Buccaneers at Chiefs - Week 11 - Record: 7-3

I can't help but start by saying how great it has been for Chiefs fans for quite some time. Just about every game since that last game of the 1-5 start from last year, that loss in Minnesota, has been pretty cool for us. 10 straight regular season wins after that. A long-awaited playoff win in Houston. Most recently a 5-game winning streak.

We've been able to start 7-2 and have everyone talk about us as if we're really an elite team, a team that could beat New England in a playoff game, a team placing highly in the power rankings. It's been fun. It's been hard to experience what it is like to lose, very fun.

But as it often happens, there's the wake-up call.

Today was that day.

It's time to wake up to the liabilities of this team.

Yes, we could say Marcus Peters was inactive, we've got serious injury issues on the D-line, Dee Ford left with an injury, Justin Houston looked tremendously rusty today. But I truly believe our issues go far deeper than that.

The Buccaneers had their way with us today, and ya know? This game looked very much the same as it did with Jacksonville and Carolina, two teams we also should've put away easily. We struggled against them too, and only won those games when we got some late game ferocity and clutch plays. Today the Bucs just ran the ball way better than we did. Their O-line played way better, not only with the run but keeping their QB well-protected for the pass.

Here's one thing to take away from this game that was major.

We simply can't beat a team with a world-beater wide receiver. Their Mike Evans had his way with us today. When you have a WR who is as good as he is, he can be the difference maker. He was phenomenal today, and again, our smallish D-backs simply could not stop him. Yes, Steven Nelson made a phenomenal play against Evans in the end zone. Yes, Nelson is a godsend making solid plays much more than we've ever expected. That's terrific.

But those fast oversized receivers we seem to face week after week after week... I'm very nervous right now.

This hurts a lot mostly because the Chiefs have had the worst wide receiver issues throughout their history. I made a special blog post about it a while back, might be worth looking at again if you have the emotional stamina.

At one point during today's broadcast they showed the 2014 draft class of wide receivers, and they showcased eight players on the screen. There they were, a whole batch of highly drafted, currently top-class wide-outs out there doing great things for their teams right now. Can you take a wild guess how many of them were Chiefs?

Ahem, yeah.

Now then we did use our first round pick that year to take Dee Ford, that's fine.

But when will the Chiefs themselves ever have that kind of a wide receiver?

As it is we've got Jeremy Maclin. Fantastic, but right now he's injured and isn't the long term solution. We've got Chris Conley who has potential but is still not all he could be -- I think everyone knows that. We've got Albert Wilson, he made a fine touchdown catch today, but he's not long term. Yes we've got Tyreek Hill and he has tons of potential, that's great, it really is, but dang it...

When in the world will we get that smart, agile, bigger-sized wide receiver?

Why did Jonathan Baldwin's name just pop into my head right now? Yeah, I know, what a nightmare.

Well, there's that, I know, but what about now.

Sure enough, there was Alex Smith in there doing something great like actually executing the play action beautifully to make an easy connection to Travis Kelce way down the field to get the ball to the Tampa Bay 10-yard line -- this was with the Chiefs behind 12-10 at the beginning of the 4th quarter. Here we were poised to get a touchdown and go up 17-12, take command, do that tough-it-out thing through the last few minutes of the game and go home.

Except that Smith did something that keeps me feeling like I did in this post.

He threw a pick -- again off play action -- in the end zone. The Bucs D-back took it all the way out the mid-field and they scored a touchdown a few plays later. 19-10 Bucs. That was the game. We did come back to score a touchdown but simply ran out of time.

We're now 7-3. They flexed the Chiefs-Broncos game into prime time next Sunday, when we'll play another 7-3 team. How are we going to do in any of the next six games? They're all against solid winning teams. There's Denver, then we get them again the second-to-last week of the season. There's an exceptional offensive team in Atlanta, in Atlanta in two weeks. Then there's Oakland again, then an improved Tennessee team. Then there's scary San Diego in San Diego to finish things up.

Sheee... We struggle so much against these last few teams we've played? I mean everyone says we're an opportunistically big-play team, but darned it you just don't win games on a regular basis ripping the ball from ball-carriers' hands. I'm taking nothing from Marcus Peters' great play last week, but you just can't do that very often. Playoff contending teams control things. They regularly move the football down the field. They make plays on a consistent basis -- and the Chiefs just don't do that, especially on offense. With the talent we have there, that is just inexcusable, it really is.

The Buccaneers' offense was something like 11-15 on 3rd down today. That shows our defense was pretty crappy -- yeah we stopped them enough down the field, but we're letting them get there too easily. Our offense, on the other hand, was still crappy on 3rd down. We are just not making those conversions, and yes, I believe a lot of it has to do with Alex Smith.

Not to belabor the point, but he just does too many goofy things that put our chances to be Super-Bowl-serious in serious jeopardy. It's the Alex Smith dilemma -- on one play he shocks you, as when he runs for a touchdown (as he did today) or he makes a fine strike for a touchdown (as he did today). But then what about all those other 3rd downs we had to convert to make sure we could secure this win way before it slipped away at the very end?

Errgh errgh errgh errgh errgh...

Meanwhile, it's yet another win by the Bucs over the Chiefs, their fifth in a row over us. Remember the last time the Chiefs beat the Buccaneers? Remember? It was Joe Montana's debut game way back at the beginning of 1993. How exciting was that win, if you remember it. It was really exciting, seeing Joe in a Chiefs uniform and doing his thing so well for us. Since then, though, Tampa Bay has had our number.

At least this loss was against an NFC opponent. If you're going to have a loss, might as well be against one of those teams.

Still, the Chiefs have a lot of work to do to show they can compete and be competitive against an NFC team in the Super Bowl. Come on, do you really think we could beat a Cowboys? A Seahawks? Any team in the NFC East?

::Ohh-ohhhh...:: We have a lot of work to do.
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