"The Devastating Hunt" Postscript. Five years ago shortly after our harrowing playoff loss to the Titans I wrote this blog series, and recently I'd been reviewing it -- as a sort-of "How It Started" perspective on "How It's Going" cerebral exercise. Funny, as I just think about this now, that game was the last first-playoff game loss we've had, after a plethora of such disasters in Chiefs playoff history.
You can go back and read it, that very first post gets a lot into those horror shows. Since then the Chiefs are, believe it or not, 8-3 in postseason play. Damn.
I look back at "The Devastating Hunt" and I don't believe anything I wrote was inaccurate or antagonistic. What I put down came from the heart and I did include many truthful facets of the thing Hunt, not just the negative but the positive as well, trying to be fair, respectful, and balanced about all of it.
It is just, wow, look at this team now. Right after that, the Mahomes era started -- the promise of which was mentioned in the series. Also the Veach talents at assembling this world class organization were coming to fruition -- another fine item addressed in the series. Andy Reid has continued to do phenomenal things with the Kingdom, has grown into a better coach along the way and still enjoys being out there doing what he does best.
And certainly Clark has a lot to do with it.
Right now as everyone knows the Chiefs are the No. 1 seed in the AFC, get the bye, and are looking to continue being that Andy-Reid-best-after-a-bye in two weeks. We all consider missing the Super Bowl a grave disappointment, but it can't be denied that this is the golden age of Chiefs football and there does not seem to be any reason it can't continue for some time.
The "Snow Globe" play. On Saturday against the Raiders, towards the end of the first half, the Chiefs ran a play designed to throw the defense off by first gathering in a circle arm-in-arm and spinning around. It looked a bit like "Ring-Around-the-Rosie" and was often mentioned as such. They broke, lined up, and ran a dipsy-doo play that resulted in a Kadarius Toney touchdown, only to be called back by, yes, you guessed it, a phantom holding call.
Afterwards haters from every woodwork crack in the NFL punditry and fandom world called it "disrespectful." No matter how they felt about it, whether sneeringly hateful or grudgingly deferential, the word came up a lot.
I bring this up here because, ahem, it was not disrespectful at all. People are just hating the Chiefs because they are good, and they are having fun out there they wish their team would have. This especially in light of the fact that there was a reason for this madness -- again expressly to keep the opposing defenders guessing. Excuse me, but every team does this with every formation they establish before every play they run.
Who cares if before a play a team's offensive players run around flapping their arms like birds, do somersaults and cartwheels, and shout "Hacka-slacka-macka-whacka!" before lining up? They still have to get the formation correct and have 40 seconds to run the play.
Furthermore, I do agree, not every thing a team does in this vein is not disrespectful. If a team ran to the formation flipping off the opponent and shouting vulgar epithets at them, that's disrespectful. A taunting or unsportsmanlike penalty is in order.
What the Chiefs did was not that, by miles.
I'd like to think most pro football fans who truly like the game appreciated seeing Snow Globe. I'd even like to think, believe it or not, that the NFLers liked seeing Snow Globe. As you know if you've read my work, I loathe the advantages the NFLers give to the large-market media-darling teams, but in a twisted way, yes, I admit, I'd sure like the Chiefs to be a media-darling team. Already with a once-in-a-millennium talent quarterback in Patrick Mahomes they do have the attention of all of the pro football world.
I must add this here, just to add it. At the Raiders stadium Saturday were a phenomenally large number of Chiefs fans. Really, it was a sea of red there. At the Raiders stadium. I didn't see the national anthem, but my son told me the roar of "...and the home of the CHIEEEFS" was quite pronounced. It was also very clear in the massive amounts of cheering for any Chiefs good thing.
The Chiefs dominance over the NFC. Over and over again we see how dominant the Chiefs have been over the past few years, especially within its own division. In the Mahomes era they have lost only three games to the Chargers, one to the Raiders, and zero to the Broncos. There're all kinds of stats like this, but one ignored is this one.
Did you know the Chiefs beat every single NFC team in its rotation of playing NFC teams in the last four years? Every one! Look:
In 2019, their Super Bowl year, they beat the Bears, Vikings, and Lions. Yes, they lost to the Packers that year, but stay tuned!
In 2020 they beat the Saints, Falcons, Panthers, and Buccaneers -- even though they did lose to the Bucs in the Super Bowl.
In 2021 they beat the Cowboys, Giants, soon-to-be-Commanders, and Eagles. And yes, they also beat -- ta-da! -- the Packers in that extra game they got when the season was extended to 17 games.
In 2022 this season they beat the 49ers, Rams, Seahawks, and Cardinals, and as an extra added feature beat the Buccaneers also. Two wins in that time period against the Tom Brady-led Bucs (that all of us would trade in for just that one Super Bowl win against them, for sure).
There you go, all 16 NFC teams in four years, bested by the Chiefs.
Now we just need to do it again in the Super Bowl.
The still festering NFLer commitment to not-good-things. I did mention a few things in "The Devastating Hunt" that I'd like to emphasize here, things I've shared a number of times. I do believe the NFL has done some good work in these areas, but I also believe the System browbeating that afflicts anyone susceptible to the best virtue-signaling is still too prominent.
One of them is the vaccination issue that too many are not examining more carefully. This Bills player who suffered a cardiac arrest on the field two Monday nights ago could easily have been adversely affected by the Covid vax he was fiercely pressured to take. Yes we don't know, yes we do want the very best for Demar Hamlin, yes I'm not at all about politicizing this difficult and personal health concern.
The fact is, however, everything is political. Why is my bringing it up any less acceptable than the people who say "Don't talk about vaxxing at a time like this!" Sorry, but if the horrific pressures for people to get a terribly dangerous chemical injection contributed to what happened to this young player, then it should be addressed.
Another incident relates to the whole gambling relationship I've argued against for some time, even back when I wrote "The Devastating Hunt." Recently former quarterback Bernie Kosar, an excellent football player in his day, made a bet and said something about donating something to charity -- I'm not clear on the exact details. Thing is Kosar was dismissed from being any representative of NFL football anything. The issue seemed to have been that Kosar's official role with the NFL was somewhat fuzzy, so the question was should he have been disciplined in such a way?
As it is the NFL has strict rules about players, coaches, and any other such personnel doing any betting of any kind -- that's good. The problem is still in how much those gambling interests may still very much influence what happens on the field. Then there is the double standard -- how much the NFL polices this gambling thing in its ranks while still making a mint from these betting sites. This means all those NFL personnel everywhere still benefit greatly from the betting action on their games.
For the 57th time, get rid of any of that gambling stuff. Not just for the NFL and its integrity but for the benefit of those self-destructive fans who can't stop. It blows my mind that in just about every "DraftKings" type commercial -- and it seems there are more and more of these kinds of operations showing up -- there is some disclaimer that if you have a problem with gambling go seek help. That's nice, that'll fix things. No, sorry, it just proves this thing is so very wrong.
One more related item is just the impact of the expectations of the commercial NFLer interests. Last night in the college football championship game the easily predicted outcome did transpire: a far more talented Georgia team walloped a woefully overmatched TCU team, final score 65-7. It was 38-7 at the half.
There were only two things I thought about. One, I sure would like the Chiefs to beat every team they play 65-7, every game, for the next, oh, 800 years straight, at least -- but then, yeah, who would pay any attention. We certainly wouldn't be a media darling team would we -- who would care about any of the spectacular Ring-Around-the-Rosie elaborate Snow-Globe-&-orchestral-music-box dipsy-doo wildly-spinning-carousel twist-a-loo slamma-blamma triple-reverse hook-&-lateral cross-field double-pass-back quadruple-leaping 99-yard-bombapalooza to score the special 17-point touchdown plays we run every other down?
Yes, sadly, I agree that would be bad. Weirdly, when you think about it, being the obsessively devout Chiefs fans that we are, it is actually a good thing that every game features the very necessary possibility you could get your ass whupped. Not-so-delightful at all, but reality.
The second thing I thought, however, is the one that is most concerning, and that is how disappointed the advertisers must have been in the 4th quarter of that Georgia-TCU game. I didn't watch any more if it after the half. I'd bet most of the country didn't either. Even fans at a watch-party had their attention elsewhere and not on the commercials these guys paid gazillions of dollars to air.
How much, exactly, does this affect eventual outcomes and indeed what may happen to work things in certain ways to get closer scores?
Honestly, I don't think this is a new concern at all.
The best and most honest way the NFL addresses this, to its credit, is to try to have some sort of parity among the teams to begin with. This is not a bad thing, although yes, as a fan of a single team you do want your team to win every game 65-7, woo-hoo!
I just saw written by some fan or pundit -- I don't remember which -- when the NCAA puts that 12-team playoff system in place (when is it, next year? I don't know) every team qualifying to be in the "Final Four" will be an SEC team. True that. This year the teams making the playoff could have easily been, along with Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee for sure. LSU finished really strong, South Carolina looked really good late, Mississippi State was showing its chops -- indeed it has almost gotten to the point that every team wants to be in the SEC!
College football has become like that European soccer league, where they have that Premier League thing going in which teams that play well elevate themselves into a higher level while teams that don't play as well are just dropped to lower levels. I do not know the details of any of how that works exactly because soccer is supremely boring to me, I simply do not pay any attention to it.
But I do follow how sports leagues work, and the only reason I bring it up is just to think about what happens in a league that has in it any given team that is simply too dominant and worries the advertisers. They're saying Georgia will win it all again next year in college football. Will the strong competition in the SEC be enough to make it interesting? I mean really, Ohio State gave Georgia a good run in the playoff game, so I don't think we're quite to Premier League status yet.
It is just again, how much exactly do the Scorecasting or The Fix Is In realities result in, shall we say, alternative strategies to keep games closer than they should be? If that is the case, then it is frightening to think of the ways NFLers might be perfectly okay with those things subversively arranged to affect game outcomes, and that is very bad.
The 8-9 team in the playoffs. Finally I have to make mention about something else I'd touched on in "The Devastating Hunt": how much the NFLers really do prefer certain teams to be in playoff action, merely because they are simply more of a draw. I've always felt they've never liked the Chiefs, but hey, the Chiefs are looking like they are having fun, they have a terrific quarterback, they play an exciting brand of football -- so they may actually like them for now.
But they still aren't the New York team or the Boston team or the Los Angeles team or the Dallas team for that matter. Earlier I'd posited that the NFLers certainly do not favor any team in the AFC or NFC South divisions, namely (AFC) Indianapolis, Houston, Tennessee, Jacksonville, (NFC) Atlanta, New Orleans, Carolina, Tampa Bay.
The NFLers must be happy this year because only one of those teams had a winning record, Jacksonville, and even that record was 9-8. That means the NFC South representative this year is Tampa Bay at 8-9, and yes, this team is led by Tom Brady. The luck this guy has is legendary.
Is Brady a good quarterback? Yes, indeed. But is he even more the GOAT at being lucky? Without question. Here his team has a losing record and he still gets another playoff appearance. You just can't make this stuff up.
Ultimately, though, while I understand that the rule is each division gets to have a representative in the playoffs even if that team's record is 6-11, I question that especially when another NFC team had a 9-8 record and are not in the playoffs. Whaddya know, yet again, the abject silliness of this. The luckiest quarterback in the history of just about anything anywhere gets into the playoffs with a losing record, while the unluckiest team in just about anything anywhere, the Detroit Lions, can't get into the playoffs in spite of having a winning record.
Really, I actually think that rule could be changed. If your division winner doesn't have a winning record and another team does, you forfeit your privilege to qualify. The NCAA has a bowl-game rule now: don't have a winning record? You don't get a bowl game. Why don't they have something like that in the NFL?
And please, I would be all in on this rule even if the playoff-qualifying losing-record team was the Chiefs. It would just not be right, even for my own team.
That does make it much more fun for everyone.
As it is we'll see who we'll be facing after next weekend's wild-card games. More then!
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The first image of Clark Hunt and the Super Bowl trophy was clipped from a story about Super Bowl LIV at the "St. Mark's School" website -- apparently the Hunts have given to the school for some time. The second was simply in my file. The plot graph was assembled by Arjun Menon with date from Pro Football Focus. The other images were my own screenshots of various things widely shared on the web.
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January 11 additions. I just thought I'd come back here and add these items augmenting this post from yesterday. This tweet features a wonderful but sobering video satirizing the Covid vax hysteria -- be sure to watch it all the way to the very end. This piece by Jason Whitlock addresses that college football title game and the far-too overreaching power of the corporate interests in duplicitously distorting the integrity of the game, with an emphasis on the extreme dangers of forcing vaccines on an unwitting population especially those in the limelight such as high profile athletes. I will also mention that I did also today add the posted plot graph with the Chiefs in terrific shape both now and in the future, a testament to the incredibly good work Brett, his staff, the club's personnel, and yes, Clark, have been doing in shaping the Chiefs into one of pro football's elite organizations.
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