Colts at Chiefs - Divisional Playoff Game - The Take, Part I

Stevie Wonder has a song, you know it: "For once in my life there is someone who needs me..."

Well, that's the theme of this Chiefs victory yesterday. Indeed a number of things could be slotted there in for us, like, "For once in my life we actually beat the Colts in a playoff game..." That's cool, it's all good.

But the two I'm singing about right now are the two key things that for once in our lives did not horrifically plague the Chiefs in a playoff game.

For once that crazy-ass stupid thing did not happen, that thing that is so mind-numbingly huge that an otherwise decent effort by our reasonably decent team simply cannot produce a win in a first playoff game. I mean really, I was convinced that avoiding that thing was the main reason we had any chance to win.

There were a few opportunities for that thing to happen, certainly. A good clean pass defense by Jordan Lucas was considered a PI by the announcers, but it just wasn't. Even though he had his back turned as the ball arrived, Lucas didn't touch the receiver until after it bounced off his shoulder, and he didn't impede his vision. And glory be, the refs didn't call it. On Tyreek's long winding touchdown run for our second score, some said Demetrius Harris held the Colt's D-back. Upon further review, he barely grabbed his jersey and made a clean block. Not only not a hold but a good non-call by the official.

There were a handful of other opportunities for the crazy-ass stupid thing to happen, and maybe we'll talk about them as we go here, but that thing's absence in the game was wonderfully helped by the officials pleasantly avoiding being involved making it happen. Indeed throughout the game I was nervously waiting for that to happen, muttering often "No that wasn't a hold. No that wasn't a PI... Whew, good they didn't call it..."

I was even committed to waiting until the 4th quarter to see about anything no matter what the score -- that's always been the time when the worst happens. In this game I took a snapshot of the start of that quarter. You see it there, look close. We were up 24-7, we had the ball at midfield, it was 1st-&-10. If the crazy-ass stupid thing was going to happen in this game, it would definitely go down as one of the worst ever, hey, we've had so many. My cousin even texted us at about that time remarking he wasn't counting on anything after that 38-10 lead we had against the Colts a number of years ago. I don't think there was a Chiefs fan anywhere who wasn't.

I confess I did get nervous at this point because the score at halftime was, yes, the exact same 24-7. That means we hadn't scored at all in the 3rd quarter, and last year if you remember against the Titans we didn't score a single point in the 2nd half which really cost us the game. We did eventually score another touchdown late in the quarter to make the final score 31-13.

That second thing you could put into the second half of the "For once in my life..." lyric is that for once, our consistent strengths didn't vanish and our legitimate weaknesses didn't metastasize once we stepped on that playoff game field. In fact, FOR ONCE our strengths were a bit more amplified ::joy!:: and our weaknesses dissipated ::happy happy joy joy!!!::

Sure enough the one weakness I thought would kill us, something I discovered was echoed throughout the sports commentary world during the week, was our run defense. As I mentioned I paid attention to nothing anyone said during the week about this game, but listening to the announcers it was clear everyone thought the Colts were going to run the ball all over us. But on the very first Colts play from scrimmage their fine back was dumped for a three-yard loss. Sure they could have come back from that, but they didn't. That very first play sort of set the tone for the Colts offense throughout the game, and they even admitted they were frustrated not being able to get into any kind of rhythm.

A great big kudos then to Anthony Hitchens and Reggie Ragland, who we all knew had it in them.

For once in our lives we actually got to enjoy our team play well in a playoff game when they actually truly really SHOULD have played well.

There are a whole lot of things I'd like to put down in this entry, but I simply can't sit at a computer screen for too long at a time. I've got some time today, so later when I feel the itch, I'll pound out some more here -- thanks for reading. I'd kind of like to address each part of our game through the lineup, because each part of it requires some delightful measure of attention.

For now however, I do want to close this post with this extraordinarily notable thing.

Remember back, if you will, to that January day in 2004, Colts at Chiefs, January 11 to be exact -- trust me, it isn't so bad now when you know you've finally exacted that sweet revenge, and we're all so familiar with it anyway it doesn't matter... But remember one of the most distressing things about that game?

We ---- simply ---- could NOT stop them on 3rd down. Couldn't, wouldn't -- I distinctly remember almost shaking my head right off my body. "The No-Punt Game" they always call it. Ergggh.

Well guess what happened yesterday. It was almost as if our defense had The Jedi Force in them somehow to so thoroughly avenge that debacle that, yes, you know it...

The Colts were 0-9 on third down yesterday.

Among all the fine numbered Chiefs things yesterday, that was the best, it really was. Check it out.

Oh-and-nine. Nine times the Colts faced a 3rd down, and every single time they failed to get a 1st down. Call it poetic justice of some sort, because that is just too rich. Of course, people fail to realize that even though our defense was much maligned throughout the season, we were actually, if you can believe it -- we were actually pretty good making 3rd down stops. We really were, consistently throughout the year -- the numbers bore it out.

So yeah, what fun that was -- our good team that was legitimately good through the year actually did the good things in a game to actually win a well-played, well-executed pro football playoff game.

For once in our lives...

(Don't forget, more to come! This is too much fun!...)
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