We were down 24-0 before you could even breathe. It wasn't just one crazy-ass insane play to do us in, it was dozens.
To wit:
They scored a TD quickly when they ran a play that totally faked us out. We're down 7-0. On the second play of our offensive effort, we got a false start against us. Then Kelce drops the pass and suddenly we had a 3-&-out. Right away they blocked the punt and ran in for a touchdown. We're now down 14-0. Everyone in the Kingdom is shellshocked.
Sure enough, all that's pounding in my head: Something about Arrowhead. 3-8 Chiefs record overall at home in the playoffs. What - is - that...
It didn't stop. We had another dropped pass on 3rd down. When they got the ball again we stopped tackling. Carlos Hyde, who as you remember was on the Chiefs at the beginning of the year, was chewing us up on the ground.
We finally got them to punt -- yay! -- but then, ::ngnck:: Tyreek Hill dropped the punt and they recovered. He never drops punts. Never. They follow with another TD. When the 2nd quarter started they added a field goal making it 24-0. I'm just thinking, no Jones, no Juan Thornhill -- we're just dead.
But the difference is we still have Patrick Mahomes. Not to single him out as unbelievably skilled as he is, because our entire team rose up -- and that ugly Arrowhead playoff thing? We did nothing other than kick its ass.
The Texans were then stopped, and they tried a run on a fake punt that Daniel Sorensen snuffed out.
At that point, we just took over. We started catching everything, especially Kelce who even when he was double-teamed was even forcing them to commit PIs or holding penalties. I mean I thought that one baaad thing that would hurt us the most would be some baaad officiating on a PI call. No, our receiving crew is so dominant that the Texans D-backs couldn't help but PI us all the time.
After that harrowing start, we put a 41-spot up on them.
Final score, 51-31. After being down 24-0, we blasted them 51-7. In fact I later discovered that the Chiefs actually ran out of fireworks to shoot into the air after touchdowns, we'd scored so many in such a short period of time. Wow, how about that.
And really, give credit to our defense, who put pressure on Watson just enough to keep him from doing too much damage. Steve Spagnuolo, what a blessing it is to have him in there calling things. And the fans did their job too! Decibel Up was also in the mix of keeping Watson in check.
I'm not going to post as much as I did back in 2015 when we all went bananas after we beat the Texans that time. This post is going to be pretty simple, for now. I may add some later, and perhaps include a preview post sometime this week. But I wanted to add just one more thing.
At one point around the beginning of the 4th quarter, just after our splendid quarterback had another of his extraordinarily nice pass completions -- this one to Sammy Watkins for a huge gain to the Houston 8 -- the camera showed a closeup of Mahomes face as he ran down to the gained line. He was looking to the Chiefs sideline.
Call it "The Mahomes Look." He promptly followed that up with another TD pass to Blake Bell. They were saying at that point we'd set an NFL record of seven consecutive touchdown drives. Cool.
Next week we've got a very difficult challenge in facing Derrick Henry and those Titans again for the shot at the Super Bowl. Again more on all that later. For now, how sweet is this...
How very sweet it is to watch our team be the one comfortably enough ahead with a minute left...
How so very very nice...
We get to watch our team kneel to end it.
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Special thanks to Chris Donahue, Ben Green, and Steve Sanders for the photographs at the Chiefs official website.
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