As it is, the Chiefs have a good enough team to beat anybody. They've clearly shown it -- in fact the few times I've looked at Chiefs things out there I've seen "This is as complete a team as any!" quite often. I think that's true. Their defense has come around especially towards the end of the year with the steady tutelage of Steve Spagnuolo, so we're good to go playoffs-wise. Good to go...
Just like every other postseason.
I think you know what I mean by that. My attitude through this whole season has been, hey, I'm just enjoying the ride through the fall. It's been great in the Kingdom for all of September, October, November, and December, it really has. These last seven years of autumns have been phenomenally enjoyable, they really have.
It is just January that is painful.
Will it be different this year? It could, but really a number of things have to happen in each game we play. Let's go over them -- the first one is most important.
1. You've read about it here every year I've blogged just before our first playoff game. You know it all too well:
We must avoid the one crazy-ass insane impossibly ridiculous thing that has murdered us every postseason.
There. Thuh end. That's the key. I'm sorry but we have too good a team with too many weapons to go down to anything but that. We had four losses this year, and all were within a touchdown. Three of them were really because of one critical turnover, that fourth game result was because of the dime-defense/special-teams collapse very late in the game against the Titans.
Otherwise we manhandled every other team in the NFL this season. It is just inexplicable how we could go into next Sunday and just not have any of that keep us from the crazy-ass insane you-know-what.
But it has happened so often. Know what really scares me the most? I'll tell you right now, just to share it here. I fear that ludicrous pass interference issue that should not go against us but because of the new interpretation rules, for some reason, for some yet-again insane way, it will just kill us. Sorry, but I just had to share that. You know, for the therapy.
So what else needs to be happening to ensure that deep post-season run?
2. Patrick Mahomes must play out of his mind. The great thing is that Mahomes was built to do just that, as a simple matter of practice. It's just who he is. It is wonderful, for sure. Some of this is just the idea that he can get us going so strongly that the crazy-ass thing simply cannot beat us. That's quite an advantage.
Part of his success lies in this third thing:
3. Andy Reid's playmaking puts us up by double-digits early and we never have to look back. This has been the success of our team, let's hope it happens in the postseason. This will avoid having to be in a close one late and then having to endure the wrenching of a struggle to either flail about trying to not-lose, or just bumble about trying to get points we should've gotten way earlier.
As far as the defense goes:
4. We've got to find a way to defend against running backs pounding us with screen or swing passes. The Chargers did well with that against us in that last regular season game, and other teams are watching.
Not having Juan Thornhill doesn't help. Thing is, I think about how much this could really hurt us, but please, I always also think, what about the other teams? Why is it the Chiefs always seem to be hurt the most by some unforeseen disability in whatever way that shows itself? Why have the Chiefs never been able to take advantage of some profound weakness on the other team and get that close dubya?
I'd like to think Armani Watts or Kendall Fuller will step in and do okay enough. They should. But after so many postseason failures I just get nervous. Sorry.
But guess what.
We still have hope. That stuff I mentioned earlier about Spagnuolo really molding these guys into a decent defensive unit? When we played the Texans earlier this season, we did lose, but we had them, we really did. Except that there was that turnover, and yes, our defense wasn't what it is today.
We can hope with very reasonable hope for another week. It'll be good.
The fifth thing I think about is this one:
When I watched us play the Patriots a few weeks ago, it was clear the Chiefs were the more talented team. But I have to say it, and it is really one of the reasons why the Patriots have been to Super Bowl after Super Bowl after Super Bowl: They were more focused. It was even that they were more disciplined or anything like that. It is was just that their focus was just more directed, more resolute, more refined.
It reminds me of a quote from Jim Turner, the Broncos kicker who after his team's Super Bowl loss to the Cowboys after the 1977 season, remarked about what he saw out there: Before the game the Broncos were whooping it up, jumping up and down, demonstrably excited. The Cowboys, however, entered the stadium walking calmly but securely, heads up high with quietly determined looks on their faces. Turner's remark?
"We came out thinking about winning. They came out thinking about football."
I'm not saying at all that we won't be thinking about football. I'm not saying at all that Andy Reid won't fully employ his most dexterous playmaking skills for the on-the-field action. I'm not saying at all that Patrick Mahomes will not bring every nano-liter of his enthusiastic leadership to infuse into everything the Chiefs do next Sunday.
I am saying we'll need it all in its fullest measure if we're going to win. Yeah, I like that Mahomes has said quite famously, something all of us in the Kingdom feel so deeply about: "All that past Chiefs playoff stuff is history. This is a new generation." I like it, it means a lot, really. We all feel that way.
But they know about it, they do. And I hope they all know what it will take to win this thing.
I really do.
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