no matter how ugly it was. But that doesn’t mean the team has to be entirely happy with the performance that led to a win.

The 24-10 win over the Miami Dolphins in Week 3 was much closer than the box score may indicate. The Chiefs left the game feeling as if they underperformed and left opportunities on the table. Opportunities that would’ve led to a much stronger performance.

“It’s great to be 3-0, and there are some real good things we can take out of it, and there’s some things we can definitely work on going forward,” Chiefs HC Andy Reid said. “But I thought the second half, we had some stops defensively. I thought we did a nice job there with that, and then took advantage of a couple of those with with the offensive side.”

Speaking to the media following the game, a pair of team leaders expressed the team’s need to grow and learn from this performance.

Patrick Mahomes isn’t disappointed, but knows the Kansas City Chiefs can perform better

Despite having season veterans who have been there and done that, Patrick Mahomes knows that this team is a young football team. This was the first road matchup of the season, and within that, the team faced some adversity.

“At the end of the day, we won the football game,” Mahomes said. “And we found a way to win and win by two touchdowns. Obviously, we didn’t play to our standard that we would hold for ourselves, especially in that middle part offensively of the game, kind of second quarter through third quarter. But I thought we we found we found a way to come together at the end of the game. We had two great drives at the beginning of the game, and now it’s about learning the in-between. And so it’ll be a learning experience for us to know that we have to come with our A-game every single time in order to win, but at the end of the day, we’re 3-0.”

If the team had been playing a different opponent, this performance might not have been enough.

“We just got to get better as an offense,” Mahomes said. “I mean, we scored 24 points, and we did all those things, but at the end of the day, we left a lot out there, and we’re not going to be mad about getting mad about winning. We won the football game, and I mean, think about last season we were losing some of these games, and so we’re not going to be mad about winning. But we’re going to look at the tape hard, find ways to get better for next week.”

What Mahomes hopes to see from his teammates this week? Improvement. Even if it’s just marginal gains, Mahomes believes there are improvements that can be made heading into Week 4.

“I think last year kind of taught me that you can’t be disappointed when you win football games,” Mahomes said. “You have to enjoy every single one of them… But I know we can be better. I know we can get better, and that’s going to take watching the tape and going out and having a better week of practice, communicating within the entire offense and the entire team. We’re going to be happy. We’re going to enjoy this victory. But we know, and if we want to get to where we want to go, we have to continue to get better and better, and so we’ll do that.”

Kansas City Chiefs DT Chris Jones thinks this will be a good learning experience for the rookies

On the defensive side of the ball, they felt they let some opportunities slip away. The Dolphins were especially effective at limiting the team’s pass rush. Chris Jones pointed out that on third down, Miami’s play calls prevented the pass rush from getting home. The first third down was a screen. The second was a quarterback draw. The third was also a screen.

“Yeah, we’re gonna have those games where we face a lot of adversity,” Jones said. “I think coming in today, we didn’t start how we wanted to, but we were able to get the win. That’s the beauty of it, and we know this game isn’t easy to come by.”

The Chiefs expected the Dolphins to give them their best shot. After all, Kansas City is still revered as one of the NFL’s powerhouse opponents. It’s a measuring stick game for virtually every team.

“We knew they were going to come out punching,” Jones said. “A young team who is building, an explosive quarterback, running back. Mixed it up on us in the run game, blocked it up, threw a downfield a couple times, so I think we beat ourselves on a lot of it. We got to figure out, you know, what we messed up on and correct those errors this week, and we can move forward.”

Part of moving forward will be the lesson that each Chiefs rookie will take away from the win. That’s, of course, that wins are hard to come by, and no opponent should be underestimated.

“I think that’s just the NFL,” Jones explained. “No matter the record of a team, we all are professionals. We all come to play, and we all have got an opportunity in front of us. No matter what your record. (No matter) what teams you beat, it’s a new challenge every week. So, I think they’ll take from it that nothing comes easy in this league.”