I liked it a lot. It makes the things I said in the Broncos game post more meaningful. It makes the things I said in the Bears game post less meaningful. After the Broncos game I felt the Chiefs would come back from that terrible defeat. Well, it's taken a few games, but they've genuinely played well the past two weeks. After the Bears game I'd given up on Andy Reid and Alex Smith, but they've both looked really good lately, and during this broadcast I'd seen scrolled across the bottom of the screen no fewer than 57 times that Clark Hunt wants Reid and John Dorsey to be around at least through 2016.
Except that, ahem, danged cynical me.
We played a pathetic Lions team today that had just replaced three people in key coaching positions, including offensive coordinator. There was no reason this fine Chiefs team wasn't going to blow out a team like this. It was very fun to watch, don't get me wrong. Everything went right for us today.
In fact, I look at this game and think, here we are. In London -- we've never played there before. Facing one another were the two teams with the fewest seasons having at least one playoff win since the merger -- the Lions with only one (1990), the Chiefs with only two (1991 & 1993). Tha's it. Yes, don't cry me a river -- the Lions were the team of the 1950's winning all kinds of titles, and the Chiefs had just won a Super Bowl when the AFC-NFC format started in 1970.
We started this game at 6:30 my time here on the west coast, first game of the day. Tonight is the NFL's showcase game, last game of the day, starting at 5:30 pm, the Broncos and Packers, two teams who have a gangantuous number of seasons with playoff wins. The contrast, each game featuring an AFC West team and NFC North team. May mean something. I just keep throwing these things around because I'm just hoping something magical happens to end the curse.
I've always said the key to that is that we have skilled team players who are well-led, well-managed, and well-coached, and that there's that core element of inspirational got-it that drives it all.
Some of the good for today is that we were still playing an NFL team today, a team that was never hammered like this all season. Some of it was seeing Andy Reid do some novel things that our players did very well. Some of it was seeing that inspired play from every Chiefs player on the field, not that it was never there -- I've got to confess they've always had more of it than I've thought they've had, and that's what's most important.
What we'll really have to see is if all this carries over into the season after the bye. We play Denver and San Diego next, and maybe we'll actually start winning against our division. That too is most important, more important than games we win against the NFC, which we'd been very good against the past several years. But this year we're 1-3 against our NFC opponents on the season (the one win today against the Lions).
Maybe we'll finally have that winning season against the AFC West, do you think? I mean, the regular season really starts November 15. If we run the table against the Broncos Chargers Raiders, really, amazingly, we win the West. That's five games. We have only three more games against non-division teams (the Browns, Bills, Ravens), so if, for a change, we can take down the teams we need to beat here, and this is a division that can be had, really, if we can do it...Dang.
Could we actually win this thing?
A little off-season time, bye week, and then... really -- opening day at Denver.
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