But dang.
The baseball Royals are winning and are champions. The basketball Warriors are winning and are champions. Now the Chiefs are making their run. It is the golden age for my favorite professional sports teams -- I'm overwhelmed, but yes, in a very good way!
So right now I do have a few minutes. I get to pound out more of the 30-0 score items from Saturday. Again, in no particular order, with the exception of shifting things around a bit for a little continuity. Other than that, it's freestyle placement, which means really, you can just start here and scroll to gorge on all things Postseason Chiefs. (Otherwise, here's Part One, then Part Two, then Part Three.)
On with more of 30-0...
18-0. I thought I'd get to some items related to the Texans game itself. Situational issues, really, about how we did in particular situations.
On defense there were a couple of times the Texans had 3rd and 10 and I was just hoping hoping hoping we could stop them. I really think I had nightmarish visions of the 2003 season's Divisional game when we never stopped the Colts on 3rd and long, and that truly cost us. Today I didn't have to worry.
Besides the four interceptions, on these particular 3rd-and-10 situations I made note of, Eric Berry had a terrific pass defense on one, and Husain Abdullah had one on the other. Needless to say, with the four picks, our pass defense was in fine form, and that's encouraging. We've got Tom Brady on Saturday.
The offense was more of a concern, when a number of times we had 3rd and short and failed. A couple of times we unimaginatively ran the ball on the short side of the field and got stuffed. The first two field goals off those failures were both virtual carbon-copy 49-yarders that Cairo Santos hit splendidly.
19-0. Those field goals. To a large extent they were more instrumental in demoralizing the Texans than I think people have felt they were. Some say the game was over when Davis got us the kick return TD 11 seconds in. But when Santos kept hitting those long field goals, it whittled away the Texans morale considering how well we were playing on defense.
You must know that it reminded me of Jan Stenarud's 48-yard field goal against the Vikings, a first-score kick that set the tone for Super Bowl IV. The Vikings realized that the Chiefs only had to move the ball to mid-field and they'd score -- remember, the goal posts were on the goal line back then.
BTW, there is another critically important note about our special teams, but that is reserved for a 30-0 score bullet point of its own. Stay tuned!
Well how about that: ACL intact. He does have an ankle sprain, and they're saying he may be able to go Saturday. We could definitely use him, but I think we'll be fine if he's not out there. Chris Conley has been accelerating his mastery of the system, and Frankie Hammond and Jason Avant are capable. We have good receiving backs in West and Davis also.
To be honest with you, the injury situation of Justin Houston and Tamba Hali is of more concern to me. Houston appeared to wrench his knee at one point and we were all gasping watching him limp off the field. Sure he returned, sure he said he was rusty, but I'm wondering if he's really 100%. I mean yeah, he isn't 100%, we know that, but we'll need him to be less rusty on Saturday.
21-0. The play that gave me the first major spark in my heart that we were going to win this game came when the Texans had the ball on our two-yard line and -- no, it wasn't when their QB threw the interception to Josh Mauga, it was the play before that, do you remember what it was? -- the Texans had the ball on our two-yard line and...
J.J. Watt came in to run the wildcat. It wasn't even that he was ruthlessly stuffed at the line, but that the Texans were trying this at all. Here they are down 13-0, and they brashly try to pan off this play as worth a dime. They couldn't utilize their well-oiled regular offensive weapons, so they have to try this gimmick. As the following play demonstrated, even their well-oiled machinery was pretty much conked out.
22-0. The whole approach to all of this was, and continues to be, so different than during that first week of January, 2014. Remember that? Remember the abject despondency? Even before that game I was screaming about how much we deserved to beat the Colts. It was only when I came to that moment of acceptance afterwards did any of this truly mean something. I don't know if that means anything to you. If you are an old grizzled Chiefs fans like I am, I think it does.
Here's the link to the post I made back then about the acceptance, and then there is this final post concluding with a photograph I made of the stunning Chiefs red sky the morning of Tuesday the 7th. Yes each post still begins with the viscerally scorching attempts to figure it all out, but that's what we do. That's what we all do with everything that is meaningful in life. Nothing wrong with that.
The key though is the acceptance.
This year it was different, the whole approach to this game was just different. After work this past Friday, the afternoon before the Texans game, I'd actually picked up a philosophy book at the library and the first quote in the thing was from Epicurus: "Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; remember that what you now have was once among the things you only hoped for." Now it wasn't as if I hadn't adopted this into my psyche for all this, but this merely confirmed it. It was nice, and so profoundly relevant to Chiefs anything.
They're in the playoffs for cryin' out loud -- how awesome is that. Just revel in it.
I then went out on my regular Friday afternoon walk, my mind filled with the acceptance project and prayers filled with joy about what is meant to be. Along the way even happened to hear Incubus' Drive on the radio: "Whatever tomorrow brings I'll be there, with open arms and open eyes..."
Later that night went for more walking, through my Beats headphones listening to Michael Manring's Welcoming -- absolutely transcendent music. Along with other songs from that classic Windham Hill collection, I also had streaming through my soul the last words of the 16th Psalm, "You will make known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures in Your right hand."
Oh my, has God blessed us with Chiefs winning kinds of things.
It's good to just soak it up, right now, whatever happens later.
23-0. Nkay, on to the later. "No arriving allowed," I've also been reminding myself. "Further up and further in" as C.S. Lewis writes in The Last Battle of the rapturous sprinting toward the sublime.
On to face New England.
Because I do enjoy browsing the historical perspective with this blog, I can't neglect to bring up our postseason success against AFC East teams. Remember?
Not good.
Losses to Miami in '71, '90, and '94. Losses to Buffalo in '91 and '93. Loss to New York in '86. Make it the old AFC East throwing the Colts in with them and since Super Bowl IV we're 0-10 against the entire bunch.
Notice, however, which team is missing from this murderer's row?
Yeah, New England. We've never once faced the Patriots in the playoffs through all the years of the 50+ years of AFL-AFC football.
Many are saying we match up well against them. Sweet. But here are my brief Patriots-oriented concerns.
First, Bill Belichick is an expert at exploiting weaknesses and doing insanely sneaky things that work. There's a reason everybody is suspicious of them, what with deflategate and spygate and all that. He knows how to get into his opponent's heads, and he is a genius at getting away with it. Yes he's a good coach in his own right, but he has the psych game down. It isn't even just the off-the-field whack jobs he does, it's the on-the-field ones too, opportunely pulling out of his hat surprise tactics and edgy stuff that just works.
Second, the Patriots can attack a team quickly and mercilessly, and I'm kind of nervous about what will happen if the Chiefs get behind by a couple touchdowns. I don't know, but I really can't remember a time all season when we were behind by much except for the Green Bay and Cincinnati games, and it was like plowing a planet through drying concrete trying to get back into those suckers. Every single other game we were within reach or we were just flat-out firmly ahead for by however much and just grinded it.
Third, it should be a close game, and if it is, I'm also nervous about those stupid things returning to haunt the Chiefs that can happen in a close one. Tom Brady is flat-out phenomenal working things to get a close win late.
The things the Chiefs have going for them? To wit...
24-0. One of the obvious beat-downs against the Texans was in the battle for trench territory.
The Chiefs utterly dominated. On both sides of the football.
Games are indeed won by the team who wins at the line.
On offense it wasn't as pronounced as we struggled to run the football like we should. West made decent yardage, Ware a bit better. But considering the O-line was again racked with injuries -- Morse was already out with the concussion and Duvernay-Tardif went out with a concussion early in the game, we actually did really well. Tackle Jah Reid came in nursing his own injury and played guard, and did extraordinarily well considering. Here's to hoping Andy Reid continues spreading his O-line guru wisdom all over this crew.
See, this is the key. When the New York Giants inexplicably won the Super Bowl in 2011 from a 9-7 regular season record, I thought, "That's inexplicable!" That was until I took a closer look at what they had and how they played in the playoffs. Turned out to be very 'splicable.
And those three key things are things the Chiefs have in spades right now.
1. A versatile head coach in Andy Reid.
2. A resourceful quarterback in Alex Smith.
3. A ferocious pass rush in Justin Houston et al.
That's what'll get us the W this Saturday.
Oh, and know what team the Giants defeated that January day in 2012? Remember?
The Patriots.
A handful of neat items to come in this blog post series! I just have to get to it tomorrow! See you then!
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