Chiefs at Raiders - Week 12 - Record: 7-4

Gotta give the Raiders credit. Fine work today. They deserved to win. It is good to see a team that has played as hard as they have with the heart they have finally win a game in a season that has been a nightmare for them so far. I remember how that feels. Remember the horror of our 2012? No one should ever have to endure that, not even the Raiders and their fans.

Funny, 30 years ago, 1984, the Chiefs faced an 0-10 Oilers team -- and lost. That's nice.

I had no illusions about what could, and did, happen in this game. The Raiders are an NFL football team. The Raiders have been playing decent football in their games, most of them close affairs. Any NFL team can win on any given Sunday. The Broncos had a pathetic game on Sunday and we all thought, "Woo-hoo we're ready to take over the world!", but you know, the Chiefs aren't immune to not-so-great games either.

The Raiders had a bit of a wilting there in the middle of the second half and it looked like we'd actually take this game. But they came alive again, and in the 4th quarter did what they needed to win.

Meanwhile, the Chiefs. How many blown plays did we have? Off the top of my head, Husain Abdullah not making that interception late hurt us. That would've stopped that game-winning Raiders drive. In fact, how many interceptions did we drop today? A few. Yeah, coming in we had the No. 1 pass defense in the NFL, but yeah, we kind of sucked today, and yeah, I saw a stat right after the Abdullah fail-to-pick that the Chiefs really suck at interceptions. Umm, No. 1 pass defense? But yeah, when you think about it, when have the Chiefs intercepted a pass? Hardly ever. It was never as ruthlessly costly as it was today. We had our chances.

As it is, I could remark about this Chiefs blap or that Chiefs blap, eh, whatever. We showed we could do some things with our passing to our receivers, but not a lot. I'm still very concerned. We got untracked with our usual 4th quarter push, but today our 1st to 3rd quarter game was pathetic. Yeah, it was raining, but when we're that far behind (14-0 score) we absolutely have to have a passing game.

Will this game get us untracked to know that nothing is a given? Yeah, that'd be nice, that we really step it up against Denver, that'll do it.

But then, does this reveal that we are not as good as our record? Damn, we not only have Denver next, but we also have Arizona (9-1 record) and Pittsburgh (with an unconscious Ben Roethlisberger at QB) coming up on the road.

We'll just have to see if we're for real.

Everybody has a poor game.

But will we get back up and be for real?

We'll have to see, that's what it is all about.

It only counts if it is for real.
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