Correction related to Once-Redskins vs Chiefs Head-to-Head Record

This weekend the Jets are playing the Buccaneers, and in the history of this rivalry the Bucs have not won a lot of games against the Jets. Since I've had some interest in just looking at overall head-to-head records I thought I'd peek again at what I thought was a Chiefs record: The best overall against another team with at least ten games played against one another. 

The point of this post is that in this blog effort I've made mention of our 10-1 record against the once-Redskins as the best of any team in the NFL, besting that one the Jets have over the Bucs. I thought I'd painstakingly looked at all the records, but I was just now gobsmacked by one I missed! Indeed the Chiefs do not have the best record head-to-head!

It is actually the record between the Jets and the Philadelphia Eagles! Weird, while the Bucs have rarely beaten the Jets, the Eagles have a perfect record against the Jets, 12-0! Yes, it is true, I missed it a long time ago, even after checking through all the head-to-heads twice! I'm disappointed I missed it, and certainly there are many who already know this well: In twelve meetings with the Eagles, the Jets have never beaten Philadelphia, never. This includes an Eagles win earlier this month!

So yes, here is my correction. I won't be changing my blog from earlier this year when I made remarks about it in my blog post related to the Chiefs game against the once-Redskins, but I'll put a note there.

Thanks still for your readership, and we get the Bengals in a couple days here. See you then!

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Steelers at Chiefs - Week 16 - Record: 11-4

During the game the announcers brought attention to the Chiefs being without several of their best players because of the Covid stuff. They emphasized Andy Reid's philosophy, which is far better than mine that's for sure. I like it.

"Next man up." 

The idea: just go with who you got. It's why he's the coach of the Chiefs and not me. It's why he's the coach of our team and not anyone else, period. It's why he's a Hall-of-Famer who ranks among the best coaches ever.

But still. Ergh.

I thought about giving it another take, but I won't -- I posted about it here in may last one and that's enough. Sure enough today we did not have several key guys including Travis Kelce and Nick Bolton. Without Harrison Butker out there our one-game kicker missed a field goal and a PAT.

I'd love to say "I can't wait until this is over" but I just can't. These people should've figured this out over a year ago, but they still have their heads not where they should be, I'll just leave it at that. And that could go on for a very long time about some other variant scare or medical crisis or faux-catastrophe over which they may virtue-signal. Who knows?

While the NBA is itself still too much into the Covid silliness, at least they're making progress in moving on. I'd read that Adam Silver, the NBA Commissioner, has decided to dial way back all that stuff. They initially said they may cancel the Christmas Day games, but wiser heads prevailed and we got to enjoy pro basketball on the holiday. They're still putting players on the shelf, so that's not good, but maybe, just maybe there is a tiny sliver of hope.

As for the game, the uncharacteristically weak lines the Steelers put on the field allowed us to have our way with them. For once against the Steelers, it was us who looked like we had 14 guys on the field against their 9. In fact this is the second win in a row we've had against Pittsburgh -- the last time we did that was in our very first two games ever against them in 1970 and 1971. Otherwise the Steelers have pretty much had their way with us on a regular basis.

Melvin Ingram was clutch against his former team the Chargers last week, today he was clutch against his other former team the Steelers. Again he is a difference-maker out there and has helped make our defense pretty stout. Having Chris Jones back was also instrumental, our defense today was just all over the place.

And I have to put in a good word for Mecole Hardman, who made some fine catches, nice returns, and scored a nifty touchdown. Byron Pringle was a beast scoring two touchdowns himself. What is the deal with Josh Gordon? I hear so much about how not-good Hardman is, but today Gordon had two passes dropped. I'm not necessarily saying he's not-good because apparently he's good for blocking and route running, and I too hope for the world he'll have a breakout game.

So we've won the West for a sixth year in a row. I believe that has never been done, not in the Raiders heydays, not in the Broncos heydays.

Next week we've got a decent playoff preview game against the very good Bengals at their place. Maybe, just maybe we'll be at full strength so we can see how we look as we head into the post-season.

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The photo is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs site, thank you.

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Chiefs at Chargers - Week 15 - Record: 10-4 - Addendum

Very early in the game on Thursday night Chargers tight end Donald Parham almost caught a touchdown pass, then going down slammed his head on the turf so ferociously he suffered a serious concussion and had to be carted off the field. Medical personnel rushed to his aid, he was stabilized as best they could, then he was taken to the hospital where he was further treated and declared to be in stable condition. As of this writing three days later, it appears he is going to be fine. That's very good news.

The medical treatment for anything like this was wholly justified and we are all blessed to have it available by professionals who take their work very seriously. Kudos to every single one of those people who have that commitment. In fact, great kudos to anyone who does a job -- any job -- honestly and truthfully using their talent, skill, and knowledge to authentically labor making someone else's life better.

The Covid lockdown stuff is not that.

The reason I'm adding this is because the NFL is experiencing a "pandemic," if you will, of pseudo-science, that all these Covid protocols must be in place for... for... what exactly? Oh you'll hear "Stop the spead," or "Save lives," or other such pithy plappings. In many ways it is just the opposite. Many of the Covid protocols whatever they are have actually led to more deaths, and more destitution. I saw in an interview a top medical officer categorically declare that the censorship of effective treatments has led to far more deaths and as such is the worst part of the whole lockdown circus.

Instead what we get is these sports leagues, like the NFL, following all the make-up-on-the-fly Covid rules they are supposed to follow without doing the careful thinking that they are all worthless. It is all just theatrical virtue-signaling with everyone passing the buck to excuse their complicity -- "Oh but so-and-so health officer told us we must do this!" Come again? Seek the pathway up the line of authority and no one steps up to take responsibility. You'll notice it is always shuffled up to someone else.

Regarding the NFL they've already pushed back three scheduled games -- I imagine so players could try to test negative for Covid by the time they play the rescheduled game. The Rams-Seahawks game for instance, scheduled for this afternoon, was pushed to Tuesday night. Why? They'll say it is because too many players are tested this way or that way or this Covid-related things is this way or that way -- huh, I wonder what the rule is for that? The Chiefs were down, what, four players I believe Thursday night and without them we almost lost the game. Why isn't our game pushed back to, oh, say a Thursday night in 2027 so we can reeeally be sure no player with Covid-something-who-knows-what is going to go out and wantonly kill someone?!

The point is some medical things like Parham's injury are serious for seriously factual medical attention. The Covid thing is not one of those things no matter how much fear mongering they spew. It just isn't. The NFL is even starting to realize this in that they have announced they now will be doing much less testing. Huh? I thought this disease was an apocalyptic plague?! Because it isn't, by far, many are coming around.

Over in the NBA, notorious pro-legitimate-health Kyrie Irving -- kudos to him for standing his ground on how ineffective, unnecessary, and dangerous these particular "vaccines" are -- was reinstated, but still had to endure the punishment of testing and testing and testing out of his rear end -- and apparently still he got Covid -- along with several teammates who themselves were "vaccinated." 

Here's the thing about all this. An NBA official, or a Brooklyn Nets official, whichever I don't remember, remarked about Kyrie's stance, "Each person has their own individual convictions, beliefs..." yada-yada-yada, something like that -- you know the song-and-dance.

The problem with this statement is it is made to try to absolve the Covid lockdown supporter of any responsibility for his actions. It is expressed to make it seem like Kyrie Irving has his own odd superstitious fantasy beliefs about things "but we want to respect him."

No. Please. You're patronizing him, you're actually being disrespectful. The correct answer is this: "We were wrong. While there are some instances where a given Covid thing is something to address, most all the things we've been doing for two years to address it have been preposterous. We're sorry.

"Now, let's play ball."

That's it. That's what needs to happen. This needs to come from every single person who ever believed masks or "vaccines" (in quotes because it is really not a vaccine), or wildly inaccurate testing or contemptibly worthless distancing or hapless contact tracing inquisitions or any of that stuff would do squat about the Covid thing.

Indeed one remark made in the mix of all the NFL sidelining players and pushing games back and otherwise doing any of the inane things it does was that here they're sidelining players for the tiniest confrontation with an illness that will simply not harm them, when every football game features some of the most gruesome injuries to the players on the field. 

We can certainly have the discussion about why I and so many others enjoy such a violent sport far more than we should, I get it.

But still, it is yet another of the legion of examples of hypocrisies about this Covid response tyranny. Government officials enjoying going maskless while everyone else is suffocating in their face diapers. "Vaccinated" people screeching about others being vaxxed while real vaccines should be protecting the vaxxed anyway. One of the best ones of all: masked people walking into a restaurant then 10 feet in taking off their masks to dine. Good thing the Covid bug can't stand going near dinner tables! Maybe we should all be strapping dinner tables to our faces!

Fortunately many people are really starting to get the absurdity of all this -- indeed the lethality it brings. They are starting to reject these things in larger numbers, and we can only hope the government officials who feed off the virtue-signaling vote-glomming they can do by telling us how much they're doing gol-darn-it to save our lives will start backing off as they should be.

Maybe the NFL is starting to do so as well.

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The image of Donald Parham was snipped from the CBS Sports website. Thank you.

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Chiefs at Chargers - Week 15 - Record: 10-4 - The Take

Pro football is a game of single plays. 

Travis Kelce makes all kinds of very nice catches across the middle of the field, and often he tries out a juke move but almost always he gets tackled right away.

Except that there are those single times they work. Kelce had two of them work last night, one a long 50+ yard catch-&-run down to the one yard-line to set up a late touchdown, then another that went the distance to win the game in overtime.

Then there are our two punching-bag players, D-back Daniel Sorensen and LB Ben Niemann. Both were in there long and often because there was no L'Jarius Sneed or Willie Gay, two key players who've helped revitalize our defense over the past several games. Sure enough they were being pushed all over the place as the Chargers offense had its way with us.

But there are those impact plays. Sorensen batted down a 4th-down pass that saved a Chargers score -- why does it seem there is just that one play he makes in every game that makes a huge difference? Ben Niemann had a phenomenal stop on a Chargers back at the goal line setting up a Turk Wharton strip and fumble recovery by, yes, Ben Niemann. Another Chargers score critically averted.

Thing is our defensive line was also without Chris Jones, and it showed. Our run defense was horrific. Chris Jones himself is not the best run defender, but his presence in the middle mucks things up and puts our other fine defenders in great position to make plays. 

One of those guys is Nick Bolton, by the way, and if people like those over at Arrowhead Pride would stop their obsessive and completely unjustified dissing of Mecole Hardman for two seconds (yes, they did it again after last night's game), they might take some of that web space to instead give Bolton his due. The knock on him is he doesn't cover well, but besides making all kinds of major hits and stops, he did have a terrific pass defense on one short ball. He's all over the field in some way or another and is arguably the best rookie linebacker in the league.

Another thing the people at most of these Chiefs sites like Arrowhead Pride will not do because they are so kowtowed to the NFL and other powers-that-be is call out this Covid hysteria lockdown insanity for what it is -- idiocy that led to seeing these strong Chiefs players sidelined.

The reporting is always "Oh what an unfortunate turn of events that ___ Covid thing [likely they have no idea what it is] that is keeping ___ off the field." Sadly, no one tells the truth that there is no reason whatsoever for the NFL or anyone to keep anyone off the field for whatever Covid thing they concoct. Virtually all of the Covid protocol absurdity is ineffective, unnecessary, and even dangerous. Chris Jones, L'Jarius Sneed, and Willie Gay should have been out there playing ball and not being an unwitting part of the NFL/powers-that-be's propaganda machine. This applies just as much to any player on the opposing team.

Really, to some extent, I just have some serious consideration that the Chiefs Super Bowl win was the last legitimate one. A month after our glorious championship, potentates the world around started to virtue-signal out of their rear-ends trying to convince us that they could eradicate all bad things with the wave of the mask wand, or the vaccine wand, or the testing-distancing-whatever wand. And yes, it is has horribly infected our fine sport and the Chiefs Kingdom. How can we count anything that happens on the field as legitimate now when they unnecessarily jerk the game around like they have. But then, really, the NFL has been jerking it around for some time now, with all the racialist plap as well as its now quite openly broadcasted connections with gambling organizations.

I was going to remark more on some of the amazing game we got to enjoy last night, such as how good the Chargers QB Justin Herbert is -- how good it'd be to talk about the new Mahomes-Herbert rivalry we'll get to enjoy for the next several years except, yeah -- what Covid insanity will ensue to wreck it all then?

::Sigh::

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The photo above is from Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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Chiefs at Chargers - Week 15 - Record: 10-4

What a comeback! Down 28-21 very late, Mahomes to Kelce to tie, then in OT Mahomes to Kelce with Travis bobbing and weaving through the defense for the game-winner!

I have work early tomorrow for a high-pressure time there and it is late, so I'm getting into shut-eye mode right now. The thrilling nature of this game was exhausting! Whew!

My take tomorrow!

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Photo by Andrew Mather at the Chiefs site. Thank you.

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Raiders at Chiefs - Week 14 - Record: 9-4

Jarran Reed! Mike Hughes! Harrison Butker! (Made the PAT!)

Chris Jones! Melvin Ingram!

Tershawn Wharton and each of our defensive backs!

Patrick Mahomes! Mecole Hardman! (Memo to Arrowhead Pride: Time to knock off the constant deriding of Hardman -- he's still a valuable asset to this team, always has been...)

Darrel Williams! Clyde Edwards-Helaire!

Daniel Sorensen! Tyrann Mathieu!

Michael Burton! Josh Gordon! (His first touchdown for the Kingdom!)

Mike Hughes again! (With the nice punch-out for the turnover!)

Each of our offensive linemen and CEH again! (With the amazingly slippery TD run!)

And finally, Andy Reid! (Yes I ride his butt quite often, but his skill at playmaking and getting this team to play its best is still unparalleled -- we're now looking to be back to our solid confident selves!)

That was just action from the first half. The second half was really all just a formality. Final score, 48-9.

It is nice to simply cover this post with lots of unequivocally earned kudos to our boys. 

With a blowout win over the Raiders, we've clinched our ninth straight winning season. Oh that 2012 is now such a distant memory. Switch those last two digits for a 2021 and we're now still blessed to enjoy this grand Chiefs renaissance. Seven playoff appearances with an eighth very likely. Several division titles -- how many in a row now? I've lost count. Three straight AFC Conference Championship games and counting. Two Super Bowls and one quite delightfully wonderful NFL Title.

This Thursday we try to keep up the momentum against the Chargers in Los Angeles.

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The posted image is from Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs website. Thank you.

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Broncos at Chiefs - Week 13 - Record: 8-4

Since it is late and I've got work tomorrow, I'm going to get going posting this guy right now.

Right now it is half-time, and we're up 10-3. We should be up 17-3, at least. We started out great, just slicing through the Denver defense like a hot knife through soft butter (sorry for the overused cliche but I'm tired).

Meanwhile the Broncos had two straight 3-&-outs, and we went to work again, flying down the field with the aid of that awesome screen pass and run by CEH we've been eagerly anticipating forever.

Then...

Yes, it is my fault, I'm sorry. Please, I am so sorry. I actually remarked, "This is not going to be close. We are smearing these guys. I feel sorry for the Broncos." Yes, yes, I did it, I'm sorry.

Because right at that point, it was different.

First of all we started dropping passes. Byron Pringle alone had two key drops, right away. We had to settle on a field goal.

The Broncos came back to move the ball and they ended up with a field goal. Willie Gay played terrifically, but here he even dropped an interception.

Our offense then looked pathetic. Mahomes ditching balls, others committing dumb penalties, including one that had Travis Kelce get called for pass interference on a play when he accidentally slammed into a Denver D-back running in coverage.

After a fine Tommy Townsend punt Denver got the ball at their own 3, then started heading downfield. We simply could not stop their big slippery rookie back Javonte Williams. Denver was employing one of the smartest things you could do to stop a Patrick Mahomes. Just have the ball forever on offense. Get our defense tired. Keep the ball out of Mahomes hands.

We could have stopped them in their 20-play clock chewing effort if, yes, Charvarius Ward had intercepted a ball right in his hands. Nope, another drop. Thing is, our D-backs were actually covering pretty well. The Broncos got deep into the red zone, yet tried for it on 4th-&-2 and were stopped.

Well, here we go -- we get the kick-off to start the second half.

Right outta the gate Tyreek Hill has two drops, the second getting picked. Errrrrgh. The second really wasn't as much his fault, as Mahomes let his throw sail on him. So after Hill's miss it made for the easy interception. The television broadcast is now just flashing Mahomes' QB rating for tonight so far: 49.7. Are you even kidding me. The announcers then mentioned something very profound.

Why isn't Mahomes throwing the ball down the field?

In fact the other day my brother-in-law mentioned something that was pretty insightful. Why don't quarterbacks throw the ball down the field deeper much more often? You'll either get a completion (yay!), an incompletion, or even if it is intercepted it is no different than a punt later. Thing is you may even get a PI call in your favor.

The announcer then said something else just as observant. That Mahomes is doing that side-slinging thing far too often. He just missed a receiver who was wide open and he could have just thrown the ball regular and got it to him just fine.

Shout-out though to Darrel Williams, who has already had two terrific catch and runs. We definitely have to keep getting this guy involved.

As it is, Butker gets the field goal to make it 13-3.

Annnnd... after a nice Thornhill pick, more penalties kill us. After the punt the Broncos guy pulls our guy into the returner who fumbles -- KC ball! But still, our offense can't do anything. Mahomes had another side-slinger throw that got tipped and almost picked. Grrghrgh.

Denver gets the ball back and sure enough their nice new back is pounding out yardage. It got to 4th-&-2 and how-about-that, Dan Sorensen pick-sixes a tipped ball, tipped by Ben Neimann no less. A big-time play from two Chiefs D players who've been a bit deep in the doghouse of late.

Buttt... Butttker misses the PAT. Not nice. Still 22-3 us.

They score a touchdown yet don't get the two-point conversion attempt, so with about 4:00 left we're up 22-9.

Annnd we close it out.

So we extend our regular season winning streak over the Broncos to 12 games. There will be a time, sometime, when the Broncos will win one against us. Really, today they had a good chance to do so. After that first drive of the game our offense was very flabby and the team got some nice breaks that devastated the Broncos chances. I'm sure everyone in the Broncos kingdom as it is is just sick having to endure all of that yet again. I feel them. Some of those games were heartbreakers. Cairo Santos overtime field goal comes to mind. Mahomes' astounding first start ever won on a late KC FG.

We'll be playing again in Denver on the last day of this regular season.

When playing this team I do, however, still think of all those games we played against the Peyton Manning-led Broncos and how spanked we'd get over and over and over again. Just got to enjoy the moment for now.

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The image is by Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs website. Thank you.

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