For all the things people are saying about Mahomes and all the offensive weapons, is not Kareem Hunt one of the best? He scored a number of touchdowns tonight, much of it with his ferociously tenacious running ability.
551 yards of total Chiefs offense on the evening. There you go.
Okay, on to the defense. So is there hope? Against a decent Bengals offensive unit?
First of all at the beginning of the game when they introduced the players and showed those PFF rankings, our guys were not horrible, they really weren't! The exception was for what I thought was really one of our defensive strengths: Anthony Hitchens and Reggie Ragland! These are our highly touted inside linebackers and they were ranked close to the bottom of all NFL inside linebackers! I know they had a poor game against the Patriots, but ouch.
One of the very interesting things about our defense is something I'd heard a number of times in previous broadcasts. Really? Is it true we are at the top of the NFL at stopping the opponent on third-and-long? When you think about it, yes, we have done very well at stiffening a bit and getting that last stop we need. Yeah we give up way to many big plays on 1st and 2nd down, and our run defense is very soft -- here's to Hitchens and Ragland making the corrections there.
Now to Patrick Mahomes. Here's the highlight: 1st play of the 2nd half, with the pocket closing in Mahomes gets smacked hard on his throwing arm, shakes it off with a vengeance, then promptly steps up to hit Watkins for 50. Whuh-oww. Throughout the night he flipped it there and there and there and did business. One critical mistake he made was underthrowing Tyreek Hill and getting intercepted, and you just saw it: he took something off when he could have easily fired it the requisite 60 yards to get it to him.
The funnest featured video was that of a ten year-old Patrick Mahomes playing basketball, taking the in-bounds pass and firing it across the court towards the basket -- sure enough, he makes the basket for the game-winner and gets mobbed by his teammates and other courtside participants.
The funnest remark by the announcers during tonight's typically fine NBC broadcast production was from Cris Collinsworth. After a screen pass completion to Hunt getting the ball close to the goal line he said, "So much going on, so much lateral movement -- it's like playing the Globetrotters." Later he added, "There's so much flash and dash, just play 'Sweet Georgia Brown'!" The producers then showed highlights from earlier in the game and did play the music. Very sweet indeed.
We're as good as the Harlem Globetrotters.
How much fun is that.
I'm hoping that even with this blowout tonight fans fully and richly enjoy watching our Kansas City Chiefs, simply because you have to think that the ratings for this one dwindled quite a bit after Ron Parker's pick-six making it 38-7 midway through the 3rd quarter. Yes, could it be, could it be? I don't know if this is a good thing because I want the Chiefs to be showcased in any way they can be, or a bad thing because of the principle, the principle of competitive integrity, but yeah... could it be?...
Are we becoming a media darling?
Well, yeah, let's just wait to see what happens in the postseason and hope that no matter what, when we win we win fair-and-square.
As it is now I can't deny this is very very very fun.
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