Sunday, December 17, 2023

Chiefs at Patriots - Week 15 - Record: 9-5

The main questions we are always asking, let's face it. In no particular order:

Will our defense maintain its excellent play on the season?

Can Patrick Mahomes be as consistent as he had consistently been in all his previous quarterback play?

Will the referees let us play THIS week?

Will our receivers for once actually play like they belong in the NFL?

And the number one question of them all:

Will those who have interminably annoyed us all with their incessant and completely unjustified disrespect of Clyde Edwards-Helaire admit that they'd been major league buttheads about him this entire time?

That last one first. Sorry, because CEH is not Barry Sanders does not justify the constant and contemptible dismissal of the skills he does have. Yes Isiah Pacheco is on the whole a better option, but I'm really glad the Chiefs did not give up on CEH because replacing Pacheco today he did marvelously. His ability was highlighted by a phenomenal leaping catch in the back of the end zone for the Chiefs clinching touchdown.

So yeah, no matter what he does from this point forward, please afford CEH all due respect he rightly deserves, please.

As to the other questions...

Defense. It was pretty much as good as it has been, allowing only 17 points and just generally aggravating an average Patriots offense all game long.

Mahomes. Eh, he's still not what we'd like to see, just what we've been so spoiled to see, but he still did pretty good matriculating when he needed to. He threw at least a couple picks if I remember, and yeah, that is always cause for concern.

Referees. To be honest they were making some ticky-tack calls... against the Patriots. To be fair it did seem to go against the Patriots a bit more in this game, although there was one call in particular against Rashee Rice, for a pick he was essentially pulled into, wiping out a big Chiefs play.

Receivers. Still -- not. It's just ----- not. Our tight ends are great, which includes Noah Gray who is not Travis Kelce but still plays well. We have our backs doing great receiving -- besides CEH's TD catch there was Jerick McKinnon's nifty screen-pass touchdown. 

But our wide receivers. Umm -- yeah -- not

Kadarius Toney dropped two passes he should have had, one of which he dropped right into the hands of the Patriots defender. Not.

Skyy Moore caught a pass he made himself open-for very nicely, and the proceeded to fumble it away before the relief that it didn't count because of a Patriots penalty. Whew. And not.

There were other drops here and there, and other routes not-run or openings not-had that made Mahomes' day again a bit of a struggle.

The only receiver who actually did well was, yes, our rookie Rashee Rice who is again singlehandedly salvaging the reputation of this group. He caught nine or ten passes today and they were saying he is about to break Dwayne Bowe's rookie record of some sort. That's cool. 

They were also saying Mahomes has never lost three games in a row. We got the win today to avoid that, so we were able to stop our two-game losing streak, so that's cool too.

As it is we're 9-5 and with the Broncos loss last night we've now got a two-game lead again. We may snatch yet another AFC West title still.

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The photo is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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