Browns at Chiefs - Week 8 - Record: 8-0

Do any Chiefs fans sense how much we're living on the edge? I mean we are on the sharpest razor's edge of play this season. Yes we have a good team with a good coach and a good quarterback and a good defense and a good closing game and a good Arrowhead crowd and all the rest of it. But I hate to tell you, but these scores just tell me that we're flipping the coin and getting heads every single game. There are just so many things happening in each of these games that tell me without a good number of those bounces going our way we could very well be 4-4 right now.

So yeah, I'm sorry. Let's all cheer and revel in our good fortune and good play and our good perfect record so far, but come on.

May I warn you, if you want to remain in your cocoon of comfortable Chiefs bliss please commence with covering the ears closing the eyes and shouting Camptown Races, but forthwith I'm going to be the most nattering of negativity nabobs. Fair warning.

Nkay, what's with our pass defense? Wow did it suck today. Our vaunted pass rush did nothing creative out there, they were stood up, straight up, and Jason Campbell connected with his receivers at will in the second half. And this is Jason Campbell. He's not terrible, but he was, what, the third straight throw-in-the-game quarterback we've faced? Please. What's going to happen when we come up against an Andy Dalton or Joe Flacco -- or, yes, I'll point it out again, what will happen during the FOUR times we ARE still going to face Peyton Manning and Philip Rivers this year? I'm cringing as I write this!

They say we have the best defense in all these special categories, you know, sacks, red zone defense, all those kinds of things, that's great -- but I saw we're still something like 20th against the run, and today we just schlurped against the pass. Suuure we got to their QB late in the game, just like we always do. And yeah, it takes hard work to hang on to games by a thread week after week after week. I am proud of our boys for their tenacity in doing that, I am, I'm not being sarcastic.

And this is the NFL. Every team is good and the Chiefs are playing tough, playing opportunistic, playing right at the times they need to.

But man, let's just face reality. We are playing a weak schedule. We just aren't being tested by the Patriotses and the Ravenses and the Bengalses. We are also relying too much on guys like Browns receiver Davone Bess who practically handed us the game all by himself today.

I'm thrilled by what we're doing, I really am. I know we're very very very likely to lose a game to someone along here sometime. We'll likely finish the season with some kind of 13-3 record or something, that's splendid.

But I can't not say it. This game just made feel very queasy, because I kinda sorta kinda thought about 2003 -- oh my 2003 that's great that's the last and only other time we started 8-0 all right yay! -- but the fact is if you're a very realistic Chiefs fan you know, painfully, that was the year our defensive liabilities were brutally exposed in that first playoff game.

I bring this up because a team that lives on 23-17 wins is highly susceptible to a 23-17 beating in a playoff game. And sorry, all this Chiefs fan is about is us winning playoff games.

Oh but be patient Dave. Enjoy the show now Dave. Everyone has a less than stellar day at work Dave. Why are you being the most negative kind of nabob Dave.

Well, I just say what I see, that's all. Yes I do sometimes feel like the plittering poopie of pessimism. It's just that I'm just sick of being the third to last team going the longest without winning a playoff game (the Bengals and Lions the only teams to have gone longer -- and the way they're playing this year the drought should end for both of them). I'm sick of blasting out to 13-3 records only to have to endure yet another catastrophic loss on Day One of playoff time. We can't even be a 10-6 team and squeak in like a Giants or Steelers and fly on into the Super Bowl.

Yeah, yeah, I shouldn't talk about any of this. We're a good team, we're playing well, we've got guys with heart out there giving their all. Please, know -- Dave can't be prouder of them.

It's just I can't help it.

As it is, just another of those notes I like to include here and there. This was our fifth home win of the season. 50 days from September 8th to today, October 27th -- five wins at Arrowhead in those 50 days. Do you know how far you'd have to go back before September 8th to get a total of five previous home wins? Well, count one home win last year, count three home wins in 2011, and the last home win of 2010 was December 26th against Tennessee that clinched us a playoff berth that year --

A total of 987 days.

Sooo, we got five Arrowhead wins here in 50 days' time, and before that it took us 987 days to secure five Arrowhead wins.

Funny, when the Chiefs were bogging down throughout the entire second half today, when we just weren't pulling away from this Browns team, when our offense just got smothered over and over and over again, I actually heard the boo's.

Wow. Yeah, I am quite the nattering negativity nabobitous guy, but wow. These Chiefs fans haven't been able to behold a regular winner at Arrowhead for a looooong time. No wonder they're grumpy.

I'm not willing to be that grumpy now, even though, yeah, I'm still eagerly waiting to see a consistent vertical passing game. Still. Still...

I'm just afraid of how grumpy I'm going to be when we're the talk of the entire sports world and

And...

Day One of the playoffs arrives.
_

Texans at Chiefs - Week 7 - Record: 7-0

The beat goes on.

Close hard-fought game. Chiefs giving up big plays but still containing. Offensive specialists coming through at the right times. Exceptionally solid special teams play.

And the 4th quarter D getting it done.

I can't help but think about how mind-bogglingly a stretch of difference there is between this team and last year's team. Everyone knows the talent was there, but last year we just slogged through the game until in the 4th quarter it was just accepted by all that we were going to lose. Yes we have a nice new quarterback. Yes we have a nice new coaching staff. And yes having those two additions gives us that intangible that has us playing the full 60 minutes of football, and yes --

Just turning it up in the 4th quarter.

Through the game I'm still nervous, though: It's too close. We're not getting untracked. Alex Smith is making bad throws and Dwayne Bowe is not pulling down passes. Ergghkk. But then I think...

4th quarter coming up. If our defense is on the field we're good to go. And sure enough it wasn't any different in today's game. What'd we have, something like four sacks in the 4th quarter today?

While all that is splendid indeed, I can't see how this team can run the table. That wake-up call is around the corner sometime, so just be ready. Think about it. This was a 17-16 win against a team with a quarterback who'd never played a snap, was without his best running back behind him, and he still completed six passes of 25 yards or more. What's going to happen when we face a team with a Peyton Manning or Philip Rivers? (And those two guys in particular? We face them in four games still to come this year.)

I'd heard that they were also without a key D-back, and yet Alex Smith was still throwing balls that were off, one of which was picked late when we could've put them away then and there. This is not to mention that pass he bricked to a wide-open Sean McGrath in the end zone on the series just before that which would've put the Texans out then.

Those things drive me crazy just because this is the Chiefs, my team, my guys, my all-that-stuff. But I still wouldn't trade Smith for anything because he does show guts and resourcefulness when needed. He is still a clutch player and shows phenomenal talent too often, talent we so need to help get us to the level of being real contenders.

I have to also give a shout out to Dexter McCluster and whoever on the Chiefs staff who's figured out how to use him. He was everywhere today, and playing big-time football. Is that Doug Pederson, our offensive coordinator? Kudos to all of them making that all happen.

And I have to add that having Anthony Fasano back in there is so sweet to see. I think the ruling on the field on his nice catch and power into the end zone should've been a touchdown, but it wasn't, and the review couldn't confirm it because no one could see decisively where the ball was. But that's probably a good thing -- it shows he can catch and hang on the ball in a pile of tacklers. It'll be sweet to see what more we can do with him out there now.

One last thing. Was thinking about that 17-16 score. Didn't we beat another team by that exact same score earlier this season? Hmm, who was that? Oh yeah, the Dallas Cowboys. Lessee, the Chiefs were once the Dallas Texans, and in 1962 the Cowboys shoved us over to KC after we beat the Houston Oilers in the AFL Championship game, and then in, what, 2002, after Houston had lost the Oilers and got a new NFL team, they called themselves the, ahem, Texans.

Just a weird item of the kind that bang around in my tiny little mind every once in a while.
_

Raiders at Chiefs - Week 6 - Record: 6-0

Throughout the first half all I could think was, yep, they're going to do it to us again. The Raiders are going to beat us again at Arrowhead. It'll soon be seven straight home losses to these guys in as many years. We let Tyrell Pryor get untracked too often to make the plays he needed to make.

But then...

This is Arrowhead.

And we did have a packed house. And the Seattle fans went and showed us up a short while ago setting the record for loudest crowd noise. And that meant that our fans had to summarily take back that little bit of notoriety.

As the game progressed and the fans got louder, and louder, AND LOUDER, I was really doubting that they'd get the record, just knowing that the Seattle stadium's acoustics gave them an edge. Except that...

The Arrowhead fans got the record!

Thing is, whether or not they got the record is way less important than the fact that however loud they were, it was having a major effect on the Raiders offense.

Today, there is no question, the fans were definitely the 12th man out there. The Raiders offense had something like eight or nine pre-snap penalties against them -- delays of game or false starts. At one point in the 4th quarter, when I believe the score was still 14-7, the Raiders faced a 4th and 48. Penalty after penalty and sack after sack took them down. In fact sacks-wise we had ten on the day.

We are definitely a 4th quarter team, no question. For the three quarters we really slogged around on offense. We did take advantage of somewhat short field position to score our first two touchdowns. But the truth is --

I'm still kind of scared about our offense. Our offensive line is still not nearly as stiff as it should be on pass protection. Our receivers are just not getting untracked -- yet again. And today Alex Smith had a very sub-par game. After that 4th-and-48 Raiders series and we had a chance to do our standard grinding to close things out, Smith overshot an open Donnie Avery, then right after that threw very poorly to A.J. Jenkins on a gimme screen pass.

Our defense rescued us by making three very opportunistic picks, one by Quintin Demps earlier in the 3rd quarter that set up the go-ahead touchdown, one by Marcus Cooper that set up the field goal that sealed it, and another by Husain Abdullah he took to the house.

Yes, Smith still played very smart quarterback, but come on, unless we get crackin' with weapons other than Jamaal Charles we're going to experience a very painful sobering up. We do have games coming up against an underachieving Texans team, a deceptively good Browns team, a rejuvenated Bills team, and then, after the bye, that date with destiny -- Denver.
_

Chiefs at Titans - Week 5 - Record: 5-0

At the beginning of the year one key thing had happened that I thought had proved we still weren't ready for primetime football. Right after all the teams had to cut down to the minimum number to start the regular season, we went out and picked up something like six or seven of the rejects. To me it was like searching for a decent ham & cheese sandwich from the corner deli's garbage bin.

But wow, has that turned out to be great for us. John Dorsey is looking like a genius making those deft personnel decisions -- very sweet. Two of those players stand out as guys who've really made a difference so far for the Chiefs.

The first is tight end Sean McGrath, who we really needed to step up when three -- yeah, that's just the typical wretched Chiefs luck -- three of our tight ends went down with injuries, Tony Moeaki, Anthony Fasano, and Travis Kelce. McGrath has really been a key go-to guy for Alex Smith, and do we need that since Smith's game is made up mostly of those short quick routes many of which go to the tight end.

The second is Marcus Cooper, and paying no attention to anything sports during the week I simply have had no idea who this guy is. But listening to the announcers today speak, it sounded like the guy is one fine athlete who just needs to get some decent direction and coaching to play a good pro game.

And was he clutch today. First he smartly pounced on an inadvertently booted punt into their end zone right at the optimum time to score the touchdown. Late in the game he made what could be the key defensive play of the game, literally yanking a pass right out of the clutches of the receiver he was covering. We were ahead by only three at the time, and we were able to drive down and get another field goal to force them to have to get a touchdown to be back in it.

As a team we were opportunistic again, we played stout stand-up defense again, we ground out things late again, but...

We got too many penalties again, we gave up big plays again, and our vertical passing game was just not clicking again. Yes Alex Smith had a subpar game with the slick rainy conditions. We got over 200 yards on offense in the first half and got two field goals? Come on. And he had too many passes that were just, whuhh??? On the other hand he did still get some decent connections to Donnie Avery and Dwayne Bowe that were key. And when it was all said and done, Smith still played that wise thoughtful football, especially late, something he has shown he can do exceptionally well. I'll take it.

I also have to make mention of yet another phantom pass interference penalty on Eric Berry. He'd just made a fantastic defensive play on a third-down pass, yet he didn't do anything worthy of the flag. The Titans series continued, and Tennessee scored a go-ahead touchdown. On the Chiefs next series there was a questionable roughing the runner call when their linebacker plowed into Alex Smith -- I agree it was tough to make, but they ranted and raved about that one. Sorry, but your guy launched his body at a guy clearly running out of bounds -- a penalty -- while nobody said a thing about our guy doing nothing that was just a critical.

In a way this is one thing I like, however, about this team. The players are carrying themselves with great composure, not letting those kinds of things get to them. Big play against you? Poor-call penalty on you? Another down: Just get out there and take care of business, baby.

Another testament to the splendid impact Andy Reid is having on this team?

Maybe.

Thing is, as far as I know, we are one of three undefeated teams left in the NFL. How insane is that. And while it is thoroughly enjoyable, indeed, I still watch how precariously we are winning these games. Next week we get Oakland at home. The Raiders are just not that great, and we haven't beaten them at Arrowhead since 2006.

Ugh, just looks like the perfect recipe for that letdown.

As it is, just soaking up the winningness. Pretty cool.
_