Chiefs at Cardinals - Pre-game

A few times I've blogged while the game is on. You know, just for the therapy. Very rare.

This is even rarer -- in fact, I never do this, except for before a playoff game. But I just felt like doing this now.

Just want to get down some of the thinking about things, just for the therapy. Chiefs fans know this, as you know. And as you may know, I just don't deliberately look at anything Chiefs, but yeah, I do pick up all kinds of things from the news, from friends and family who let me know about things, that kind  of thing. Sometimes with circumstances like Eric Berry's, I will peek around online for more information.

Here's what I know about this game, here's what I'm thinking.

- The Cardinals quarterback is not Carson Palmer who I know had a season-ending injury. They do have this guy Drew Stanton, and I'd caught from seeing stuff about other games while watching Chiefs games that he had been doing pretty well, but lately not so much. Will our pass defense be as good as it has kind-of been for much of the season against a second-string QB? If we don't, furgit about us really being anywhere the contender we want to be.

- The Cardinals running game is pretty good, because they have some small quick back whose name I just don't have in my brain right now. Thing is, the Chiefs run defense has been pretty crap recently. We were crap against Denver. We were crap against Oakland. We were crap against Buffalo. We were kind of crap against Seattle but were able to stop Marshawn Lynch when we needed to. What's this going to look like?

Really, we have to rely on Josh Mauga and James-Michael Johnson in the middle. Not Derrick Johnson. Not Eric Berry. And not that Ray Lewis-type I've been slobbering that the Chiefs draft for years and years and years. Run defense? ::Whimper::

- How about that scrambling shake-&-back offensive scheme I introduced last time and which we should be employing to light up our offense? Consider the following, just consider: Alex Smith. Jamaal Charles. De'Anthony Thomas. Travis Kelce. Knile Davis. Anthony Fasano. Dwayne Bowe. Donnie Avery.

Take all those guys and put them into a dynamic, imaginative play package and we should put up 52 today.

Orrr... Are we just going to do vanilla play - vanilla play - vanilla play until you just want to splatter-barf all over your set? I got the idea the Cardinals defense was pretty beast. So how many sacks will Alex Smith get today? Let's say four. Okay, fine, but if he's not countering those by running the designed, arranged scramble plays to get the field wiiide open for these guys, then get ready for 7-6 and more praying for any remaining chance at the playoffs.

But then, if we can't beat the Cardinals, how much do we deserve to be there? Sure we've beaten those NFC teams handily, so yeah, we should beat them. (After all we can't beat the teams in our own division.) But how long is our streak against the NFC and the Cardinals going to last? I can't even remember the last time we lost to them.

So yeah, there're some thoughts. We'll all behold what happens to see if anything I think or say is worth a darn, we'll see. Just a note: I may not even be able to put up a post today because right after the game we've got family Christmas things going, but I'll see what happens. If you don't see my standard post-game post here soon, you'll know why. Stay tuned, but in the meantime you can ruminate on the quasi-meaningful thoughts about Chiefs things related to this one.

I mean, what else do we do with our lives?
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