Chiefs at Redskins - Week 14 - Record: 10-3

What a splendidly extraordinary weekend for Kansas City footballers.

First, I just have to start with this, yesterday Sporting KC won the Major League Soccer title in a thrilling sudden death shootout. From what I'd heard they'd been a pretty good pro soccer team in recent years, but just had that unlucky run in playoff action (oh does that sound familiar). But yesterday they shot down all those demons and played hard and clutch in winning the championship. I don't watch or care much at all for soccer, but hey. Kansas City. Football. For the title. Had to tune in, and how fun it was.

Now it's time for the Chiefs to match it.

As it was today, they annihilated the Redskins in their snowy stadium, 45-10. It was 31-0 before anyone breathed enough to even see that breath in front of them.

See, after my abject disappointment from last week's loss again to the Broncos, I'd taken a couple of days to think about it, and just thought, you know? We do have a pretty good team. I'd made special mention of Alex Smith and Marcus Cooper, and for good reason. Smith was everything we expect of him today, and Cooper -- while still working hard at get grounded with some good pro fundamentals -- helped a stalwart defense get it done.

The real kudos today must go to the special teams, especially the return teams.

Whuh---uh---owwwwww.

Dexter just went off on these guys. Sure you could say Washington's coverage team was very weak, and I got you, I saw that. But still, McCluster's first two returns gave us very short fields and his third went the distance.

Then there was Quintin Demps, who took a kickoff 95 yards to the house. Whatever you say, we have got a very well-coached, fundamentally sound return squad.

I realize right now that I can't not make a long overdue extra extra mention of Jamaal Charles. Over the year in this blog I've really just mentioned him a few times, almost in passing. But much of that is merely because he's already established himself as the key cog in the Chiefs machine. All season long he's gotten it done for us in every which way. Today? Just as spectacular.

For a few times at the beginning of the game we'd tried stretching him to the outside with some weak vanilla handoffs, until the coaches got the clue that on an icy field like this one was you've just got to run straight ahead. And we did. The result? A 151 yard rushing day for Jamaal, and off 19 carries that's a 7.9 average. Did you get that? Seven---point---nine, per-carry average. That's phenomenal even for Jamaal.

Along with that, mention must be made of our O-line. We've lost Branden Albert and Jon Asamoah to injuries for some indefinite period of time, but bless John Dorsey, he got some depth in that area by picking up Geoff Schwartz. Eric Fisher is coming along, and Donald Stephenson has done well over there at left tackle. The key is that we're making things happen for our backs -- hey, Knile Davis even got his first rushing TD today -- and we're giving Alex plenty of time to get off some good passes.

Was this a statement game? I don't know. It was with respect to the fact that we'd blown three close games in a row to division rivals. But it wasn't because it was against a very weak NFC East team -- oh that we were in the NFC East, we'd be world beaters.

Now we've got to prove we can win in our own division. We've got a very pesky Oakland team next week at their place. (Ever get the feeling we're in the wrong conference? You do know that after today's final game against an NFC opponent, for the four-year run of playing all NFC teams, we've got a 13-3 record against them. We've only lost to Detroit, Atlanta, and Tampa Bay. Yeah. We've beaten, ::deep breath:: San Francisco Arizona Seattle St. Louis Minnesota Chicago Green Bay New Orleans Carolina Dallas Philadelphia New York and ::pant pant pant:: Washington.)

Today we could've clinched at playoff spot if Baltimore or Miami lost, but they both won very late. In fact, we almost enjoyed the most brutal irony of Matt Cassel leading the Vikings to victory over the Ravens late to get us in, but Joe Flacco did his great comeback thing, and, well, we'll have to wait until next week.

Thing is, as of this writing, Tennessee is surprising Denver in Denver, I think it was 21-10, but we all know how Denver can easily turn that around. But hey, if that score stands up, we are back to having a pretty decent shot at the division title. We'll see.

For now, a somewhat meaningfully statement game that we needed badly.
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