Broncos at Chiefs - Week 12 - Record: NOW It's 1-10

A tale of two pass plays.

The score: Denver 14, Kansas City 9.

The situation: Sometime in the middle of the 4th quarter. The Chiefs defense had just brilliantly stopped Denver on successive possessions and their offense has the ball at midfield.

The Chiefs play: I'm not sure if it was a third down, but it was a critical passing play. Quarterback Brady Quinn passes the ball to super-duper wide receiver Dwayne Bowe who's running a quick in-and-out route covered by a linebacker. The ball just sort of plops off of Bowe's hands. The Chiefs must punt.

The Broncos play: In the ensuing possession, with the ball close to midfield but still in their own territory and about five minutes left in the game, quarterback Peyton Manning throws a perfect strike to his wide receiver, much-less-well-known-than-Bowe Demaryius Thomas who's gotten about a mile-and-a-half separation from his defender, quick Jalil Brown.

Soooo, our play: a supposedly stud wide-out covered by a linebacker: doink. Their play: a supposedly nothing-much wide-out covered by a speedy back gets the clutch catch, easily.

Broncos run clock all the way down to about the Chiefs 10-yard line whereupon they kick a pretty much meaningless field goal with seconds left to seal the game.

Chiefs lose.

The sky is blue, the Pope is Catholic, a bear shits in the woods, all is well with the world.

All we can do is continue our agonizing rumination about why it is all this way. And when I say it is this way I mean it has been this way for years. To review, in order of importance:

1. Our wretchedly poor drafts. Yes even in the last years of the King Carl era we got people like Dwayne Bowe, Tamba Hali, and Derrick Johnson, but we just haven't been able to flesh out our team enough to truly contend. The early-2000's drafts were especially abysmal, and the worst of all of this is in the equally woeful second thing:

2. The Chiefs ineptitude/misfortune/inability/refusal/rottenest-of-Curse-of-Odin's-Revenge-luck in drafting and developing a long-term studly quarterback.

Matthew Stafford, Matt Schaub, Tony Romo, Robert Griffin III, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Colin Kaepernick, Drew Brees. Because of Thanksgiving weekend the television has all the pro football games on, and yes, I do work to avoid watching much of it -- a lot because it is just too freekin' painful. All these guys played quarterback just splendidly for their respective teams Thursday or today, and each one demonstrated that he is about 87,000 times better than anything the Chiefs can even remotely put on the field.

Again, what I said in my last post is something that even my wife said today, "Isn't there some way we can get new quarterbacks?" To reiterate, is there simply no possible way in the entire universe that we could pleeeeeaze unload these guys, all of them, Cassel Quinn Stanzi, the whole bunch and sign three other guys whoever they are -- we have absolutely nothing to lose. WILL this team show us some ganas?

So much more can be said about this even after it seems it's all been said, but ya know? There's another really awful thought that has come screechingly into the picture. That is that

Our receivers may really be much more crappy than we ever thought.

Look at today's game. How many catches did Bowe have? Two? Along with the three or four standard drops? I've also noticed that Bowe just does not get separation from his defender nearly as often as the other team's receivers do, sorry.

Jon Baldwin was invisible again. And he's supposed to be our big strong receiver -- erckk, how many times I see the other team have some big strong receiver eat us alive and I wonder, where's ours? Where on earth is Jon Baldwin???

I don't think the not-Todd-Haley staff here likes Steve Breaston, he hardly plays. The only decent solid catch I remember today was by a wide-out named Jamar Newsome -- who? Where on earth did they get this guy? And there were a couple of catches by Tony Moeaki, a couple I think by Dexter McCluster, annnnd... that's it.

So, yeah, we actually truly in reality not only have a crappy quarterback but crappy receivers too. And this may actually be fixable if we didn't have this third major crappy thing:

3. Our head coach is hapless. That's all. This is not news. But we haven't had even a decent head coach since Dick Vermeil. Extraordinarily excruciating ouch.

We can all see that guys out there can play. Today I liked what I saw from just about every player on defense, especially the regularly solid guys, Eric Berry, Brandon Flowers, Justin Houston. I even liked what I saw in Dontari Poe. Our offensive line was actually pretty great today particularly in light of the injuries and the shifting guys around and the having to start rookies like Jeff Allen and Donald Stephenson.

But Romeo Crennel et al still have us running around like the Keystone Kops -- er -- Cops, you know, the KC -- there is simply so much going on out there that is on the coaching. How many times do I say during a game, "Romeo, that's on you." "That penalty -- Romeo, that's on you." "Calling that totally unnecessary time-out, Romeo..." Whatever kind of metaphor there is for things being on other things works just fine here, but I'm too tired to think of one.

Other things are in the mix too, like Rodney Hudson's crushing injury (again, see last post for more) and our terribly inconsistent defensive line play. But those big three just came smashing through the television set today.

Smashing through, just like the reality of future Chiefs destitution. I mention this at the cost of belaboring the harrowing details, but I knew there was something in that last post that I realized I was simply not fully articulating. You know, the post I wrote about how sure I was of things.

I saved this part for now, because I'm not so sure about it, but if what I think but am not sure about is the way it is actually going to be, then it is truly the most frightening thing of all. This thing was woven through all that I wrote in that post. You could see it in why a Chiefs fan may actually think, "You say the Chiefs folding is the worst thing? No it isn't, this train wreck is the worst thing..."

What would a particularly sensitive and cerebral Chiefs fan do to finish that thought? Why would they even think that it'd be best to put a shotgun to the head of all things Chiefs? Do you know? Have you thought about it? Have you grasped the deepness and darkness of these Chiefs days as the deepest and darkest ever?

What any observant Chiefs fan could perhaps very reasonably say to complete the above thought is:

"...and if it will be this way for many more years then it isn't any worse than mercifully putting us out of our misery right now."

For you see, worse than the Chiefs now, and worse than the Chiefs not being around at all ever more, is quite plainly

The Chiefs being the way they are now for many more years to come.

So yeah, I do know something else for sure, something that could easily be the very worst thing of them all. To echo my thoughts from the last post:

I do know the worst thing of them all is indeed being made a floormat for the AFC West, even the NFL, for the next many years to come however many that is.

Because we have no quarterback -- not a single one for the future, because we so contemptibly fail to ever get one in the draft, because we may have to resort to picking a quarterback off the rest-of-the-NFL scrap heap yet again, because that 2009 draft made Scott Pioli look like such a choke, and as such

Because the entire league and all pro football anything now looks at us with the lowest amount of respect...

How could a Chiefs fan not see anything else in his/her team's future?

As I said in that post, we can't know that it is this bleak. It sure looks this way, but it is still possible we can have a bit of luck in a draft, get that quarterback, nab a pretty decent head coach.

So there is that still slight ever-so slight sliver of hope.

We'll see. It's all we can do right now. Unless we hoot and holler about it, wear black at Arrowhead about it, put banners behind airplanes that say "We deserve better" and fly them around the stadium about it, or as I can do here, blog about it.

All we can do is wait and see...
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