Chiefs at Buccaneers - Week 12 - Record: 10-1

I hadn't thought about this but looked it up real quick: We had not defeated a Buccaneers team since Joe Montana did it in his very first game as a Chief, way back on September 5th, 1993. Since then five straight losses to Tampa Bay. We broke that streak today on the amazing touchdown streaks of Tyreek Hill.

Hill was a blur today. He had three touchdowns and nearly 300 yards receiving. As the game went on the Bucs doubled him and Kelce, so Mahomes simply went to Robinson and Watkins more often. If we didn't stall so much it'd have been a blowout. On the other hand if we didn't get those clutch interceptions against Brady we could've just as easily lost this one.

One time close to the end zone Mahomes fumbled the ball away, very uncharacteristic of him. Another time right at the end of the half, and again close to the goal line, we could've had six but settled for a FG when on three straight plays Mahomes just threw the ball into the stands. What was that ugliness?

But you can't shake it. Mahomes was still brilliant. He stayed strong in the pocket and hit his marks when he needed to. He bobbed and weaved through the backfield to run for yardage or just chuck it to someone getting open. His most impressive play was in the 4th quarter with about ten minutes left in the game. He faced a 3rd down and with pressure coming on the right side he just backpedalled left, kept backpedalling, backpedalling as he scans the field -- he is essentially running backwards mind you -- and he then throws a strike 25 yards downfield to Mecole Hardman. 1st down.

I could say more about this game, but I just wanted to add a quick note about Thursday's game. Guh? Thursday's game? Yeah, the one in which Alex Smith made the Cowboys look silly. I was just thinking, really -- I do firmly believe Smith should be in the Hall-of-Fame. The dude not only suffered that horrific football injury two years ago, he not only almost lost the leg, he not only had to endure surgery after surgery after surgery -- he almost lost his life.

And yet now he has won the Washington football team's starting quarterback job, and is playing great. When he was with the 49ers in 2011 he almost led them to the Super Bowl. When he was with the Chiefs he never had a losing season and took the team to the playoffs four times. And this return to football after what happened -- the guy deserves a place in the Hall-of-Fame, he really does.

Oh, and he taught Patrick Mahomes much of what he knows as a quarterback. That should get him more than enough votes.

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The photo is by Adam Parker at the official Chiefs website. Thank you.

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Chiefs at Raiders - Week 11 - Record: 9-1

With a minute and change left in the game we were down 31-28, and we definitely need games like this to keep getting Patrick experience with these last-minute instances when we've got to score. We'll be in the playoffs again this year, but this is very good, keep working hard. We simply cannot blow out every opponent and get flimsy taking things for granted. 

Indeed there've been a couple far-too-close wins we've really had to eek out this year. The Chargers game. The Panthers game.

But wow, did Mahomes take care of business. He was 6 of 7 for 75 yards in 65 seconds of play, capping it with a nice scramble hitting Kelce wide-open in the end zone. We got the very nifty late comeback win.

But the Raiders really played well, even with a defense crippled by Covid suspensions. Derek Carr had his second terrific game against us when in just about every game he'd played against the Chiefs before was not his best. We did a decent job of keeping that big-play pass from hurting us, and we actually did pretty well against their run. But their pass blocking was terrific and could have won them the game. Our defensive line simply could not get to Carr, and the Raiders really could have gone up by enough to win if their receivers didn't have several critical drops.

As for us, just some quick notes:

The Mahomes-Kelce-Hill triumvirate was astounding, yet again. DeMarcus Robinson ran a poor route leading to a Mahomes pick, but he did well later to make up for it snatching a critical 4th down pass.

LeVeon Bell got much more in the mix, and showed some of what he was so good at before. He even scored a touchdown.

Clyde Edwards-Helaire was terrific again, and having Bell in there is also terrific so CEH doesn't get overworked. We need both of them for playoff endurance.

We've got to keep our heads. No reason for Tyrann Mathieu to get an unsportsmanlike late in the game.

Too many penalties made me nervous, especially at the line. Mahomes hard counts though also got those guys to move all over the place to our advantage.

Our defense was far too bendy, but adjustments seemed to help as the game moved forward.

Next week we've got the other pirate team, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, I'm pretty sure a "prime time" afternoon affair.

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Panthers at Chiefs - Week 9 - Record: 8-1

This week I wrote a piece at Arrowhead Pride about teams using a sophisticated "Let the Chiefs score" strategy to take advantage of time of possession keeping Patrick Mahomes off the field. One of the problems with this newfangled strategy is that the other team may never think about it because they know the rest of the Chiefs team is not Patrick Mahomes.

The Chiefs shouldn't have any trouble seeing it if they keep fumbling after a decent drive like Demarcus Robinson did today. Or their kicker keeps missing field goals and more PATs (which almost really cost us this time!) like Harrison Butker did (and three years ago he was poached from Carolina, remember!) 

They may see it if you keep committing costly defensive penalties like we did today, allowing them to extend drives on 3rd down, especially since they have Christian McCaffrey who piled up 152 all-purpose yards on us today and doing his part to keep Mahomes off the field.

We do have Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill, who just torched the field today (were the Panthers kind of employing the strategy? Hmm...) 

What we don't have is a truly reliable offensive line, and I'm joining all those Chiefs fan who hope Brett does his magic and can pull out of his hat some O-linemen that can get our running backs untracked. CEH and Le'Veon had a combined 22 yards rushing total today. 

That especially stank when we needed one first down to run the clock out end the game but got a total of -3 yards. We lucked out after they got the ball back with a minute to go and got a good 40 yards with no timeouts only to fail on a 67-yard FG attempt. Whew!

Next week is a bye and then the revenge game in Vegas against the Raiders on Sunday Night Football!

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The photo is from Jim Berry at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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Jets at Chiefs - Week 8 - Record: 7-1

A shout-out to the special teams today -- hey! Harrison Butker connected on all his PATs! Okay seriously now (But yeah, seriously, what has he been doing missing so many of them?) Anyway...

There was Tommy Townsend faking the pass and firing a bullet to Byron Pringle to get the 1st down. Then there was Armani Watts just blasting through the line to block the Jets FG attempt right before the half. Townsend's punts themselves and our kick coverage were terrific on the day. Even on a kickoff that was placed way back at the 20 because of a penalty, Butker almost got it out of the side of the end zone.

Right after Townsend's completion Mahomes hit Hill in the end zone for a spiffy 36-yard TD completion. Those two had another one later in the game, so let's hope the Mahomes-to-Hill relationship is getting hot again. Kelce also had a field day against the Jets.

And how about Mecole Hardman! The guy was amazing today -- scoring a nice jet sweep pass TD but also making ankle-high catches. Maybe taking him off the kick returns has gotten him focused on all the things he can bring to the offense. Hopefully his late-game injury is not too serious.

Concerned about the running game though. I think having Le'Veon Bell is critical, because it takes a lot of the load of CEH, so I'm not complaining about having them. But their yards per carry was abominable today. They didn't work much because Mahomes and his receiving crew were just nails today, so there is that. Darrel Williams did okay in his time out there except he almost fumbled the ball away when being used to try to run clock in the middle of the 4th quarter.

Something I really like is how our defensive scheme is always ready for those very important 2nd half adjustments. In the 1st half we were softer than we should have been against this team, but right outta the gate in the 2nd half we clamped down -- our coaches are doing marvelous at finding out what we need to do to get it done. The Jets got absolutely nothing going after that.

Of course the game rhythm has a lot to do with that. At the half we were up 21-9, and it is so true: if a game is close a Chiefs opponent knows if they can run the ball and keep Mahomes and company off the field. This is why our defense, which I saw was statistically one of the better in the NFL, has got to get those key stops. So far this year we've done that reasonably well. We just won't look at the ugly beast that was the Raiders game.

This was a Jets team that was 0-7 coming in. Before the game they were a whopping 20-point underdogs, that's just unheard of in today's NFL. And the Chiefs covered. Workman-like day at the office.

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Photo is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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