Seahawks at Chiefs - Week 16 - Record: 12-3 - The Take

A few times through the first part of the game Saturday there were indeed penalty situations that did go the Chiefs way. Carlos Dunlap unnecessarily pushed their QB after he let go of the ball and it could've easily been roughing the passer. I agree, but no call. Then there was a really ticky-tack movement penalty on their center that should not have been called. Five yards back for the Seahawks, but it shouldn't have been. I agree.

I will be fair when calling out lousy officiating, even when it afflicts the other team.

Sure enough, however, the penalties started piling up for the Chiefs, and sure enough it was clear to me the refs needed to make sure the Chiefs didn't get too uppity. There was one scoring drive the Seahawks had in the middle of the 2nd quarter that was practically all Chiefs penalties, including a hands-to-the-face on L'Jarius Sneed that I think was ticky-tack but extended their drive as we'd just sacked their QB to bring up 4th-&-very-long.

Seems the Chiefs penalty-oriented penalizings are the ones that really hurt us the most. Please know that I'm very much not in favor of any penalizing items that favor us either, very much not. But I do know about the Scorecasting factor, and I do know that one thing that would help immensely (among several things) is to get those officials in the booth both with monitors to see everything and original calling-out privileges in order to make the right call. I'd add that they must be able to rule authoritatively on those so-called "judgment" calls, so cleaning all that up would also be very beneficial... but, um, yeah, there are the NFLers who may still be in the way.

Just a few observations about this game related to the actual game play and not anything to do with the always ugly reffing.

1. Mahomes and his "Cirque de Soleil" athleticism. This was what the television announcer said, that Mahomes should be in the Cirque de Soleil. What a great call after his phenomenal stretching touchdown that iced this one. He scrambled right, planted his foot into the turf at about the four yard-line, stuck his hand just in-bounds to brace himself, and polished the work extending the football just barely scraping the right side of the pylon.

That's a touchdown.

Thing is, couple plays before his acrobatics he hit Kelce on a couple of big-gain completions, and even better just before our second TD Mahomes threw a pass that dropped right over the defender's right shoulder and into Kelce's waiting cupped arms. Huge gain deep into Seahawks territory -- then Mahomes hit McKinnon for the TD.

There is no question that the most observant pro football pundits know Mahomes is the NFL MVP this year, and sorry, it isn't even close.

2. Our defense was beast in this one. Even with the penalties, we shut the Seahawks offense down. Our D-line in particular made a few plays that we can actually make very well -- batted-down passes. I think I saw we are first in the NFL right now in passes-batted-down-at-the-line.

3. Our running game with Pacheco did all right, but honestly, I get a bit frustrated when we rely on Jerick McKinnon on straight-up running plays. Don't get me wrong, McKinnon is fantastic, I've always liked him. But in this game, with the Seahawks actually doing a pretty good job against our running game? I'd have run a lot more with Ronald Jones, a bigger more bruising back who I really think Andy Reid is not employing nearly enough, especially in particularly relevant situations.

4. Those dropped passes. Uggh. Justin Watson had two brutal ones that both stalled good-looking drives. Kelce had a drop. And while not a drop. Valdez-Scantling caught a pass at the sideline and failed to get both feet down when it looked like he could have done so without too much difficulty. Was it the cold? Temps were in the teens across most of the country Saturday, so that could have been a factor.

5. Back to the defense just to give a kudos to our D-backs, and it still amazes me that we've got all those rookies there. They did a decent job of shutting them down, even though someone like DK Metcalf still had his way with us enough times. A couple times when they were in the red zone we benefitted from poor decision-making by their QB Geno Smith. On one play they really should've thrown a quick corner pass in the end zone to Metcalf, but Smith ended up throwing it away. No TD. Whew.

On another play Smith overthrew his receiver and the ball was caught at the side of the end zone by our guy, Juan Thornhill. Nice pick by the guy who I think is getting too much grief.

Yes, our defense needs to makes sure they stick their tackles, and they did do better Saturday. One nice play I remember was one of those rookies Bryan Cook tracking down their receiver who caught the ball a couple yards from the 1st down. Cook got to him making a nice open field stop, and as it was 4th down it represented a big stop for the Chiefs.

We're now 12-3 and still fighting for that No. 1 seed. Next week it is Denver again at home.

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The image is by Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs site, thank you.

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