Chiefs at Dolphins - Week 3 - Record: 1-2

The very first blog post on this site was in 2005, October, a few games into the season when I just up and decided to do a Chiefs blog. As you know I only write about the game of the week, the only thing my eyes behold, mostly because that's just about all the Chiefs heart-rendering eventualities I can take. In fact I started this a mere two games after a game against the Eagles we'd led big early but ended up losing big, in a season we'd need just one more win to make the playoffs in a 10-6 campaign. Heart rendering indeed.

The reason I bring it up is that that first post was about the Chiefs game in Miami. It was notable because it was played on a Friday night because of some hurricane thing going on. What was neat was that we won the game with the help of two Lawrence Tynes 50-something yard field goals.

The game today was especially sweet, for a number of reasons. In no particular order:

We showed we could play with critically critically critically key people not in the lineup. Of course Johnson Devito Allen weren't there -- they're gone for the year. Charles Berry Thomas weren't there, they're injury status is still up-in-the-air. Our right tackle Donald Stephenson has still got one more game on his suspension, and today we had another guy in there working on the line.

Speaking of the line, Eric Fisher is starting to show his No. 1 overall pick quality. Our running game ground out 174 yards. Of course Knile Davis and our other fine O-linemen such as Rodney Hudson had a lot to do with it.

This also speaks well of our coaching. Exceptional job by Andy Reid today. The game started out very vanilla -- at one point I screamed at the set watching yet another run off tackle that the Dolphins defense very predictably squashed. Good thing I screamed very loudly because they heard me. Reid started mixing it up, being imaginative, going to different guys, using his tight ends like crazy for power blocking and elaborate short yardage passing schemes. Joe McKnight scored two touchdowns today! Joe McKnight!

Our defense was again very bendy, but still got enough of the job done to stuff them when we needed to. The absence of Johnson and Berry is very obvious, but our guys still worked their asses off to not let the big gains they gave up get to them.

We made some bonehead mistakes, like that safety, what an aggravation that was. But damn, we do have those skill players who can make key plays when we needed. Our QB got sacked too many times, but again, Alex Smith is a guy who won't let those things get to him. Not his best game -- too many weirdly errant passes -- but he is resilient, athletic, versatile... very good to have in there when you want to win games in spite of the ugly stuff.

Hey, I can't not say something about Dustin Colquitt. I actually really like saying good things about him even though he's the punter. I mean, first a 63 yard punt, then a 64 yard punt. That's great defense, right there -- and the guy doesn't even have to make a tackle. Oh, and after that safety? High, booming kick to put Miami way back at their own 20-something.

Finally, we beat the Dolphins, an AFC East team. Remember the horror that was three years ago? When all four AFC East teams beat us by a combined score of 397 to 2? (Or something like that) It is sweet to have Andy Reid and Alex Smith this year, not Todd Haley and Matt Cassel -- and it is nice to have a number of clutch players to complement them that could make this season a decent one for us.
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