Chiefs 2024 Bye Week Edition

The Chiefs have a bye this week, one of the earlier ones, but it is still a good time to rest and recover. I was thinking Marquise Brown would be back here sometime but I think I saw that he may not even be back until as far out as the playoffs. Wow. 

More on a couple Chiefs things in a moment, but I did want to pound out my thoughts about the professional sports world as I occasionally do here in this all-things-Chiefs effort. 

The baseball playoffs are going real good now, as they do every October, and I just wanted to point out yet another instance of evidence that the major league baseball world continues its competitive duplicity unabated -- namely that there are distinctive advantages granted to the Yankees and the Dodgers that no other team has. 

This has been the case for many years now.

Sure enough, this year, not only are the Yankees and Dodgers appearing in their respective league championship games, but the New York Mets will be facing the Dodgers in their affair. How'd that happen, when last year the Mets were such a train wreck? The World Series will be featuring at least one New York or Los Angeles team this year. And if it is the Yankees and the Dodgers, the entire major league baseball world will be cheering this on and of course enabling the wicked deceit that goes with it.

I've already gone to the mat to elucidate this duplicity, most recently in this post. I will add that my good friend sent me an article written by a Bay Area sportswriter about how horrible the owner of the A's is, you know, to let them slip away to another town and all the rest of it. No. Not even. Please. "Bad owners" are a dime a dozen, and most sportswriters and fans like to heap vitriol on the ones that they think are just not as good as others are. It is just plainly stupid considering what the MLBers are really doing.

No, the problem is the competitive duplicity that is quietly embraced by everyone who wants to make money in pro baseball. The only way that happens is if the Yankees and Dodgers are always winning. And the only way that can happen is if they are patently handed the overwhelming advantages they have. Again, "What is good for the Yankees and Dodgers is good for major league baseball," is a principle that governs the majors, and when that is widely and articulately challenged then I'll pay attention.

Again, so much more can be detailed to prove this, and hundreds of thousands of tunnel vision fans and sportswriters who bleat about the fun they want to have that I don't like doesn't change this reality. Indeed that so many of them are brazenly enthusiastic about this possible renewed "classic World Series matchup" helps prove my point. The MLBers (again anyone who makes money from this operation) know there are millions -- and when I say that number I mean literally millions -- of fans who'll be much more engaged in Yankees and Dodgers success and therefore all will reap the benefits. 

What does this have to do with the Chiefs? Why do I write about this yet again? One major reason is this here is just a platform for these truths to be expressed. I'm not a major influencer with this, but at least I can share here. It'd be nice if others would be bold and truthful about it.

Some of it is just amplifying the meaning of what we get to enjoy with Patrick Mahomes and company doing what they are doing in light of the competitive duplicity that seeps into everything professional sports. The gambling thing is already infecting the game, and if it isn't affecting game outcomes at least from what we can openly see, it is afflicting the people who watch them. The NIL thing in college sports is now doing some nasty things as to how college players consider themselves and their schools.

The Chiefs success is something to truly enjoy right now in spite of all that. They can take pride in the work that people like Clark Hunt and Brett Veach are doing as much as they are not as much hindered by the same impediments that the MLB has for teams not the Yankees and Dodgers. More parity and some meaningful limits on free agency are instrumental, of course, and the Chiefs have been fortunate to have probably the best general manager/head coach combo in the history of the game. Brett picks 'em and Andy coaches 'em. Both perform at Hall-of-Fame levels. (I can't neglect to add that Brett manages the cap restraints extraordinarily well, that is a critical part of the Chiefs success.) Oh, and we just can't not mention the HOF coaching of Steve on the defense. They are really carrying the team right now.

This year they have done wonders with reclamation players Mecole Hardman, JuJu Smith-Schuster, and of all people Kareem Hunt. And don't dismiss the impact Mecole Hardman has had. In the Saints game he had good kick returns and a couple nice gains on plays that use his abilities to the best.

I'm still taken by the whole Kareem Hunt thing. Don't forget how dominant he was when he came on the scene in 2017. Remember that opener against the Patriots, and that amazing long TD pass from Alex Smith to him to help them paste the Pats in that Thursday night game? He did everything a running back could do for the next year-and-a-half -- they're now saying Well, he's now 30 years old [or however old he is] and he probably doesn't have anything left in the tank...

Well, it appears he can do just fine in the offense of Andy Reid who just knows how to use him -- like he does with Mecole, and with JuJu, and with any player who joins, or rejoins, the Chiefs Kingdom.

Yes, I'm convinced the NFLers hate it. Why isn't this happening with the Giants, the Jets, the Patriots, and above all the Cowboys? The NFLers simply can't do what the MLBers are doing, and what a testament to the genius of Brett and Andy.

Next week we get the rematch with the 49ers, let's see if we can keep the party rolling.

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

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Saints at Chiefs - Week 5 - Record: 5-0

Sorry but I've got early Tuesday morning work and I'm starting to pound this out here in the early 3rd quarter. These Monday Night Football affairs -- it is great we're on prime time some, what, 36 times during the season nowadays, but it is ruthless for us bloggers with jobs that start early in the morning. And yeah, I'm here on the west coast so I've even got a few hours on everyone else. I have no excuses. Sorry.

I'll start with the latest on Rashee Rice. I saw a quick note somewhere that said he was now officially out for the season. Then I looked around to get confirmation, but I saw nothing else on that -- no other news or notes anywhere. Are we still waiting with that sliver of hope that he'll somehow be okay?

Over the course of the 1st half we had our way with the Saints, really. The only thing the Saints had was a nifty long-bomb TD pass from Derek Carr to Rashid Shaheed. That was absolutely it for them. Our D-line was doing great work stuffing Alvin Kamara. Bryan Cook snatched a nice pick early to get us started on the drive for our one 1st half TD.

Meanwhile we got terrific play from our O-line busting Kareem Hunt free for regular big yardage runs, including a 5-yard TD run. Mahomes was stepping it up, elevating that Mahomes-like play to that next level, nice, really having a good feel for the pocket tonight, making connections when he could and when he couldn't he scrambled nicely.

The highlight of the game so far: After being stuck with a 2nd-&-34 on a Carson Steele messed up fumble thing then a Trey Smith penalty, we spectacularly got it down to 4th-&-2 at the 24 yard-line! How? That patented Kelce catch-&-flip thing! He caught it, ran a bit, then threw a spiffy hip pass right to Samaje Perine whereupon he gained about 15 more yards. Still, we had to settle for a Butker FG. 

With minute left in half, the Chiefs used some really nice passing connections from Patrick to JuJu to do some major matriculating. Still could only muster another FG. Up 16-7 at the half.

Here as the 2nd half starts they received the kickoff and continued matriculating until they got stopped and, alas, Butker bonked his 50-yard FG attempt off the upright. Eegh. 

We managed to stop the Saints yet again and yet again we matriculated beautifully until......

At the Saints 2 they get one of those stupid ridiculous plays that always used to wreck the Chiefs. Mahomes throws a strike to JuJu at the goal line and he simply can't hold on. It pops right into the hands of Khalen Saunders of all players, who runs it all the way back out to the 35 yard-line. EEEEEEgh. What is so grating is that right before that play the TV shows photos of Travis and Khalen's brother dancing the night away with Taylor Swift at one of her concerts. Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeegh.

How on earth is it we simply cannot put teams away. We are still up 16-7 as we near the end of the 3rd quarter, but dang. We really should be up 27-7, but we just aren't finishing these very fine offensive drives. We are absolutely dominating this team yet the Saints are a couple of ridiculous plays from taking the lead.

Annnnnnd the Saints just scored a touchdown driving the rest of the field after that Saunders whoopsy-doo pick earlier. Please.

Nkay everything is back to normal, at least for now. JuJu makes up for his earlier ugly whiff by running a perfect crossing route for a 50-yard gain, then we follow it with a Kelce wildcat handoff to Worthy who streaks for the touchdown. Now 23-13.

We're matriculating again, getting down deep into Saints territory, and - and - and - with about 4 minutes left we stall, a penalty, a sack, errrgh...... So with 3 minutes left we get another Butker FG to make it 26-13.

And I thought all the splendiferous Taylor Swift mojo was spent after that silly precog thing the TV did just before the wildly goofy Saunders interception that was almost the start of our undoing. Wasn't to be as we did nail this one down.

There is, however, just that Chiefs weirdness of having former Chiefs JuJu, Mecole, and Kareem back and producing for us. With our newer key guys Rashee and Isiah Pacheco, and Hollywood for that matter, all out with extended injuries, it is nice to see these guys out there with some fine Chiefs Kingdom mojo in them.

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The photo is simply a screen shot of the ESPN highlight of Worthy's touchdown out of the wildcat with Kelce taking the snap.

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Chiefs at Chargers - Week 4 - Record: 4-0

Here's a good rule that is never followed because everybody thinks the quarterback should not sulk after throwing a pick and should actually be out there trying to tackle the interceptor.

The rule: Don't have your quarterback try to tackle the guy who just intercepted his pass.

First of all if your super-valuable QB (::cough cough:: Patrick Mahomes ::cough cough::) is out there trying to make tackles no matter how much he caused the conditions for said tackling attempt, he could so easily get injured. The pick-six he gave up this one time is not worth the dozen touchdowns he's not getting for you in future games because he got foolishly injured trying to make some weird tackle.

It isn't as if he can't make some attempt to at least look like he is getting in his way or just get off the mat and look like he is running interference of some kind, but he really should be thinking much more seriously about staying out of harm's way.

Second of all your super-valuable QB may be super-good at throwing the ball for many touchdowns, but he's probably a klutz trying to make some beast tackle as if he were some boss strong safety. 

Such was the case today when Mahomes tried to kneecap the interceptor and he ended up kneecapping his best receiver as he was trying to tackle the interceptor.

And by kneecap, we mean kneecap.

As it is they are saying Rashee Rice may have torn his ACL, and if that's the case, he's done for the year.

Yikes.

It is weird because we thought we'd be without his services for some time anyway because of his drag-race driving incident earlier in the year. So yeah, we can't get Hollywood Brown out there any sooner.

As far as the game went, the Chargers looked pretty hapless out there for most of it. Their only touchdown came when their QB Justin Herbert was hammered and just before the hit flung the ball to the back of the end zone that their receiver just managed to stick his hands out to grab.

Otherwise for the most part our D had its way with these guys. Chris Jones was unstoppable. Spags' D plan made for a ferocious attack the Chargers had no answer for. And we should give a shout-out to our punter Matt Araiza who continuously flipped the field forcing the Chargers into long tiring drives any time they had the ball.

And for the offense it did get the job done with a number of contributors. It was especially nice to see Xavier Worthy get that nice long bomb touchdown catch as well as watching Kareem Hunt do very good work for us reminding us of what he gave us seven years ago.

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

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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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Why NFL Pre-Season Play is So Loathsome

Well that was nice. 

Sure enough, two bad things happened to the Chiefs last night in their first exhibition game this summer, a loss to the Jaguars. Both may very well not be horrifically bad things, but one in particular is why pre-season NFL football is so wretched.

Let's cover the bad thing that can actually be a good thing first.

It happened right at the end of the first half right after the Jags scored a touchdown to go up 18-10. with seconds left in that half they kicked off, and as they did they demonstrated the genius that is their coach Doug Pederson.

He had his kicker do his dangedest to kick the ball right at the goal line. He did, and sure enough the ball landed about a yard into the end zone then plopped back out about a yard into the non-end-zone area. Mecole Hardman rushed over at the goal line, grabbed the ball, and slinked back a bit into the endzone to down the ball.

Uh-oh.

At first the officials called it a touchback, which is what Hardman wanted, but Pederson rightly objected. Yes, it was indeed a safety, as unwitting as Hardman was about it all. The officials agreed. Two more points for the Jaguars.

Ick. With a half-minute left in the half they get a 35-yard touchdown pass play, a 2-point conversion, and a 2-point safety. 10 points in 30 seconds of play. Actually, to be honest, the entire time span for that ten points was seven seconds. From .33 to .26. Ighckghck...

Here's the thing. Radio guy Mitch Holthus was yammering the whole time about how there needs to be some review of the rule -- what with the new kickoff rule and all -- that they should look at it and adjust it and they haven't encountered this kind of thing and all the rest of it. On and on he went. Now Mitch is the very best football announcer in the country. He is fantastic. We love him, he is great.

But he was completely misled about all of that.

The rules state that after the ball is kicked off, it is a live ball. For the entirety of the time is goes anywhere. There is no more letting it just bounce in the end zone while the returner holds his arms out as if he's getting ready for takeoff. This is an excellent rule, and it is one that Pederson insightfully exploited to his advantage.

Good thing it happened in this meaningless pre-season game because now everyone will know to get their kicker to aim for that goal line -- which requires the returner to have to make a decision about whether to run it out, and if he stumbles or is indecisive he's going to get hammered at the five-yard line. If he hopes to down it in the end zone -- bringing the ball out to the 30 -- he'd better get it right because if he's off by even an inch, he's then downing it right there at his own one-inch line or, as Hardman did, committing a safety.

Of course, again, now everyone knows what to do with this. Everyone's kicker will now try it, excellent -- we have one of the best kickers in the league. Everyone's returners will now have to step up their on-field judgment about where that ball is going in relation to where they are in relation to where the goal line is, also excellent -- let's see who does that the best.

That second very bad thing that happened occurred on the very first Chiefs play on offense. Mahomes hit Marquise Brown for a nice first down pass, it was very nice, yay! A super nice preview of the 150 passing connections this season between the two on the way to even greater and greater Super Bowl glory! Yay!

Except the *#&%*@# Jaguars defender went the extra mile to punish Brown by driving him into the ground, seriously injuring his shoulder/collar bone/clavicle/something-right-there, whatever it is there where the injury occurred. They say he'll be out for about a month, which is good in that he'll be back for most of the season, but bad because yet again a pre-season game means unnecessary injuries.

And this one was even worse because the Jaguars player was very clearly pile-driving Brown into the turf.

What - is - with - that?

I really think during a pre-season game if you do something like that, there has got to be some penalty. I know football is violent and I know the players often can't just stop and treat ball carriers with kid gloves -- I know all that.

But this kind of crap? Stuff you really could easily avoid as expert tacklers who spend every working hour not only practicing tackling but being trained about how to make good solid tackles without injuring the opposing player?

Again, two very bad things, but because it is early in pre-season action things that (a) with the Hardman safety our special teams now know what they really have to work on, and (b) with the Brown injury there should be enough time for him to get a full recovery and get back to help the Chiefs win ball games.

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

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