Ravens at Chiefs - Wild-Card Playoff Game

It just doesn't seem to matter.

Do you feel that way any time the Chiefs get into the playoffs now?

Please know that I had no illusions about the Chiefs chances -- everyone and his uncle knew the Ravens were a better team. But I will tell you there was a chink in those illusions yesterday when the 7-9 Seahawks, a team we beat handily at their place, played inspired ball and took out the world champion Saints. I thought, yep, in the NFL anything can happen, the playoffs are always wide open, and we are so due to win a playoff game that our postseason losing just can't keep going like this.

But for the Chiefs, it just doesn't seem to matter.

No matter what, we just can't win a playoff game. Needless to say our cherished team now holds a quite ignominious record: longest continuous streak of playoff losses in NFL history. It is now at seven. When you think about it, this kind of record is very hard to get. If you are a playoff team it must mean you're pretty good, and you're going to win at least one playoff game every once in a while. But, yeah...

It just doesn't seem to matter.

No matter what we do we just can't shake the Curse of Odin's Revenge.

Here it is, in all its rotten colors. Since our glorious Super Bowl win in '69, we have hit the playoff trail a total of 12 times. 41 years, 12 times. That percentage alone stinks. Of those 12 times, we have had a one-&-out in ten of them.

Ten.

Ten TEN TEN one-&-outs. We're presently at six straight and still going.

It just doesn't seem to matter in any of them.

We could be better than the other team (Den 97, Ind 95 and 03) and it doesn't matter. We could be worse than them and hope for a good swing our way (NYJ 86, Ind 06, Bal 10) and it doesn't matter.  We could be evenly matched with them and at the end of the game just happen to golly-gosh find ourselves on the winning end (Mia 71 and 90, SD 92, Mia 94) and it doesn't matter.

We could be in close games (Mia 71, 90, and 94, Ind 95, Den 97) and it doesn't matter. We could be in blowouts -- naturally always be on the losing end (NYJ 86, SD 92, Ind 03 and 06, Bal 10) and it doesn't matter. We could even be home (Mia 71, Ind 95, Den 97, Ind 03, Bal 10) where the Chiefs are supposed to be so devastatingly invincible -- in the postseason we only play in feeble Arrow-through-the-heart Stadium.

It simply plainly utterly doesn't matter.

All of this putridtude comes with the services of six different coaches (three of them are or should be in the Hall of Fame -- Stram, Vermeil, and Schottenheimer) and eleven different quarterbacks who have in their resumes a total of 26 Pro-Bowl appearances among them (yes, 15 of them were for Len Dawson and Joe Montana, but did you know that Bill Kenney, Dave Kreig, Elvis Grbac, Rich Gannon, and Trent Green were also all Pro-Bowlers at least once?)

You may say "What about those two years in that time we did win?" I know. But there was only one of those games that I believe we actually played a really good solid game, and that was the Houston game in January of 1994, our very last playoff win of any kind. ::Sigh:: Our offense was pitiful in the Oakland game of 91 and we won mostly because the Raiders played so poorly, and we barely eeked out the 93 Pittsburgh game in OT. Yes we played well enough to win those games so those Chiefs teams wholly deserve the credit, I'm great with that and proud to chalk up those dubyas. The main point is this, again...

Of the twelve trips in, ten were one-&-outs. No matter what, it just doesn't seem to matter. The kind of playoff awfultude we endure just never seems to afflict any other team. Every team sometimes gets a nice playoff performance, things that happen in the game that are good and fun and result in a win. Just sometimes. The Chiefs just always have some kind of repulsive playoff-game leprosy.

Here's a key thing: all ten one-&-outs seem to have similar characteristics. Just lots of stupid wretched things that happen to us every single time. Let me regale you with some, things that wiggled their way into our game today big-time.

Stupid distractions. This whole thing with Charlie Weis leaving to be offensive coordinator at Florida. Not a distraction they all said. Of course it was! I know Todd Haley has to get a good feel for how he wants his coaching staff, I know he really wants to do offensive coordinator stuff and he wants to see how that works out with his staff and Weis just may not have fit in with that. Whatever all the reasons are, it just reminds me of when Paul Hackett said he was going to USC just before the Denver game of 97. It was just a stupid thing that got in the way of our 100% commitment to excellence by every one in the organization. Sorry, but I just never see this crap happening with other truly contending teams.

Stupid reffing. How about the overofficiating against the Chiefs? Yes, you are never supposed to complain about the officiating because often enough it comes back in your favor. I'm good with that, I really am, especially when it comes back in the Chiefs favor fair and square -- exxxcept that in the playoffs, it just never does. The Ravens just flat outplayed us today, but my goodness, Eric Berry was called for a phantom defensive holding call, Glenn Dorsey was clearly held on a key first down run by their guy, and on one of their punts a linemen barely flinched and they called him offside giving them a game-breaker first down. And those spots at the marker that went their way and didn't go ours -- I was pulling out so much of my hair that I had to get hair plugs at half-time, then resumed pulling them out.

Stupid really-stupid things. Needless to say there is all the head-shaking type of stuff that goes against us. The field-goals-bonking-off-the-uprights kind of things, you know those incessent misfortunes that keep your stomach twisting because they just never seem to stop. Off the top of my head, Verran Tucker today made a great catch and had his toe on one foot out of bounds. Here's another one, they punted the ball and got it to bounce at the one nanoinch line and dribble back to the one (and it didn't even count because they got a first down on that lineman offside call). When we punted it went down to the one nanoinch line where our downer had one of his butthairs barely in the endzone, in there enough to bring it back out to the twenty.

Stupid collapses in some key areas of our game that are not merely break-downs but catastrophes. Probably the worst of all is the axiomatic Chiefs playoff truth that however well we did something in the regular season we just can't do it in the playoffs. It's as if we leave all of our talent on towel hooks in the locker room. Happens every time we walk on the postseason football field. Every single damn year we get the chance.

So here is today's lack-of-what-we-did-so-well-in-the-regular-season:

1. Matt Cassel. He had been doing so much to prove that he wasn't some schizo out there, but I'm afraid I'm back to being very concerned. I actually thought our offensive line was going to a problem, but they actually played great. It was Cassel who really really sucked out there today. He had nothing, and he had absolutely zero confidence in himself. Sorry, but even the most vitriolic detractors have to admit that is just not like him. When he could throw the ball he didn't and got sacked. When he did he threw it poorly or right into the hands of the other team. I'm pretty sure he had more interceptions in the Raiders and Ravens games than he had all year. Check it out, I'm pretty sure that's a fact.

2. Holding on to the ball. During the year we had an extraordinarily low 14 giveaways. During the game broadcast they actually put up a graphic there with Chiefs alongside a few really great Super Bowl type teams who'd also had only 14 in their seasons. Today we had five. A lot of this was Baltimore's fine defense, which we knew was going to be a factor, but still! Couldn't we have protected the ball way better, like we did so well during the year? Why do we fail to do it so spectacularly now?!

3. Smart, solid coaching. I don't think Todd Haley really knew what he had to do to beat Baltimore. When the score was 10-7 he went for it on fourth down deep in their territory when a field goal would've tied it and kept things really close. Instead we utterly failed and they took over the game at that point, simply because Baltimore is a team that can take over a game with a 10-7 lead. He also played his defensive backfield deep containment game far too long and far too softly, and their QB Joe Flacco just picked us apart underneath. Their tight end had ten catches, and at one point I saw Tamba Hali trying to cover one of their wideouts.

One of the key things we didn't really have at all in the regular season that was bad and was just as bad in this game was any kind of decent receiving situation to compliment the justifiably studly Dwayne Bowe. In this respect you can't blame Matt Cassel when a defense can so easily take out your only true threat -- I think the closest a football got to Bowe all day was when he walked past the encased signed one in the Hall-of-Fame room there at the New Arrowhead. The Ravens could swamp Bowe because we simply had no one else.

Here was the deal with the rest of our receiving core: Chris Chambers, benched for whatever reason. Verran Tucker, picked up off the practice squad earlier in the year. Kevin Curtis, a cancer-survivor signed on Tuesday (mind you nothing against him being a cancer-surviver, that's great, it's just that he was signed Tuesday). I didn't see Terrance Copper anywhere, but did it matter? You can't expect to succeed in a playoff game with that kind of wide receiver situation. Yeah, the eye-gouging stats here were brutal: our wide-outs caught a total of two passes for eight yards.

The fact is Chiefs playoff football is never being able to overcome our awful things like this receiving travesty, and never being able to take advantage of the good things we do do. Again, you simply can't feel any other way than

It just doesn't seem to matter.

I have to close this season with a kudos to the Chiefs for what they did accomplish. After all they did win the AFC West when everyone was just hoping we'd even come close to a ten-win season. This game was a good one in the sense that I continued to see great things from our getting-better youngsters like Eric Berry and Jamaal Charles. It was fun watching Tamba Hali play like a rampaging bull out there. And I was very encouraged by our offensive line, who in spite of some slip-ups by Branden Albert, upheld their end of the bargain today.

In a perverse way I no longer have to be stressed about the NFL record for most consecutive playoff losses. We already have it, so it's a done deal. Nothing anyone can do about it, and I know why it is happening. In that respect ultimately maybe it will then be the motivating factor that gets Todd Haley to hit the playbook that much more fiercely, that gets Scott Pioli to scour the draft boards that much more rigorously, that gets the whole team will step it up that much more because they are getting slammed with what it truly takes to be a champion.

This Odin's Revenge thing is truly awful. Maybe from all of this our top people will get it done to take it out.

Maybe something like this is exactly what we need.
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(A quick note about the above opinions regarding the nature of past games and teams. The Mia 94 game was a close one at a 27-17 final score because we were fully in contention throughout. The Ind 03 game was a blowout even at 38-31 because we were always two scores down and never able to really catch up. And briefly, the Mia 71 was at home but not at Arrowhead. One may argue about the team quality assessments, but I consider Super Bowl champion Den 97 the best team in the NFL that year, except for Kansas City. The Chiefs were just better, but were done in as usual by the typical playoff stupidness. And some may say that Marv Levy is one of the coaches who is/should be in the Hall-of-Fame, but I've only counted those who got to the playoffs. Levy did come close to getting the Chiefs in the playoffs in 1981. Still, if we count him that makes four such coaches and we still haven't gotten it done. Sigh.)
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