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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