On Sunday, October 22, 1972, my father, brother and I were returning from a weekend trip to Yosemite National Park, which was about 100 miles or so away from our home. We were there without my mother because barely a month before she and my father had gotten a divorce. So, here's Yosemite, something for a dad to do with his boys on a weekend to show he was still there. That's cool.
I distinctly remember something from that drive home, and that was listening to the radio to the NFL scores of the day. Sure enough they said that Kansas City had defeated Philadelphia, 21-20. I remember being pretty stoked about that, even though I didn't follow everything quite so fastidiously -- I was only 11.
Turns out later sometime, I don't remember when, that the broadcaster got it wrong. It was actually Philadelphia that beat Kansas City 21-20, and I remember that kinda got to me. Wow. I can't trust my parents to stay together, now I can't trust these people to get the score right so my already fragile emotions don't get further yanked around.
Thing is, I thought, hmm, what actually did happen in that game, and what was the context? In fact I didn't even know it was a scant few weeks after my parent's divorce until I looked it up. Do you know what happened in that game?
Well, the Chiefs had already lost their first two games ever at Arrowhead that year, including an opening day home loss to the eventual undefeated Dolphins. But they had won three games on the road, so they were sporting a 3-2 record, not too bad especially coming off a terrific season that ended on that infamous Christmas day playoff loss.
So into Arrowhead come the Eagles who had no wins at all, 0-5. Sure enough the first half featured three touchdown passes thrown by the immortal Eagles QB Pete Liske. Yeah, Pete Liske. The Chiefs could only muster the 20 the rest of the way.
The Eagles would go on to get a grand total of one more win that year, while the Chiefs slogged to an 8-6 record and would get nowhere near the playoffs, a streak that would last another 13 years.
Because of the odd ways they did interleague scheduling for many of those years, the Chiefs and Eagles would not face each other again for another 20 years.
That game was on October 11, 1992, and this time the Dave Krieg-led Chiefs got the touchdown they needed to actually win the game, 24-17. Here's the personal note though, I don't remember a thing about that game because, strangely enough, my stepfather had died suddenly just that week before the game. I was at my mother's consoling her and helping her make arrangements. So, yeah, weird, two Chiefs-Eagles games 20 years apart are preceded by my mom losing a husband each time.
The Chiefs-Eagles game after that was a Chiefs spanking, but only one of the two they had against the Eagles before this year's game. Thing about this one was that it was part of a streak to start the 1998 season when I was sure we were going to dominate the NFL -- finally! -- before we utterly tanked beginning my own sports swearing-off in November of that year. For five years following, yes, truly I knew not a thing about the Chiefs, or mostly anything else in sports. Today I still do nothing with any of it except -- I simply can't help it -- watch Chiefs games.
The Chiefs-Eagles affair in 2005 was two games before I started this blog. I remember it well too because, while the 2005 season was actually a pretty dang good one for us -- we finished 10-6 -- this game was probably the most devastating one of them all. We shot out to a 17-0 lead, at Arrowhead no less, and then, it evaporated just like that. We actually got crushed, the final was 37-31, but it really wasn't that close. If we had that game, we'd've gotten in the playoffs, and taken the place of the eventual Super Bowl winning Steelers.
Now to this game. The way I look at this game is that there were five key things that were both good and bad, but the good of each was just a little bit better, and that got us the win. Here they are, in no order of importance:
2. Our Offensive Line. The Bad: For most of the game they played far more on the poor side than the good side. They got penalties, they allowed QB sacks, they couldn't get Jamaal untracked. It was very discouraging. The Good That Was Just a Little Bit Better: For the second game in a row the O-line stepped up when we needed it and did the grinding-down-clock thing to ice the game. We took, what, eight minutes off the clock when Philly really needed to get the ball back. They actually started opening things up for our backs, and yeah, a lot of that was Jamaal Charles, but they also gave Smith enough protection for a few of those dump-off passes you also gotta have.
3. The Big Play. The Bad: We got utterly roasted on three big plays that didn't have to happen. Can you believe Michael Vick's 61-yard run was the longest of his career? Michael Vick??? That was the longest? They also got a nice 20-something-yard arching touchdown pass from Vick and a 41-yard touchdown run in which their guy just hit a small crease in the line and was gone. The Good That Was Just a Little Bit Better: Our opportunistic defense. We do have a decent defense, but tonight they stepped it up to force Philly into five turnovers. Yes, some of that was them bouncing snaps off their butts, but some of it was indeed our defense just being beast out there. And just look at Justin Houston, who's emerging as -- dare I say it -- another Derrick Thomas. Okay okay, I won't go so far to say he's there yet, by any means, there's still lots of career ahead of him -- but wow.4. Being in-synch. The Bad: Being out-of-synch. We really did look all over the place out there. Especially in the red zone, we really looked inept on too many plays. Too many times the Eagles were all over anything we tried to do. The Good That Was Just a Little Bit Better: Alex Smith's patience. Wow, did that help us out. He got sacked five times, but the odd thing is that this was actually a really good thing. He's proven he's not going to try to make something out of nothing. He really knows when to take advantage of things but only when you really can. Hey, if you suffer five yard losses on two plays of a series but can get 20 on one, it's all good. This reminds me of Eli Manning's play, and ya know, if Alex Smith can get us two rings, I'm perfectly fine with that.
5. The Overall Game Approach. The Bad: All the penalties, the formation problems, the confusion, the unnecessary timeouts to try to fix it all. Ergh. The Good That Was Just a Little Bit Better: Our coaching. Yes, the blame for all that bad stuff is on Andy Reid, but ya know? I wouldn't trade him for anything in the world. The key little-bit-better thing is that it looks like the team is working hard to get it all going, and it's not easy. The whole system is new, and this is the NFL. It really does look like the coaching staff does have things in order, and are committed to making it work. Right after the game Reid had a microphone in his face and the very first Chiefs oriented thing he said after all the sentimental "I'm back in Philly" stuff was "We have a lot of work to do." He sees it, he knows about it, and he and his guys will get it done.Hey, that we're 3-0 with all of that happening? I mean, after last year?
And just so you know, my mom is fine.
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