1. The House of Horrors that Indianapolis is just a day before Halloween turned out to be exactly that, but while I thought that would be because of the awful luck the Chiefs would have again there -- turns out today we won decisively -- it was because of the injuries.
2. The Chiefs showed it is a team with some depth. I know this has been something Reid and Dorsey have emphasized, and today it really showed. We needed it because of, yes, those injuries.
Remember on that fateful day of January 4th 2014, one of the critical components of the Chiefs collapse was the horrific rash of injuries we suffered in that Wild-Card game. We'd stayed very healthy throughout the regular season, then in that Lucas Oil Dome or whatever they call it we'd just gotten smashed up on whatever turf they have.
A long time ago, back in the early '70's when it was brand new, the artificial turf was terrible -- being out there running and tackling was like playing football on plastic covered concrete. Today Alex Smith had to go through concussion protocols twice, the second time when, as Smith went down, a punk Colts defender took his hand and shoved Smith's head into the turf. It happened so fast and it was so hard to see that the officials missed it. But damn.
The depth aspect is that we could put in a Nick Foles who threw two touchdown passes and did a fine job filling in. He was rusty at times -- towards the end of the game when we needed to seal the win he brutally missed a wide-open Charcandrick West for what would have been a cakewalk touchdown.
Thing is, the injuries didn't just hurt the Chiefs. The Colts were going down like flies, too. Their stud cornerback, Vontae Davis, was out with a concussion. Their go-to receiver, T.Y. Hilton, had hamstring issues and caught his first pass at the very end of the game when it was pretty much over.
What is it with that place? Really, seriously, they need to do something about it. I mentioned it in one of the posts after that January 4 2014 nightmare, what's with a playing field that does that much to players on both teams. Again, the idea from that post, it's not just injuries but players' lives. I firmly feel the NFL must do more with the helmet -- make it stronger with some kind of liquid inside the padding to absorb more of the impact -- as well a host of other provisions to work this out.
As for the Chiefs, we must wonder. Will Spencer Ware be ready next week? -- He had a concussion today. Will Alex Smith be ready to go? Again, our depth makes these possible losses manageable -- maybe Jamaal can be ready to go, and even so, West filled in and played well. We also lost Parker Ehinger, but this may be more of a concern. The times we have not been able to have all of our O-linemen all together to play as well as they can has been a touchy issue for us.
As for today, when it seemed like things were going to turn against us and this could easily be yet another House-of-Horrors loss to Indy, we got a big play. Every time we got that big play.
We got sacks when we needed them. Dee Ford was nicely in the mix of all of them.
We got turnovers when we needed them. Philip Gaines was healthy out there with fine coverage today, he got a key pick. In fact we got a solid defensive effort across the board -- wasn't Indy supposed to be another explosive offensive team? Held them to 14 points. Not bad.
We also benefitted from, yes, some very fortuitous penalties against the Colts, those were very lucky for us -- hey, how about that!
And we targeted Travis Kelce a ton more! Woo-hoo! It really paid off with a touchdown catch, and yes, another fantastic catch that was overruled by the official when he just didn't see that he had possession after making a number of "football moves". I won't get into the abject silliness about yet another of those calls that went against us.
Hey, we won in Indy. That's awesome.
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