Chiefs 2012 Mid-Season Muddling

Sad. Very sad. Even the other Kansas City football team can't escape the Curse of Odin's Revenge when it comes to first playoff games. Today the pro soccer team Sporting KC lost to their awful nemesis, this Houston team that I'd read they just can't seem to figure out. Apparently I guess (because I just don't follow soccer at all) they've got to take down Houston something like 57-0 in the next game to have hopes of moving on. Yeah, here's this splendid KC football team THE NUMBER ONE SEED IN THEIR CONFERENCE/DIVISION/REGION whatever-it-is GETTING BEATEN RIGHT OUTTA THE GATE IN THE PLAYOFFS.

DOES THIS SOUND ALL TOO FAMILIAR?

Okay, I'll stop yelling with the text here.

So let's talk Chiefs. Mid-season, 2012, a presidential election year. You know I thought, hmm, we really really sucked in the last presidential year, too. So I thought, hmm, how do we do in election years? Yep, for the most part, we suck.

Look at their records with a bit of commentary when needed: (Not counting '60 because we were the Texans then. Sorry. Not the Chiefs.)

'64   7-7
'68   12-2   One of two of these kinds of years we made the playoffs. 12-2 is great until you remember we got pasted by the Raiders 41-6 right outta the gate in the playoffs. Sorry, but awful awful awful.
'72   8-6   This year we started the season with the first game ever at Arrowhead, a loss to the eventual undefeated Dolphins, in the very next game after we lost to them on that awful Christmas day. Awful.
'76   5-9
'80   8-8
'84   8-8   A bunch of records close to 8-8 through our history kept us mediocre enough to never get great high draft picks, yet great teams in the 1960's and 1990's kept us having an overall winning record. Swell.
'88   4-11-1  A Frank Gansz year. Ick.
'92   10-6   The other time we made the playoffs, but we barely got in when we should've romped in, and outta the gate we got shutout by San Diego. Wretchedly awful.
'96   9-7   Probably the worst year of the bunch. Don't let the winning season throw you. We were 9-4 after beating Detroit on Thanksgiving then went in the tank. I mean we went in at warp speed.
'00   7-9
'04   7-9  This ugliness was sandwiched between two fine winning Vermeil years. Hey, presidential election year. It's meant to be.
'08   2-14   The worst Chiefs season record ever.
'12   1-7   The soon-to-be worst Chiefs season record ever.

I was going to count this all up to get an overall presidential election year record, but I don't want to. You get the idea. Doesn't really mean anything except that it's yet another way to look at the abyss of Chiefs stuff through history and think that our luck just has to change. But the way Sporting KC got beat today, I'm not so sure. Hey even K-State Heisman candidate Collin Klein got some weird still undisclosed injury last night that may help derail the Wildcats' shot at a spot in the national championship game.

The Curse of Odin's Revenge I tell you. It is really, really shitty.

Before I get into my thoughts about our team, I'll tell you what I'm going to do in a minute, some other things about the insanity of that last stat from Thursday night's game. Oh it isn't any less horrific, but some things to know I have to make you suffer through also.

Looked up that game, the last one a Chiefs-drafted quarterback won, Todd Blackledge over the Chargers, September 13 1987. Did you know he went 6 for 15 with one interception? For 79 total passing yards? Even this was pathetic. We only won because Christian Okoye had a nice TD run and Paul Palmer ran back a kickoff. After that game we lost eight straight. Nice.

I thought I'd agonize myself even more by looking at Dan Marino's game that day. He threw three touchdown passes in a loss to New England. Oh, whew, at least his team lost. But it isn't just that Marino won a bunch more games for Miami after that, but think of all the playoff games he won with them. At least two of them were against the Chiefs. Niiiice.

Oh, and yeah, one more Blackledge note. He is the only Chiefs-drafted quarterback to even play in a playoff game for the Chiefs. '86 against the Jets when his last-ditch attempt to show he could play NFL football was a predictable disaster.

As for now? I'd heard after Thursday's game that Philip Rivers had the fifth best completion percentage game in NFL history with 90%. So much for the one thing I thought was good about our team, the D-backfield.

Well, let's get to what I'd been thinking.

Ownership, management, coaching -- that ugliness has to wait until the end-of-the-season wrap-up. For now, the players. I've just been thinking about which players on our team are actually any good, and yes, this is not pretty. But just to give the best to some of our better players, I've ranked them and put a percentage next to each as to how far they have to go to be a full-on Pro Bowl quality player. I really don't think we have any really Pro Bowl players, but a few are close. We'll talk about all that, but again, the percent next to each reflects how much farther of their "100%" do they need to go to be that Pro Bowler they can be, in my opinion.

Here're the top ten ranked Kansas City Chiefs today, with comments.

1. Dustin Colquitt. 15%. Oh how insane is it that our best player is, yes, our punter. But it is true. It is quite disturbing that this is pretty much the same as it was in '07 to '09. Anyway, Colquitt is amazing at getting the ball down inside not just the 20 but the 5. He doesn't get the full "100%" because he shanks about every tenth punt.

2. Eric Berry. 25%. The San Diego game got me to put him higher on the list. He was the only good Chiefs thing about that game. The key is that, as everyone knows, for him to be as studly as he should be he's got to look a lot like Troy Polamalu out there, and he just hasn't been looking that way. That was until Thursday, when he was finally flying all over the field. Maybe he's just got to get back from that injury, and maybe just maybe in a miserable campaign as this has been, this is a solid glimmer of hope for us.

3. Dwayne Bowe. 30%. A traditional Pro Bowler he's only at 30% because he still drops passes he should catch. Otherwise he is still runs great slant routes, and is probably the best sideline catcher there is. Something should be added here that I think all Chiefs fans know, and that is that a lot of why Bowe isn't going off is because of two critical deficiencies, quarterback and coaching. Yeah, no kidding.

4. Jamaal Charles. 35%. Another player who is made worse because we have no real coaching, no quarterback to take much of the offensive load off, and an inconsistent offensive line. Otherwise, like Bowe, this guy is a pro football stud.

5. Brandon Flowers. 35%. I'd have him higher but I just don't think he does very well against big receivers, and there are just too many of those in the league now.

6. Justin Houston. 45%. I had him higher earlier until I started seeing him simply not do very well pursuing runners in the open field. As a pass rusher he can be deadly, but he's simply got to be a better complete linebacker to rank higher.

7. Derrick Johnson. 50%. He's still there to make tackles and keep the opponent from scoring too many points. But then, not much difference between losing 31-13 and 48-13. Occassionally he does make that spectacular play, but I think his age is making it so there are fewer and fewer of those.

8. Tamba Hali. 80%. He has definitely slowed some. Either that or teams have just figured him out, or he's just getting older, or something. But he is way not the factor he has been in the past.

9.  Jon Baldwin. 90%. The only reason this guy is so high is because he is a phenomenal physical talent. He can make amazing catches. He is big and strong and as such can make a D-back look silly trying to cover him. But the obvious problem is that he just has no connection with the quarterback at all. He looks lost running his routes, every other pass play he looks to be somewhere he's not supposed to. If this guy really went to work and learned how an NFL passing game goes, he'd be a superstar. Maybe when we get our whole new coaching staff and our brand spankin' new highly drafted quarterback it'll be wonderfully different.

10. Dexter McCluster. 95%. I've always thought of him way higher, and even so I still really like this guy. But I'm sorry I'm tired of the whole not-finding-a-place-for-him, I'm tired of the fact that our coaches still haven't figured out how to get him untracked, although it looks like he can run the wildcat with some effectiveness. And too often he doesn't seem to know how to really get those pass routes figured out.

Players who could be up there in the top ten do include Ryan Succop (he's very good but getting field goals when we need touchdowns makes him just not much of a factor), Tony Moeaki (still trying to get going after his knee injury), and Peyton Hillis (who's also had injury problems keeping him from finding his place on this team). TE Kevin Boss and C Rodney Hudson could be there too but are out indefinitely.

Otherwise, we've got quite a lot of roster spot holders. Some are better than others, but one reason we're 1-7 is that we just don't have all the talent we need.

The worst of this is that there were three kinds of players that didn't crack that top ten, and all Super Bowl contending teams must have at least a few in their top ten. Did you notice their absence?

No offensive linemen. Funny, I'd heard somewhere that our O-line was one of the highest ranked in the NFL. But inconsistency and very bad offensive coaching has belied that hopeful situation. Sure Erik Winston came highly touted. Sure young Branden Albert and Jon Asamoah are great hopes for us. But it just isn't showing up. Remember the days when Willie Roaf and Will Shields would be way at the top of the top ten Chiefs? Ahhh...

No defensive linemen. Jackson and Dorsey are still huge high-draft-pick busts. Poe is too young to show us anything right now. Every other D-lineman is just a fill-in. This Ropati Pitoitua guy has looked good for a few plays, but that's it. Remember the days when Dan Saleamua and Neil Smith would be way at the top of the top ten Chiefs? Ahhh...

And of course...

No quarterback. This is the biggest killer of all.

But then why belabor that point.

(Except if you want to, I get into it all with The Quarterback Project. It's all there in its resplendently atrocious atrociousness.)
_