This is our first meeting against the pro football team with no name, a victim of the Let's-make-victims-of-people-we-can-virtue-signal-about craze these days. It is just plain absurdity for people to refuse to see this whole thing with the once-Redskins is close to what the Soviets did to people they didn't like. In the name of establishing a communist utopia, they went back into history books to erase mention of people they did not like.
Thing is, the Redskins name is on all that stuff. In fact, excuse me, but the Redskins name is still on everything related to their past success. The Redskins have won three Super Bowl titles. To call them the "Football Team" is like insisting fans at the NASCAR race screaming "F*** Joe Biden" are actually shouting "Let's Go Brandon!"
Don't worry, I'm great with calling them whatever team name they come up with. That they haven't taken care of that for this long still speaks to the anxiety everyone has about picking a perfectly non-offensive team name -- it is ridiculous. I have seen too much "WFT" used to refer to this team, and sorry, I'm not going to use a reference that looks like a common texting acronym for stunned surprise.
At that time there in the early 70s NFL Films also put out a half-hour special feature about a particular game of interest, the "Game of the Week." I did not watch as many of those, but they now have a lot of them on YouTube. A few years ago I came across a GOTW from 1971 that showcased the contest between the Chief and the, yes-then Redskins. It was the first time they'd ever met head-to-head. Not unusual, after all, the AFL-NFL merger had occurred just the year before.
The Chiefs won that game on a nice late-game touchdown pass from Dawson to Taylor, and here's the thing.
It was the first of many wins against the once-Redskins. In fact, if you look, for any head-to-head matchup in modern NFL history, the team with the best record against any other team - minimum ten games total played against one another - is the Chiefs over Redskins. Today's win means in the history of Chiefs-Redskins (and "Football Team") play, it is Chiefs 10, Redskins 1.
Yes, every single game we've ever played against the once-Redskins has been a win except one. That was a loss to the eventual NFC champions in 1983. That was it. That means in those eleven games, the Chiefs own a .909 winning percentage, the best of any team over another team in modern NFL history.
[Dec 31 2021 Correction! I did put up a post to elaborate that we indeed have only the second best head-to-head record! I explain there.]
Now on to the game itself.
It was definitely the story of two halves. The first half was a Chiefs team we've seen too much of this year. Three turnovers. Sloppy play on both sides of the ball. A terrible blown coverage to allow a TD pass to, of all people, former Chief Ricky Seals-Jones who was a total non factor with us last year. Patrick Mahomes looking like he was trying to do too much and just plain messing up.
There were any number of other things to mention that just got you to wonder. How could this Chiefs team be playing so miserably?
Kudos to the coaching staff to make critical adjustments. They put Mike Remmers in to replace Lucas Niang at right tackle. They adjusted the defense by getting Juan Thornhill and L'Jarius Sneed in position to make the plays they can make. They employed Willie Gay and Nick Bolton as nickel linebackers. How about that: our defense shutout the once-Redskins the entire second half.
That second half may very well have been the key to giving us hope.
And Mahomes and Hill. Both were off in the first half. Tyreek let a ball go through his grasp only to be intercepted yet again. And Patrick flinged a hopeless ball in a tough situation and it was picked.
Thing is, in the second half he made one of those amazing plays that wasn't much different from that wretched play -- running left and shoveling the pass from his chest for the completion ten yards downfield to Travis Kelce. Afterwards Danan Hughes, the radio color guy, remarked that his dad once said, "Things that make you laugh make you cry."
That is Patrick Mahomes. Sometimes it takes just a single halftime for him to pick it up and start doing the things he knows he can do.
If we can play more consistently like we should, as we did there in the second half, we'll reestablish our prominence in making that expected playoff run.
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Image of Patrick Mahomes is from Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs site. Thank you. The image of "This Week in Pro Football" is a screenshot.
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