Chiefs at Falcons - Week 3 - Record: 3-0

Nkay here's how the game progressed. The first Atlanta touchdown was screwy mess-up on defense. Ugh.

When we got the ball we matriculated the ball well enough, with Rashee Rice playing phenomenally and our back-up backs doing well enough to run the ball. 

But Patrick Mahomes was not on. First he missed Xavier Worthy in the end zone by not leading him enough, then when we got to the red zone he threw a pick not leading Noah Gray enough to the corner. What is with that? Oh, and the interception was made by Patrick Simmons who used to torment Mahomes when he was with the Broncos.

With our second drive we were matriculating just fine, and we completed the drive with a nice TD throw-&-catch from, who else, Mahomes-&-Rice.

Ahh, but while our run defense was doing really well bottling up Bijan Robinson, we gave up the big pass play. We failed on a nice blitz call and Kirk Cousins hit Kyle Pitts for the big play just before a Falcons TD. We can meticulously matriculate on offense all day long, but if any good team gives up too many of those crazy big plays wherever they are whenever they happen.

Before the half we managed to get a couple of nice Butker field goals, one of which came after a nifty interception brought about by our tenacious D-line. This was a game we could take great advantage of the Falcons weaknesses on their O-line. They had two unfortunate injuries to those guys early.

We got the ball first in the second half and we pounded the ball really well, all the way down to the three, but then we just ran vanilla plays up-the-middle until on 3rd down Mahomes got flushed and threw an incompletion. Erggh. Old Andy Reid coaching rears its ugly head again. We got a field goal.

Our defense still kept shutting down the Falcons offense. The broadcast pointed out their QB Cousins uses play action really well to distract the defenders, but they simply didn't do much of that after they did it a bit to start the game. The color man even mentioned the Falcons could not really make anything happen with a simple pocket game, and on this drive they were stuffed yet again.

So there we were again on offense, late 3rd quarter, and fortunately Andy did a bit more mixing it up. Carson Steele up-the-middle a few times, that was cool, and a nice end-around to Worthy all helping us get to the red zone yet again. But then a not-so-good flip pass to Rice almost got him killed. But then Juju came in to replace him and his experience and skill got him a nice underneath route Mahomes finished and we got the TD.

But then, the old ugly Chiefs kicking doinks came back to rear their ugly heads. Butler missed the PAT -- it clanked off the right upright. Oh brother.

22-14 us, all ready to start putting the hammer down.

But then, whupp, the Falcons then got two good drives going, the first they got a super-long FG, then the simply wore our defense down, making our guys tired, keeping Mahomes off the field. Oh joy. Thing is, they kept going for it on 4th down and at around the five they threw incomplete passes for the turnover on downs. I will admit, that one on 3rd down should have earned a PI call against our guy. It was close, but Bryan Cook did PI their tight end Kyle Pitts in the back of the end zone.

Well, we got ours as a result. The Falcons got the Chiefs to commit a 3-&-out. Our offense looked miserable when we could have started our own matriculation to close this one out. A vanilla run, a Mahomes scramble out of trouble, then a silly bad pass attempt to try to convert a 3rd-&-short. Guh.

Then our defense resumed being tired and bad. There is no way we should have gone 3-&-out. Still ahead 22-17 at the two-minute warning our defense still needed a rest. Interesting that McDuffie had a PI call against him that didn't happen. Buuut then our guy did a horse-collar, that's nice. So the Falcons were set up beautifully at the ten with a minute left.

Errgh. The sweating sweating sweating...

But Nick Bolton.

He had a fine game, getting banged up but playing very tankishly throughout -- and on 4th-&-inches he blasted through to stop Robinson to seal the deal. With everything they'd been through and everything on the line the D did the job.

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I thought I'd add a quick note about Kareem Hunt. With the injury to Isiah Pacheco the Chiefs went out and got him back -- I know, very weird. Right in the middle of Mahomes' inaugural year Hunt had all that stuff going with the domestic violence incident and then the lying about it to the Chiefs brass. 

Gone.

This was extraordinarily disappointing because he was such a good player. This was the budding Chiefs dynasty and then, BAM, we lose a key component.

I just wanted to confess that yes, back then I was livid with the Chiefs. I'd written here and in the Fanposts at Arrowhead Pride how much they could have handled it better. No excusing what Hunt did, but a full release? No opportunity to make good?

Yeah, I was too angry. My red-&-gold colored glasses got in the way as they often do. 

But then, now he's back? Everything's better now? Right now I'm thinking, um, that's great! The Chiefs are saying he's made good in his time with the Browns and that overall he's a good guy. Um, that's great! He's not playing tonight because after just picking him up they put him on the practice squad, but let's see if he's got something left.

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On another note, they're saying so far this season there are a lower number of passing touchdowns. It is my theory that every once in a while the defenses do a really pretty good job on the whole of responding to what offenses are doing. They say there are more cover-two looks and that just makes it harder on offenses.

Okay, that's fine, but let's give credit to the defenses. The point is it may just not be the offenses that have suddenly become deficient in some way. So then, what does the NFL always do? Again, the NFL game goes for a number of years, defenses catch up, offensive production goes down... What happens?

They tweak the game a bit to give those offenses a bit more of an edge to keep the scoring up. For instance they'll make it harder for D-backs to defend with their hands or something. They'll make sure the quarterbacks are better protected in the pocket. Even tonight Chris Jones was flagged for a very questionable roughing the passer call. I don't think it was, but in the judgment of the officials he went just a bit too long into his hit on the QB.

I really don't mind those things especially when they do more to protect the players health on the field. One of the latest this year is keeping tacklers from employing the "hip tackle," dragging runners down risking leg injuries.

Nothing wrong with any of that! I think building the Chiefs defense was one of the most important things Brett Veach could have done over the last few years. But opening the game up is fine too. Offense returns and defensive coordinators need to get back to the drawing board and see how they can respond. I think that's pretty cool to be honest.

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This whole valiant attempt at a three-peat will not be easy. We've had very difficult challenges here but we've still jumped out to 3-0. Our running back situation could be better but Steele and Perine looked good enough, and Veach is working to secure all of that, again let's see what Kareem can give us.

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The photo is from Adam Parker at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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Bengals at Chiefs - Week 2 - Record: 2-0

Any Given Sunday.

True, an extraordinarily trite football cliche, but still.

Today the vaunted 49ers, Cowboys, Lions, and Ravens all lost. I mean, these four were easily considered among the beasts of the NFL, and today they got spanked, each one of them.

Our afternoon game against the Bengals? Oh my. It was thaaat close. Our wonderfully splendidly beastly two-time Super Bowl Champion Chiefs almost themselves got sucked under by a very tenacious and motivated Bengals team.

We were profoundly afflicted by the three of the Four Horsemen of the Pro Football Apocalypse, turnovers, injuries, and penalties. 

Mahomes had two nasty INTs and Carson Steele had a fumble. That first pick and the fumble were turned into Cincy points. We got lucky on the second INT when shortly afterwards we forced a fumble and got a scoop-&-score TD from Chamarri Conner.

The injuries: With Marquise Brown now out for at least four weeks our wide receiving crew is weakened -- huh, sounds familiar. Rashee Rice was amazing again, but beyond that, ehh. Then there was the sight of Isiah Pacheco on crutches with some ankle thing. Not good.

And the penalties: Our rookie O-lineman Kingsley Suamataia had a couple bad holding calls, his last one cost us a 40-yard Mahomes-to-Kelce pass play late in the game. Then there was the killer penalty, a hands-to-the-face on Wanya Morris to keep us from get a critical 4th down conversion with under a minute left. Sad because Morris caught a touchdown pass earlier for our first touchdown. But we lucked out big-time when the Bengals were called for a huge pass interference call on the 4th-&-16. We got the benefit of a critically bad penalty on them.

As it was, down 25-23 getting the benefit of the Cincy penalty we positioned the ball just enough for Butker to bang through the 51-yard field goal to win it.

I wanted to add a quick note about another typical instance where the Chiefs got penalized for questionable reasons, this time the team getting fined at the end of this week for something that happened in that opening Thursday night game. 

What happened in that game was the Ravens fine linebacker, Roquan Smith shoved Patrick Mahomes beyond the white boundary and should have been penalized for it. It was unnecessary and too violent. Easy flag -- not. They didn't throw it. Should've been thrown. They rationalized that he made the play barely within the white area along the sideline, but it was clear his push went beyond that boundary.

Right after that the Chiefs inactive tight end Peyton Hendershot's hopped off the bench and shoved Smith. Yeah, I get that you just can't do that -- Chiefs players should be smarter than that. But still, ya know? He's just standing up for his team player.

I get the penalty team fine, it may be justified. But come on refs. Come on official NFL front office people. Make it fair. Tell us you blew the call.

Anyway, yeah, look at the Sunday NFL games scoreboard for this one. For all the doofiness of the NFLer decision-making, it is easy to see why it is such a phenomenally popular sport to enjoy.

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

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Ravens at Chiefs - Week 1 - Record: 1-0

At the beginning of the game I did get an idea why fans may think the refs make the best calls for the Chiefs. They called illegal lining-up on the Ravens tackle a number of times when it looked like he was pretty good there on the line. When the Chiefs had the ball it looked like Jawaan Taylor himself was in the same position, but it was never called. I honestly don't know what the deal was with that. But you "Chiefs are favored by the refs" detractors had a case with that one.

When the Chiefs could really take care of some business at the end of the first half, Mahomes threw an ugly interception trying to do too much when the pocket was collapsing. Then there was the play early in the 3rd quarter Mahomes showed how well he can move around in the backfield. It is such a critical part of his fine game, he has such a great sense of place on the field. Early in that 3rd quarter a charging lineman had him dead-to-rights, and sure enough he stopped, slipped away from him, then hit Justin Watson wide open down the field. Just wait a tick and you'll make the slip -- and the play.

Our pass rush was eh, not great, and the defense as a whole let Jackson go off and get down the field on things a bit too often. Guess you gotta live with that and just contain as much as you can. Stopping Derrick Henry was okay, and going up 27-17 in the middle of the 4th made him less effective. 

The worst part of this game was the very first play of the 4th quarter. We're up 20-10 and the Ravens have a 3rd-&-17. A 3rd-&-17. Jackson is scrambling, is almost smothered by three Chiefs players, and he manages to float a desperation pass to his tight end -- and it was a duck. The receiver had to come back to get the ball. 

We then just lost track of the whole thing. The tackling was pathetic -- you couldn't even call it even an attempt at tackling. It looked like we didn't even know where the guy was so we could even look like we were playing any kind of football at all. A total embarrassment for a defense that is clearly way better than that, and playing really pretty well on the evening. Leo Chenel. Turk Wharton. Our defensive backfield as a whole.

Well, back to the play. With the Chiefs playing no real football at that time -- something of a weird time warp disturbance of some kind, I'm sure, -- the dude with the ball now, running at a speed equivalent to about a 28.74 time in the 40 at the Combine, rambled for a 50-yard touchdown. Yeah. Uggh. Uggh infinity. Later the television broadcast said that play had a 0.3% probability of happening. I mean. I mean, it was quite truly an abysmal thing to watch. I hope Chiefs officials are able to just mercifully just take replays of this game and just very surreptitiously excise the clip of that play from the game. We won't miss it.

With about 2:30 left and Baltimore having no timeouts, the Chiefs at midfield on a 3rd-&-10 and now ahead 27-20, the Ravens bat a Mahomes pass into the air. Mahomes catches it and down he goes. Not an incompletion. Great play since it allows those last :30 seconds to run off before the two-minute warning.

The Ravens got the ball after the punt at about the 10, again needing to score a touchdown with no timeouts. They then moved the ball all the way down to the Chiefs 10 and with 4 seconds left and one more play to go, the receiver caught the ball in the back of the end zone, but his toe was on the white line. It was out of bounds. 

We win.

We win by a toenail.

And the player who made that allllllmost great play was Isaiah Likely, who by the way was that receiver who got that ugly touchdown earlier. Give the dude credit. He had a monster game on the whole. Don't want to diss him too much as he was the guy who did score that 50-yard Ravens TD. 

Anyway, here his play did look really good, he did make an amazing play to reach up, snatch the ball, and work brilliantly to try to get both feet in. Crazy, if it was a touchdown, the Ravens were even going to go for the two-point conversion to try to win it. It is almost too bad Likely didn't clip his toenail juuust a bit more before the game, so that foot could be in-bounds for the TD, and we all could enjoy that attempt. Would've been a great finish to a pretty good game.

Except for that ugliness at the beginning of the 4th quarter.

As it is, final note, the off-season has been wonderful, just hearing "Will they three-peat?" every other time you turn around. I mean, this is our Chiefs. Wow. I was thinking after tonight's game that'll be over with, but now I realize, not really. Unless the Chiefs totally tank, we can still enjoy it through the season, and of course hopefully very very very deep into the postseason.

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The posted photo is courtesy of Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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