Chiefs at Chargers - Week 15 - Record: 7-7

Before I begin, I want to lay out some ground rules. First, the Chargers are a better team— they deserved to win this game merely by the fact of their superior talent and play. I'm fine with that. Secondly, I know that you can’t meaningfully reconstruct a hypothetical game if things had gone differently, because you just can’t presume things would’ve necessarily gone your way.

With that in mind, the Chiefs got jobbed in this game. Three key things did them in. One, habitual inattentive punt return coverage, two, a stupid call by a ref, and three, a stupid NFL rule that needs to be changed. Let’s look at each, in order, and see what the game result really should’ve been, all other things being equal.

1. On the Chargers first drive, our defense stopped them, setting up a punt. They faked it, snapping the ball to the back who then ran right past a preoccupied Chiefs coverage team for a first down. In the replay it looked like there were only six Chiefs on the field. Five guys up front dutifully waiting for the ball to be booted and then turning to provide blocking for the runback, and one guy waiting way back there to receive the punt. Ahem, where was the containment? We were just brain dead on that one. This is certainly something that the Chiefs need to work on, and yes, it is no one’s fault but our own. Of course, later in the drive the Chargers scored a touchdown. Given.

2. On the Chargers next drive, QB Phillip Rivers tossed a quick out to his fullback who caught the ball, turned upfield, and was summarily leveled by Derrick Johnson. He then fumbled the ball, which was grabbed by Tamba Hali at around the 40 yard line. Oh, problem: Quick whistle by the ref. Great. They call it incomplete and it can’t be reviewed. The announcer even made a comment, something about “there must be a football action” taken, such as actually moving forward at least a teench to demonstrate he had possession. What tripe. This cost us big because shortly thereafter the Chargers punted down to our 5, whereupon we gained about 50 yards before we had to punt. That 50 yards from the Chargers 40 would have been a TD for us. So, real score: 10-7, Chiefs.

3. About midway through the second quarter I’m noticing that we’re down only 7-3, even as we were being outplayed. Okay, good, we have a chance, this is still a game, good. The Chargers are punting from about their own 10 yard line, and a super punt-blocking rookie, Bernard Pollard, swoops in to make a clean block of the punt. The ball flutters forward, however, about 15 yards when one of our linemen takes a stab at grabbing it. The ball barely skims him, it bounces away and a Charger lineman falls on it. Everyone on the Chiefs bench is now fired up, patting Pollard on the back, high-fiving. Chiefs fans around the globe are gleeful, knowing this is our chance to really get back in this, to put it to them.

All of a sudden the Chargers offense is on the field. The ref had to briefly explain to Herm Edwards what is surely called the “Really Stupid Screw-the-Chiefs Punt Block Switcharoo Rule.” It says that as long as a blocked punt crosses the line of scrimmage and touches a defensive player, it’s a free ball, and if the offense gets it, then they get new set of downs.

The bewildered Chiefs then put their vaunted “Huh?” defense out on to the field, and on the very next play LaDainian Tomlinson squirts down the field for an 85-yard touchdown.

The main reason this has got to be the stupidest rule in the book is the whole line of scrimmage thing. The ball barely got past the line of scrimmage. So it would be exactly the same as if, on fourth-and-sixty, Tomlinson got the carry, ran two yards, bobbled it, it bounced against a few Chiefs players, and was recovered by the Chargers. Anyone would certainly cry foul if the Chargers were given a new set of downs. I’m perfectly okay with it if this all happened down the field and they recovered it past the yardage needed for a first down. That’s reasonable. It’s even okay if the defensive guy actually grabbed the ball, had possession of it, ran around a bit, then fumbled the ball anywhere on the field. But here it is, essentially, a great play by the defense—stopping them on three downs and blocking a punt—and the reward for that is giving the offense the ball again and a new set of downs. That is ridiculous.

Driving home from a family Christmas function towards the end of the game, I listened to a San Diego radio station’s announcers, a couple of college-aged Charger sycophants, recount the earlier punt block incident and refer to it as THE CORRECT CALL. Yes, they did speak in all caps, I could tell. Point is, why would they say "THE CORRECT CALL" like that if they didn’t also agree that it is a stupid rule?

If the proper way the rule should be was in place—the blocked punt must go past the first down yardage point and not the line of scrimmage—then it would’ve been Chiefs ball at about the Charger 15. Not even presuming we’d even score, the Chargers would certainly not have gotten their score. So without the stupidity, we’re still up 10-7.

Therefore, the final score would’ve been 16-13, Chiefs, considering each team later added two field goals. 16-13 Chiefs, not 20-9 Chargers.

This is indeed the idiocy that drives me crazy about watching our team. Interesting, today at work a colleague even brought up another such critical stupid ruling/call incident that happened back in the Browns game. I hadn’t known about this because I didn’t see or hear the fourth quarter of that game. But he mentioned that at the end of regulation, Tony Gonzalez caught a pass and rolled out of bounds untouched by any defender with five seconds on the clock. The refs did their twirling arm thing to keep the clock rolling, and with no time outs, regulation ended. Guh? Doesn’t going out of bounds stop the clock??? Apparently we had our shot to kick the game-winning FG, and it was yanked from us because of this stupid call/rule. And I don’t know what it was. The stupid rule? If there is some silly roll-around-on-the-field exception, then change it. The bad call? Then the refs should fess up. But neither of these things happened that I know of. Hey, we're the Chiefs.

With all the typical Chiefs aggravation out of the way, a few other things need to be said about this game.

The first is that our offense is miserable. The O-line topped their performance last week by allowing six sacks this time. Trent Green looks timid—no, better: he looks scared to death out there. It is affecting his passing so much that I don’t think he threw a good pass all night. When he came close, our receivers were dropping balls, not getting open— it was just miserable.

Do you know that—throwing out the meaningless gimme who-cares end-of-the-game TD pass last week—we have not scored a single touchdown since that wonderful 99-yard TD drive in the fourth quarter of the Browns game? It’s almost as if that one drive tired us out so much that we’re done for the season.

This season also reminds me a bit of 1996, exactly ten years ago. Remember that? After winning on Thanksgiving and posting a solid 9-4 record, we didn’t win a single game after that and missed the playoffs. Same exact thing is happening so far this year. Our last win was against Denver on Thanksgiving, proudly getting us to 7-4. Ergh. How ironic that Lamar Hunt actually lobbied the NFL to get other teams besides the Cowboys and Lions to play in those holiday games, and they honored him this year by scheduling the Chiefs at home for the very first ever NFL Network game.

I don’t think we’ll have a chance to be viable on the last day of this season, because even if we do finish 9-7, right now we are 0-5 against any team not in the west, AFC or NFC. So much for having tiebreaker advantages.

So now’s the time to start looking at what we need for next year. Besides all the obvious holes to patch, here’s one thing. We need a snorting, snarling Ray Lewis-Mike Singletary-Jack Lambert-type dude clogging things up in the middle on defense. I like Kawika Mitchell, but we just need that guy who can just smell the play before it happens and mauls everyone in his way to stop it. Someone who just fires up our defense, gets us to that next level. The defense is good, it really is, but these guys have got to know what it means to finish.

As it is, we're finished this year.