Sunday, October 22, 2023

Chargers at Chiefs - Week 7 - Record: 6-1

Another day, another win over an AFC West team. I shouldn't speak too soon -- speaking about having this division wrapped up so early yet again, because the Chargers were playing us really tough in the first half. It was 17-all with a few seconds left until halftime when, yes, yet again...

Travis Kelce showed us all why he should be first get any girl he wants.

Patrick Mahomes threw a pass to him in the endzone and the cover guy simply could not keep up. PI, 1st-&-goal from the one. I believe it was on the very next play Mahomes did one of his shovel-like passes to Kelce at around the line of scrimmage and he was stopped.

Except this is Travis Kelce. And the top girl of all girls was watching, you know, Taylor was in the box right there next to Brittney and her 57 million-strong entourage thrilling to it all.

Thing is, Kelce took the pass at his knees, and because there was no more than 0.0008 seconds before everyone collapsed on him, he raised the ball quickly above his head and tried to single-handedly matriculate his body right on into the endzone about a foot away.

Only right as he got some push from his fellow linemen, the Chargers linemen all tried to snatch the ball from his grasp. It was a surreal look for just a moment, the ball held high while Chargers hands were flailing away at it to try to knock it loose. They were, needless to say, unsuccessful. Kelce fell into the endzone with the requisite mighty grip on that ball and with seconds left in the half the Chiefs went up 24-17.

In the second half the Chiefs D stiffened against a Chargers offense that has been notorious for wilting late in games. That is pretty much how it played out today. The Chargers did not score another point.

We lost Nick Bolton to what is considered a pretty nasty wrist injury, let's hope it isn't too bad.

A fun note about this one. After the Chiefs reacquired Mecole Hardman from the Jets where he went to play before the season started and was inexplicably little used, he was put in to return all our kicks today. On one occasion late in the game, Hardman took a punt that was returnable (it seems so few of any kick is truly returnable these days), and right as the television announcers were mentioning it was Dante Hall day when the Chiefs were putting Hall's name on the Ring of Honor, Hardman returned it fifty yards to set up our close-out touchdown. 

I got to meet Dante Hall nine years ago when he was coaching the high school football team that was playing my son's team that night. I was the football stadium announcer so I was privileged to be out on the field pregame getting acquainted with the player names I'd have to pronounce. What a joy it was to speak with him just for a minute, and have my son's picture taken with him.

Really neat to see him honored at Arrowhead today.

Next week we get the Broncos again, who I just noted beat the Packers today. Maybe they will be getting more of their game on, I mean they did actually do a good job against us last Thursday.

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The first image is from Chris Donahue at the official Chiefs site, the second is from Andrew Mather, thank you.

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