Chiefs at Bills - Week 6 - Record: 5-1

Before getting to the game, the Chiefs got even better this week. Yep, it works for us too, how stunningly joyful is that: The rich get richer.

After the Jets released uber-back Le'Veon Bell, Brett Veach did his splendid wining-&-dining thing and got Bell. In my view the best thing about this is how much Bell can teach Clyde Edwards-Helaire -- I've always thought CEH reminded me of Bell. CEH is a phenomenal talent in and of himself (witness tonight's performance), but he is still raw and could benefit from the refinement a Le'Veon Bell can bring to his game.

Anyway, no, Kevin Durant is not joining the Chiefs, but I absolutely loved the posted meme here. As you may know I'm also a big Golden State Warriors fan, so the connection is just delightful. Both of my fave teams dominating their respective leagues right now. (Sure there are qualifications about that with regards to the NBA, but that's another story...)

To this game. I hate to do this or admit I'm doing this, but I'm going to pretty much just post my notes with remarks. Each of these blog posts is some version of that anyway, and really, here tonight you may even get more than I usually post. But I'm afraid these evening games (great that we're on primetime so often!) can be hard when you've got to sleep and get up for very non-Chiefs related work early in the morning.

We came into this one with everyone saying how much Josh Allen should be able to match up with Patrick Mahomes with his strong arm and raw athleticism and all, but really, it wasn't even a contest. With that in mind, into the notes.

Middle of the 1st quarter it looked as though the refs would do us in again as they did last week. On a QB scramble Allen was clearly a yard short of the marker but they gave him the 1st down anyway. A play later their O-lineman was holding Taco Charlton like crazy, but of course, no call. They got the 1st down completion.

Our offense started sluggishly, it seemed like we resumed playing like we did last week, as if the Bills had 14 players on defense. It was raining pretty good throughout the game, so it was good we were eventually able to get our running game going.

The wild thing about this game was our O-line. It was like major reconstructive surgery. We even lost Mitchell Schwartz to a back injury and had to move Mike Remmers from LG over to RT. We slotted Nick Allegretti in there, and I didn't find this out until halfway into the game that we'd replaced Austin Reiter at center with Daniel Kilgore. The only real mainstay through the whole thing, someone with even a few years experience there, was Eric Fisher.

But the interesting thing was they actually played pretty well. Maybe the shakeup, giving some of these kids a chance to shine, made the difference. I believe I'd heard the Bills run defense was not the best, but they were showing more than a few shining moments for our linemen. Hmm, might be nice especially getting ready to see if Bell can still shimmy and slice through defenses with his carries.

The Bills first TD was a terrific throw and catch, Allen to Diggs, at the side of the end zone. Just want to give credit where credit is due.

More rotten officiating. We had penalties up the wazoo tonight, but while late in the 2nd quarter the PI call on Ward was legit, the one against Breeland was not on 3rd-&-11.

Meanwhile Allen was throwing the ball who-knows-where. I'm sure he's a fine quarterback, and it even looked as though when he needed to be a runner he was pretty dangerous. But so often with his passing he was heaving the ball all over the place.

I tracked the possessions of the second in a somewhat sporadic way, but I just wanted to see what we were going to do only up 13-10:

Chiefs: 3rd-&-2 Williams picks up a nice 1st down. 3rd-&-7 Mahomes almost gets picked off, and we have to punt.

Bills: Starting at their own 12 we get a 3-&-out -- our defense does well outta the gate here.

Chiefs: 3rd-&-1 a very nice pitch-sweep left to CEH gets us the 1st down. Using this guy in open space is wonderful to see. Then deep in their territory on a 4th-&-inches Williams blasts past the push and streams into the end zone. 20-10 us.

Bills: Another 3-&-out. Very nice.

Chiefs: In this drive the Bills commit two egregious personal foul penalties, both times violently shoving our guy way out-of-bounds. That helped us a lot, but after again getting deep into Bills territory with CEH running all over these guys, we get to a 2nd-&-1 and can't convert on two straight plays. Ergh. Butker makes it 23-10.

Bills: We start playing soft to keep the big play from happening, and sure enough in a matter of not-too-many plays the Bills score a touchdown. Great, now it's 23-17 with six minutes left. This is not nice.

Chiefs: CEH is now getting stuffed, even fumbling the football away. That was especially scary, except that replays showed his knee was down before they stripped it. Whew. Majorly. Then came what really was the play of the game.

I believe it was 3rd-&14, and Mahomes did his extraordinarily deft scrambling thing to find Byron Pringle breaking open 30 yards downfield. Strike. That really did it for us. With three minutes left Butker came in to bang through the clincher. Final score 26-17.

Of course there's more, but that's kind of the play-by-play. Next week we're at the Broncos place, with Le'Veon Bell joining the squad. I can't wait!

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The offensive line photo is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs website. Thank you.

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