I simply had to pound out yet another rant after watching last night's primetime affair, this one between the Bengals and the Jaguars, two fine teams in the AFC. As I've shared before I generally do not tune in to other games, but this one I did, for about half of it here and there.
The only point I really wanted to make in this one is this, well, actually six of them.
Ja'Marr Chase. Zay Jones. Tee Higgins. Calvin Ridley. Tyler Boyd. Parker Washington.
In no particular order these are the wide receivers who played most prominently last night, helping their teams' backup quarterbacks to a combined 65 points in the game. I could of course add Jacksonville's fine Christian Kirk, but he was injured early in the game.
Still.
Still.
I don't know if you watched any of the game, but every single one of these guys played light years better than the Chiefs wide receivers. I'd love to exclude Rashee Rice from that unflattering assessment, but the Chiefs are still not really getting the ball to him anywhere near as much downfield as they should be. It may just be that he is a rookie and needs that much more work in, but that doesn't make the Chiefs' present wide receiver ugliness any prettier.
Back to those WRs last night.
Wow.
They got open, they got separation, they ran fine routes, they made catches, they knew where they needed to be, they looked like they knew what they were doing, they helped their QBs out by being precisely in the right places, they tracked every pass well, they got their bodies and hands in the right places...
Do I need to go on?
Do I need to mention how opposite all of the Chiefs' receiver activity over most of the season this year has been from what we saw last night?
And here's the thing that is just so crushing about all of this.
We have Patrick Freakin' Mahomes.
I guess at this point I just wonder if any of our receivers were even watching what happened in last night's game -- something pretty much anyone who tuned in simply could not miss -- and looking and seeing and deeply richly contemplating what they could themselves be doing, you know, being as athletic and wide-receiver-skilled and phenomenally-well-paid as they are... and learning from it and preparing to practice it deep into the late evening every single day this week.
Really, they could just about pretty much look at any team's game film and pick up some things to get their game on.
I guess I just wonder why they aren't doing that -- watching, gleaning, confessing, and re-dedicating -- and while doing that just shaking their heads to themselves bleating the words that make all of this so stultifyingly inexcusable. You know what the words are:
"We have Patrick Freakin' Mahomes. I mean, yeah, what the freak ARE WE DOING OUT THERE???"
Let's see. Let's see if their quite productively instructive viewing of the wide receiver clinic the Bengals and the Jaguars guys put on last night means something, and they get something of a game on over the rest of this one football season.
Because if again I have to watch the guy who is very likely the greatest quarterback of all time, space, and dimension have to spend another single minute scurrying around behind the line of scrimmage wondering if his selected receiver is actually going to do his freakin' job, I'm going to pitch an embolism, I swear.
Yeah, I'm sure for next year Veach is going to make sure we get a Tee Higgins or one of those nice free agent wide receivers. We all know he blew it by not going after DeAndre Hopkins, but I confess I was one of those who thought our wide receiver issues would work themselves out. I'm just as guilty.
But again, maybe there is hope remaining for this season.
Maybe they'll get it.
We can only see...
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