It is something.
I had in my brain a long elaborate treatise about the state of the NFL and what actually happened last Sunday in the game between the Chiefs and Bengals, but I don't think I'll get to it. In a number of posts over the past several years I have already laid out a case that the NFL is not completely on the straight-and-narrow. In my last post I'd even emphasized that all the gambling connections, racialist expressions, and Covid protocol insanities have severely damaged the integrity of the American pro football game. Yes, I do know I enjoy an inherently violent sport, but that is a conversation for another time and addressed at some length in the past.
For now, the pressing question is how in the world can a team as phenomenally talented as the Chiefs so stunningly lose a playoff game to a far lesser quality team, a game they'd already dominated throughout 29 game-minutes of the first half (and in that last minute were poised to dominate even more)? In a game that already everyone knew the Chiefs were the far superior team and had already showed it not only in the first half but throughout the entire game? In a contest that featured the Chiefs not only shooting themselves in the foot (and, well, every other limb for that matter) not once or twice but dozens of times?
This was simply not an instance when the other team just enjoyed the whole panoply of shockingly lucky breaks or employed some miraculous strategies hitherto never before concocted to pull off the upset. This was a contemptibly inexplicable self-immolation on the Chiefs part. What makes it that much more unfathomable is that they did exactly that same thing in that Titans playoff game four years earlier. (And I have to add this: Overtime game. 27-24 loss. In a game the Chiefs did dominate throughout. Remember exactly 50 years ago?...)
Yes, we all know Andy Reid struggles with in-game decision-making using that deep intuition every good coach must have to best manage a pro football playoff game. It was that way for him in Philadelphia, it has been that way here in Kansas City. We're just glad he's a great communicator, mentor, teacher, play-designer, and all that. Game manager? Is it possible that for the past few years it has really just been our overwhelming talent that has gotten us so far in playoff action, most notably the play of our exceptionally gifted quarterback?
I guess I just wonder. Is Andy Reid that incompetent to see what every single person saw out there on the field in that second half, that after already showing we could run the ball at will against these guys that we just stopped doing that for who-knows-what reason? When you're up 21-10 you could literally run-run-run-run-run and chew clock and force their hand after they had decided to flood the defensive backfield. And please know I'm not all in on dissing our fine coach. Where were the voices of the very formidable coterie of other coaches in the booth and on the sidelines who could have chimed right in soon enough on all this?
I have not looked at anything related to this game, nor watched the film or replays of the game. Don't want to. Don't care to. But I did happen to see something on my Twitter feed from Seth Keysor who writes terrific things about the Chiefs. He had a very short video clip there from the backside of a Chiefs play in which Mahomes tried to throw some kind of pass. The Bengals were rushing three, and you could see it. It was so clear.
The holes in front of Mahomes were gaping and the field ahead of him was wide open.
From that one small five-second clip it was obvious. As long as the Bengals were doing what they were doing Mahomes could have just run quarterback draws, however many -- he is extraordinarily good at this! -- until the Bengals had to readjust and we could open up our passing game again.
Either way we're up 35-17 before you could blink (well, by the time the 4th quarter begins), and we spend the rest of the time salting this one away.
Yes. This does imply one of two things. Either Reid and Mahomes and whichever other Chiefs involved are that incompetent, or, yes...
They are that duplicitous.
Sorry but those are the choices. People can screech all they want about how the Bengals won so shut up, you're a poor loser. And your point is? They can spout all they want about how the Bengals did this or the Bengals did that. Doesn't change what anyone with some decent functioning eyes, brain, and television set actually saw happen out there.
Maybe once or twice a crazy-ass bad thing can happen (and how many times has that happened in a Chiefs playoff game). But that many things happening? With this Chiefs team? And how much our coach yet again with all that coaching experience simply did not do the things anyone with even the smallest amount of football knowledge knew needed to be done?
Here's what I think.
I think those things I'd mentioned that are destroying the true meaningful integrity of a premiere sports league are screwing with our team's chances to win. I honestly think there are more, but those are significant. And please, I'm not just speaking for the Chiefs! I'd want the game to have the greatest integrity and be on the highest up-and-up for every team, including the Bengals! Hey, even the Raiders! (Who, however, now play their home games in the gambling capital of the world. Ergck.)
The gambling thing is especially destructive. I don't know how and I just don't pay attention to any gambling practices -- how they do it and how the odds work and all of that. I just don't because again, organized gambling operations are far more rotten than most conceive.
Recently, an NFL coach came out with some stunning allegations, Brian Flores I believe it was, and I think he was the coach of the Dolphins before he was fired. He first made the claim that blacks are being shut out of coaching jobs -- not going to get into all of that right now. This claim, by the way, is the one the mainstream news media went ballistic over, of course.
The other claim the news media did not touch, though it was mentioned briefly by some, was how some coaches were offered money to lose games, "tanking" towards the end of a lost season in order to secure a higher draft position the following year so they had a better shot at the best players coming from college. From the little I saw, executives of teams accused of such things issued vehement denials.
But still.
That environment is out there.
What is so mind-blowing is that, remember, just before Super Bowl IV Len Dawson was vilified in the media merely because of reports that he'd associated himself with a disreputable person. Just that he'd had contact with some other single individual! Even that was proven false, but still! Joe Namath had a nightclub that some thought involved some relationship to organized crime figures. Whether or not that happened, the NFL was still all over Joe Namath like the cheapest, tightest, lint-caked suit ever!
Today the NFL has major contractual relationships with organized gambling!
And as I shared in my last post, it is actually why I'm great with letting it all go. I am paying attention to nothing NFL until the very next Chiefs game in September. As we all know there are a hundred things far more important than this pro football stuff, and I will happily be attending to those things while holding dear all the good things about our fine team.
I've been thrilled that Brett Veach has done amazingly at getting the team that we have on the field. He's a football genius, how great it is that he's on our side. I've shared this a million times. But you know? In some real sense... he's done too good a job.
The NFL can't stand the Chiefs doing so well. They aren't the Cowboys or the Patriots or the Packers or the Giants. In a very real sense, Patrick Mahomes is too good. Sorry, but you did not see the honest Patrick Mahomes out there in that second half on Sunday. If Mahomes were allowed to play like he could, again, we're up 42-17, easily. But then, alas, for the NFL that kind of eventuality simply will not do.
Yes, sometimes even the best have poor games. They all have them. All the time. There can be only one Super Bowl winner in the end anyway, I got that. Patrick Mahomes is a human being -- we all can cut him some slack. After all none of us are out there trying to find a receiver eight miles away in 0.04 seconds with 700-pound behemoths charging at us to crush every bone in our body. We can give Patrick a break, I'm great with that. We still love him.
He just had a tough outing is all, that's fine.
Thing is...
What we saw on Sunday wasn't that.
However it happened, it was obvious something happened because what we witnessed on Sunday doesn't just happen. It doesn't. Keysor even mentioned in another tweet that the "averaging" of Patrick Mahomes has just begun, adding some stat that was supposed to show that he is really, after all, no better than any other quarterback, really. Great point Mr. Keysor. Great point to add to the reality that bringing the Chiefs down a notch or two, or three, or fifty -- is exactly what the NFL wants.
I will add that someone close to me said they'd heard there were some poor calls in the game. Again, I don't know about that because I've seen and heard so little post-game. But was that the case? Poor anti-Chiefs calls I didn't know about? Watching the game on Sunday I do remember Byron Pringle not getting a blatant holding call. How many others were there? There were certainly a ton of them in the previous regular season Bengals loss.
So then how much did the Scorecasting factor affect our chances on Sunday?
Yet with those horrific new elements now deeply embedded into professional sports, it cannot be the case that we can trust that what you want genuinely for your team is truly on the level.
I will always want the best for my Chiefs and I root for them every game they play. I guess now I must resign myself to just letting the fairy tale nature of my rooting interest keep my fancy as much as I know how it is so exploited. I've always kind-of known this, and always still immerse myself into the whole thing as I do -- I know that, and I respond by being sports celibate (most of the time anyway). We aren't supposed to take this too seriously, but really though.
How much fun is it going to be -- how much less fun is it getting when we realize it is more and more like WWE wrestling. I mean really, this is where it is going.
And yes, I sure would like to find out more about what is actually going on to make it that way. Yes, should the Chiefs players, coaches, execs be implicated that would be a very nasty thing indeed -- along with that plaintiff little boy a hundred years ago, I hope as he did -- "Say it ain't so, Joe."
I sincerely concede it could be some other factor or force that someone works very hard to keep very opaque. I don't in any way wish to unduly malign anyone, especially my beloved Chiefs.
But something is going on.
We'll see.
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