Chiefs at Patriots - Week 11 - Record: 4-6

Well, I thought the score would be 45-3, literally, I did think that. Turned out to be only 34-3. Good thing.

Thing is, this was still an extraordinarily painful loss. The Miami loss? That was mostly a surprise, especially for people who after four straight wins thought the Chiefs were all that. The Denver loss? That was just disappointment in a team that allowed the option to beat them.

But this just hurt.

I think some of that was the fact that we actually played New England well in the first quarter. There was actually that tiny bit of hope that we could actually go in there and do something splendid and show our merit for being on Monday Night Football. But after a nice juicy gain by a resurgent Thomas Jones, we got a holding penalty on 7'9" 420-pound tight end Leonard Pope when he was blocking a 3'11" 125-pound New England grunt that looked way more like a hold than it actually was. At the cost of making this much more melodramatic by saying that was the turning point in what was destined to be a blowout anyhow, it went downhill from there.

I think what hurt most was just that this New England team is still so good, and this Kansas City team is still so bad. And I just can't deny that a lot of that is all the delightful St. Patty's luck that drops into the lap of a New England team, and all the wretched Curse of Odin's Revenge misfortune that never fails to afflict the Chiefs.

At the beginning of the game the announcers touted New England's boffo new tight end, some guy named Gronkowski I think -- I don't know because I don't pay any attention to any other team at any other time as much as I can help it. Please note that this was the first time I'd been introduced to this guy, never heard of him before.

But all I could think about was, how come they have him and we don't? How come they still have all kinds of great players leading the Patriots on to playoff appearance after playoff appearance after playoff appearance, and

We just don't?

This hurts because I always think about that game on November 27, 2005. Almost six years ago to the day. We played wonderfully and beat the Patriots, the reigning Super Bowl champs, 26-16. I actually thought -- yes, take a few moments to split some gutstrings laughing, I'll let you -- that this was the turning point. That the transition was ecstatically happening. I mean, that always happens, doesn't it? The poorer teams get the higher picks and the winning teams always have to fall back in the pack, right? That through years of painful awfulness we now earned the right to be in the upper echelon of contenders? Right? Right?

Well, after that game we won again to go 8-4, but then lost two crushing games to Dallas and New York, ended up 10-6, and failed to even make the playoffs. New England, meanwhile, went 4-1, got into the playoffs, and while they didn't get into the Super Bowl they still won a playoff game that year. Two years later they went undefeated while the Chiefs floundered at 4-12. In fact, here's the brutal reality since then, up to date. It is so frighteningly ugly you may want to avert your eyes.

New England's record since that Nov 27 2005 game, including playoffs: 81-26, a winning pct. of .757. They've won 3 of every 4 games they've played. And while they haven't won a Super Bowl in that time, they've still made the playoffs five times, and won five postseason games over that stretch.

Kansas City's record over that same period, including playoffs: 36-63, a winning pct. of .364. That's nearly a clip of losing 2 of every 3 games. Sorry, but that is repulsive. They've made the playoffs twice, and each time they were blown out in their first game.

Getting back to the Patriot's tight end Gronkowski -- this whole thing says a ton. This guy was a beast last night, scoring two touchdowns. I wonder, where did the Patriots draft him? I can't imagine for two seconds they got him high, because the Pats record has been so good, and as such they've had to have drafted low. If that's the case, then could they have drafted him after the 3rd pick in the '09 draft? After the Chiefs used the 3rd pick overall to select the now-completely-invisible Tyson Jackson? This just kills me, it just kills me. It may not have been Gronkowski that year, I just haven't any idea. But what other super-stud players out there ready to make the Chiefs look silly were drafted after Jackson?

Many will say, "Oh you just can't complain with hindsight, it just isn't fair." I respond to that with, Why can't I? Who says I can't? "Oh sure you know now, but there's no way you could know then."

But that's a lot of the point. We should be knowing then. And even so, I've been given to the consideration that the Chiefs have had the worst luck in just not being in the right place in the draft to get what we need. A team like the Patriots, they're in the right place all the time. It is luck, but it is also front office wisdom.

Do the Chiefs have that? I do think we should give Scott Pioli a chance, a guy who worked for a long time in that fine New England front office. But this is precisely why I pay no attention to anything outside of Chiefs games, because these thoughts just drive me insane. To wit: When he was with New England, was Pioli actually in the mix of successful player decision-making, or was it all really just Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick, some other Patriot top guy? Or was Pioli just holding their towels and daydreaming about Dancing With the Stars while they were going over team-building strategy?

While I do work really hard to limit my hatred of other teams to the acceptably healthy disdain for the Raiders, I do let my jealousies of teams who continue to be successful at our expense eat me up. As it is, another of those teams is up next week, the Pittsburgh Steelers, supposedly to be played on Sunday night -- yet another primetime showcase for the Chiefs. I say supposedly because NBC could flex us right off that slot, I suppose that would be the merciful thing to do. But that decision would be a clear statement that yet again, the Chiefs are so bad they don't deserve to be in prime time. That hurts. And even if they keep them on the evening airwaves, it's only because they want to showcase the Steelers. ::Sigh::

But yeah, I don't blame them. Who could. It still hurts though.

Yes, our injuries have really clobbered us. But then, that's again just the awful, awful luck of the Chiefs.

BTW, I was at a college basketball game of a friend's son a week ago, and outside the arena in the hall there was a poster that elucidated the factual reality of ACL injuries. Turns out that among the general population they occur at a 60 in 100,000 clip . I did the math and found that this is the same as 3 in 5,000. The NFL has about 1,400 to 1,500 players out there playing on teams in a given year. So that's about one ACL every three years for the entire NFL. Even if you reasonably say that NFL players are more likely to suffer ACL's that the general population, even that doesn't detract from the fact that the Chiefs got hammered by the misfortune of having three of their top players taken out for the year because of it.

So then, if there are, oh, ten players on each team who are really pretty good, Pro-Bowl type players, then, lessee... And we know that it's about 3 in 5,000 chance that it'll happen to anyone anywhere anyhey... Annnnd that means that the average for getting an ACL for any of those ten players on any given team is, like, one every sixty years or so...  Annnd the Chiefs themselves have about ten reasonably decent players, among them Jamaal Charles, Eric Berry, and Tony Moeaki... So that means for the Chiefs, having your team ripped apart by ACL injuries to your top guys is 3 in 10 while for everyone else the average is 3 in 5,000...

Ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch ouch.

Last night one of the announcers said something very profound, and that is just that even with the injuries, these guys are still NFL players, highly paid and expected to perform. Problem: you just can't do that against a team that has all the luck and skill to keep a team going strong, while your team is floundering in misfortune and inability to cope with it.

That's the New England problem, and why even though we knew what was coming, it still hurt like hell.
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