Thursday, November 01, 2012

Chiefs at Chargers - Week 9 - Record: 1-7 - Total Turnover Differential: -20

There are eight minutes left in the fourth quarter of this game and I just don't think I can watch any more of this game. I'm already here at the computer blogging about it.

My previous post was about how wonderful it was to watch my baseball team, the San Francisco Giants, do virtually everything right last week. On Sunday they finished off a good Tigers team to sweep the entire World Series. It just can't get any better than that.

Tonight, a scant three days later, I'm watching a Kansas City Chiefs team do absolutely nothing right. That span of the difference between the goodosity of the baseball Giants and the football Chiefs has grown even larger, I think now encompassing the entire breadth of the universe.

Right now they're behind 31-6, and they were actually in this thing a few minutes of gametime ago. The 2012 Chiefs can be simply encapsulated by what happened just as the fourth quarter was beginning.

They were behind by 11 and had the ball on their own 4 -- so they weren't in the best shape -- but as they went to the line Dwayne Bowe was lined up wide left with no defender near him anywhere in sight. Even Matt Cassel couldn't miss him for an easy 96-yard touchdown...

Except -- the officials or timekeeper or someone possessed by the spirit of Odin did not reset the 25-second play clock. Whistle blows. Reset everything. The Chargers can now pick him up.

Two plays later, a sack, a fumble, and another Charger touchdown.

Guh.

Rate.

But ya know? Whatever. We're still on track to get the best quarterback in the draft.

It is still depressing. At the beginning of the game they said that no team has not led at any time in their first seven games since the 1929 Buffalo Bisons, whoever they were. Now the Chiefs have not led at any time in their first eight games, and, wait, wait, I think I hear the announcer in the other room say the last time that happened was during the Pleistocene Era sometime. Guess they don't have the exact year because everything was recorded on cave walls.

No, actually, I hear Shaun Draughn scoring a touchdown. Yay.

I'm sad because I look at this team and see so many proud players on the Chiefs, some actually pretty decent, too many who really just aren't, but still taking pride in playing as hard as they can for our team.

So this Sunday when I have a bit more time, I plan to do my mid-season report with my rankings of our best players and some thoughts about each.

As for the Chiefs, they've got a ten-day layoff until Pittsburgh in a Monday night game, which will certainly be the last prime-time game we'll get until about 2054.

Ten days! Plennty of time to prepare for our Super Bowl run!
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Postscript: As I finished this post, I foolishly slipped back in to witness the very end of this ugliness, and the NFL Network shared one final stat I have to put here. It is the stat that says everything about why the Chiefs are where they are. Beware. It is gruesome. It is harrowing. I spent a whole bunch of writing time spitting up a whole bunch of words to make this point with The Quarterback Project but they did it with one simple statistic.

Here it is. Please, again, send your children out of the room now because this will be extraordinarily unpleasant.

Okay, ahem, here it is.

The last time the Kansas City Chiefs won a pro football game with a quarterback that they drafted was -- gulp -- over 25  years ago. Even with all my Quarterback Project work, I did not know that!

The quarterback was Todd Blackledge, and on September 13, 1987 he led the Chiefs to a win over the San Diego Chargers.

That, folks, was the last time a Chiefs-drafted quarterback won a football game.

What else can be said. What else can be said...
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