World Champion Chiefs! - Take Two

Thought I'd add a few thoughts about our wonderful Super Bowl victory from exactly a week ago. Right now things are moving into off-season stuff, so I thought it'd be good to put down a few more hopefully not completely last words about the conclusion to our championship season. What fun it has been to see and hear at all the great Chiefs stuff and enjoy the victory parade this past week.

A few more things I've thought about.

1. Even before the game I thought, huh, don't we have something of an advantage in having Super Bowl Steve Spagnuolo out there running the defense, the very same guy who throttled the invincible Patriots in the Super Bowl a number of years ago? I don't think Spags has been given enough credit for holding off the Eagles in this one even with their QB Jalen Hurts playing like a Superman out there.

2. Did anyone notice Creed Humphrey's shotgun snaps to Mahomes? I mean, Creed's blocking was spectacular matching the exceptional play of his fellow linemen, yes, but half his snaps were abysmal. Did you notice the ones Mahomes had to pick off his feet, or snatch from his far left, or even a few at the beginning that just got to him a tick late which in many cases can make a world of difference? This was yet another testament to Mahomes' greatness for being able to accommodate and still play amazing football.

3. Winning this game in the trenches did get some mentions, but it should be emphasized. Not only did our O-line stand up their D-line, but our D-line stood up their offense especially to the tune of Bolton-Gay-Chenel doing expert work to keep the Eagles' running backs to 45 total yards rushing. Ouch.

4. Our running game got the job done. Pacheco and McKinnon were gashing especially in that 2nd half. Sorry but it does make me think about how different last year's AFC Championship game against the Bengals would've been if we'd done the McKinnon thing in that game, something I mentioned back then. Here is worked beautifully, but I won't say I told you so here. We're champions this year!

5. JuJu was everything we wanted him to be. Do you realize how many catches he made in those 2nd half drives? A lot. So many that it is another reason why it is so ridiculous to moan and groan about that late holding call. JuJu was torching those Eagle D-backs that eventually it was very likely they were going to hold. So yeah, please, not another word about that holding thing towards the end of the game.

6. Three Super Bowl titles now overall match or exceed 25 other NFL teams. Only six teams have more (NE, Pit, Dal, NYG, GB, SF)  Pretty cool. It may go without saying that everyone sees how high the ceiling is for this team with Mahomes reaching his prime, Veach and Reid still doing what they do, and an organization emerging as arguably the NFL's best. Needless to say the Chiefs are favorites to win it all again next year -- still, I'll say it again, not sure how the top NFLers feel about that.

7. I saw a Chevy El Camino going along the street the other day, and any time I see that kind of vehicle I think of the decommissioned El Camino permanently parked outside the paintball field splattered with paintball art when we were their for my nephew's birthday party in January of 2014 -- the day the Chiefs were way ahead of the Colts and then... I used to think of El Camino's with sadness because I'd then think about that nightmarish day, but now? It's weird -- I like them. I think it is because I think about then, but then contrast that with now and the good-feelings are that much better because of that stark contrast. Does that make sense?

It is the Golden Age of Chiefs Football now, everyone knows it. Watching the Super Bowl on the DVR again, especially everything that happened in that 2nd half, is magical. It is weird in that it feels much more fun watching the replay because I know for sure that we won the game! Does anyone else feel that way?

What a time to dwell richly in the Chiefs Kingdom!

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The image is from Matt Starkey at the official Chiefs site, thank you.

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Chiefs and Eagles - Super Bowl Take - WORLD CHAMPION CHIEFS!

I do believe this will go down as one of the greatest Super Bowls ever, since each team was within striking distance of each other throughout. I believe the largest deficit was the 10-point dip the Chiefs had at halftime -- ha - yet another 10-points in a Super Bowl Mahomes and the Chiefs had to transverse to win it. Another reason this one was a great one -- indeed they'd said teams down by ten or more points at the half in the Super Bowl were 1-26, the only other one that Patriots comeback against the Falcons a few years ago.

I do know that most would consider this the greatest Super Bowl ever if Jalen Hurts and the Eagles offense had a chance to try to tie or win it with about 1:40 left on the clock after a sure Butker field goal would've put the Chiefs up 38-35. But on what I believe was 3rd down the Eagles defender was called for holding on JuJu and the Chiefs got a new set of downs to allow them to burn up that time, keeping the Eagles from having a chance to do that. As it was Butker kicked that game-winner with only :11 left.

Lots of people lamented the call, but it was the right one. The guy held JuJu, JuJu said 100% he was held, the Eagles defender admitted he held, the television referee said it was holding, and the referee himself, the infamous Carl Cheffers, put out a notice citing the rule so it was indeed pretty black & white.

With that in mind, I myself do kind-of agree with those who didn't like the call. I do. It could've gone either way, and with those, ya gotta live with whatever the ref says. I've always shared that sentiment even in my rantings about how much the most egregious ref calls could be much better mitigated. It does get really dicey, however, when people say things like "That call shouldn't have been made so we can all see a better ending of a game." Please know, I get it. I'm actually with you. But the call still needs to be correct no matter how much it makes for a slightly less entertaining affair.

Thing is the Eagles themselves aren't complaining, and most thoughtful fans aren't either. There was so much the Chiefs did to deserve the win, and so much the Eagles could've done to win but didn't. Yes it would've been nice to have won the greatest Super Bowl ever instead of one that'll probably go down as, oh, maybe the 6th or 7th, I don't know -- simply because the holding call made the ending just that much more anti-climactic. Not a lot, but enough to bump it down in many people's minds.

It is funny, after that penalty, we faced a situation where we needed not to score a touchdown. A number of years ago, November of 2016, when playing the Broncos, their guy caught a touchdown pass late in the game when I thought it would've been better if he didn't score the touchdown. He could've just stopped and kneeled a few yards from the goal line so the Broncos could run clock for the expressed purpose of keeping the ball from the Chiefs offense so they'd have little time left to try to come back.

The Chiefs did have that time after all, and I believe they tied it and won it in overtime. I wrote about this idea at Arrowhead Pride and actually got quite a few people responding. I titled the piece, "When Will NFL Teams - the Chiefs? - Start to See the Value of Not Scoring a Touchdown?"

Wow. Did that idea pay off for us last night. In the series that followed the penalty one play featured Jerick McKinnon running free towards the pylon on the left side, and it sure looked like the Eagles defenders were trying real hard not to stop him. Sure enough...

McKinnon slid down in bounds a yard short of the goal line.

The Eagles were forced to burn their last time out, and on the next two snaps Mahomes just stepped back and kneeled setting up Butker for the game-winner with only seconds left.

The Chiefs saw the value of not scoring a touchdown.

And it helped them secure the Super Bowl win.

As far as the overall officiating goes even with that reffing crew that has been not-very-good for the Chiefs in the past, they did pretty well, except against the Chiefs there was one pretty egregious pass interference call, also against JuJu, happening early in the 2nd quarter. It did have a negative impact contributing to a stalled Chiefs drive.

The main officiating question was the interpretation of what constitutes a catch. I believe there were poor calls on both sides, but that is much because the NFL has this convoluted rule about how many steps you must take and all the rest of it. Here were the cases in the game:

First the Eagles Davonta Smith made a terrific grab on a deep ball along the sideline as the 1st half was coming to a close. To me, it was a catch. And I'm definitely rooting for it not to be one. But it was. He made this terrific David Tyree-type snatch against his helmet, he had control, he got both feet in bounds -- a legitimate catch. Give it to them.

Nope. They ruled against it. Wrong wrong wrong. Now it didn't hurt the Eagles much because they still got the FG to go up 24-14 at the half.

Second, early in the 2nd half Hurts completely a pass on the right flat to his back who caught it, turned to make a "football move," and was plowed into by L'Jarius Sneed. He fumbled, it was scooped up by Nick Bolton who ran for what would have been his second fumble recovery TD of the game. After further review, not a fumble - incomplete pass.

Not.

Sorry, that was a catch too, overruled by the officials because apparently he didn't make a third step or something silly like that. No touchdown for the Chiefs.

Third, their tight end made an amazing catch at the sideline that was ruled a catch on the field, but the Chiefs threw the challenge flag because it sure did look like he bobbled it before getting both feet in bounds. I believe he did, but sure enough, they ruled it a catch. The television ref said he barely had his foot down when he gained possession.

To be honest, I'd give it to them. This was legitimately a close one, nothing conclusive was seen to overturn the call on the field, really, that's fine.

That's the whole point though. When a player makes a great play and it's close, I'm great with giving them the benefit of the doubt on a catch. Great. But with the Bolton recovery play, that should have been a catch too.

One more note about the game that I think requires mention is the state of the field of play. What a joke. I'd even heard or read before the game that they were experimenting with some putting-green golf course type turf, and sure enough right then and there I'm thinking please no. Please don't do that. That's sounds really dumb. You can't play football on putting-green turf, you can't. This will not go well. Did anyone else think that?

Well, sure enough, players on both teams were slipping and sliding and vocally complaining about it for the duration. Not sure what the Chiefs did but I was told Eagles players changed their cleats at halftime, which in some ways, while seemingly the right thing to do, may have actually messed with their rhythm and game play on the field. 

Now to a few brief notes about the play and the game. Yes we can talk about Patrick Mahomes and his once-again courageous play, awesome awesome, but here're some other things:

Kudos to our O-line who didn't allow a sack for the entire game. The whole team also did really well keeping the running game going, but I think a lot of that was Andy Reid's beautiful game plan that took advantage of the Eagles softness on the edges. We both ran and passed at those edges constantly throughout the game, even scoring our last two touchdowns on routes that took advantage of the Eagles D-backs over-aggressiveness in the middle.

Kudos to our run defenders -- not just the D-line but those key linebackers, Nick Bolton, Willie Gay, and sure enough another rookie who wasn't in all that much before, Leo Chenel. What a great call to stick him in their for meaningful minutes to help shut down the Eagles vaunted running game forcing Hurts to try to hurt us with his passing. Hurts almost did, by the way, with both his running and passing. He played phenomenally well -- we just did enough to contain him to win it in the end.

And just a kudos to our rookie D-backs. Justin Reid and Juan Thornhill played well enough, for sure, but that we had that McDuffie-Watson-Williams-Cook quadrantes needing to do just enough, now besting by numbers that 49ers rookie D-backfield of Lott-Wright-Williamson that helped them win Super Bowl XVI back in 1982.

It was also a very nice disciplined game by our team. No turnovers, no penalties at all in the 2nd half -- in fact the 2nd half game plan by our coaching staff was just terrific. What a blessing it is to have a now extraordinarily experienced Andy Reid who has been known to do a not-the-best job of making the real halftime adjustments that he should make, yet last night, his adjustments were fantastic. Three touchdowns and the game-winning field goals on our possessions - we outscored the Eagles 24-11 in the 2nd half.

The talk now is how much we could be a dynasty, yet right now it is a blast to just enjoy a second title in four years. Mahomes now has two, and I can't help but think that Dawson, Brees, Rodgers, Namath, Unitas, Warner, Young, Favre... for as good as they were on some pretty good teams each had (have) only one. Marino, Tarkenton, Kelly didn't have any. People like both Mannings, Staubach, Elway, Roethlisberger who've had two... Mahomes is now in that stratosphere and as everyone says, he's only 27 with a coach who wants to keep going and a GM who is a genius at plugging in those fine players around him.

I have to add this, that the Chiefs now have a better Super Bowl winning percentage at .600 than the Patriots at .545. Yep! True! How great is that. The Chiefs are now 3-2 in Super Bowls, while the Patriots are 6-5. Boo-yah! I also have to just add this, that finally, we now have the same Super Bowl record as that archrival Raiders, who also have a 3-2 Super Bowl record.

Can this get any better than that? 

Well, of course, when we play again in the Super Bowl next year in Las Vegas!!!

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The first image is from Matt Starkey and the second is from Evan Sanders at the official Chiefs website, thank you.

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Bonus coverage! Just looking around on the web, very much standard practice for some time after days like yesterday, there was this tweet. Too much fun not to post here. There're probably a hundred more like it, but here's this one for now:

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Chiefs and Eagles - Super Bowl Take Preview

KANSAS CITY CHIEFS WORLD CHAMPIONS!

Again! 

I can't post something now because I'm too busy celebrating! But I'll pound out something soon.

To cover in particular: our coaching staff putting a 2nd half game plan together and the players executing it was phenomenal! Our O-line taking care of business on that vaunted Eagles pass rush! Our defense just playing with everything they've got, particularly shutting down their running game with a bit of a softiness to Jalen Hurts -- but that ended up not hurting us! 

Then there was what actually constitutes a catch, as well as what-thuh-**** about that putting-green golf turf they put on that field. And of course how the usually anti-Chiefs officiating was, a few meaningful remarks about that.

Until then!

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The image of Andy Reid winning his second Super Bowl with the Chiefs courtesy of Steve Sanders at the official Chiefs website, thank you.

Chiefs and Eagles - Super Bowl LVII Preview

Getting around to pounding out something of a preview to this game. I haven't paid much attention to the pregame hype related to the team's abilities themselves, except that it is pretty much the Eagles balance versus Mahomes' absurd play. Which will prevail?

I do want to make mention of the Bengals' postgame concerns particularly those of their fans. I say this because I was going to make a post about their claims that the refs favored the Chiefs in the AFC Championship game. I didn't because I just didn't feel like it, really. But I do want to remark about it only because in my view their concerns relate to that key thing that could be the difference in this Super Bowl.

First of all, in my honest opinion I do think it was a fairly called game. The officiating was fair and above board. Almost every complaint by Bengals fans was unsupported, particularly the very clear personal foul push out-of-bounds on Mahomes very late that gave the Chiefs better field goal position, and the instance when the officials legitimately tried to get the clock correct -- the result of which produced zero negative impact on the Bengals.

I will say that there was one play that I do think the Bengals had a justified gripe yet never heard a thing about it anywhere! Maybe some brought it up but I just didn't see it in any of the most prominently published complaints. It was when MVS made that slick stretch-the-football move to get it to the 1st down marker. After he stretched the ball out he pulled it back before he was down. At least it looked like he was not down. If he pulls the ball back, and he does not set it firmly on the turf as a downed football, and he is not ruled down, shouldn't then the ball placement be where he pulled it back? If that was the case the Chiefs would've faced a 4th-&-1 instead of being granted the 1st down on a drive that resulted in a touchdown.

Otherwise, all those other moanings and groanings simply had no merit.

Here's the greater point to all this. The Bengals' kingdom also made mention of this: The NFL is rigged!

Here's my response: I agree!

What is crazy is it is rigged just as much against the Chiefs as it is against the Bengals. Did NFLers want to get a Kelce vs Kelce brother match-up? Of course they did. Did they want Andy Reid facing his old team. Sure. Were there other appealing things to a Chiefs-Eagles Super Bowl? Clearly. I get all that, but if there is anything untoward to make that happen it is wrong, as I've written about it at length and in my posts however-much-they're-read. I've always been about calling out all the things that impede true genuine competitive integrity in the sport. 

I've insisted with solid reasoning and evidence that the NFLers favor those big-market media-darling money-generating teams and the Bengals and the Chiefs have never been in that club. Are the Chiefs in that club now with someone like Patrick Mahomes at the helm? I can't say they haven't wiggled their way into it, but I'm convinced the NFLers are still loathe to have the Chiefs be  successful because they simply are not the Cowboys or Patriots or Jets or Giants or...

The main reason I bring the officiating thing up here is because of the concern a lot of people in the Chiefs Kingdom have about the officiating in this upcoming game. The NFL in its great wisdom decided to select a referee crew that notoriously makes the worst calls against the Chiefs.

I'm not going to get into this or that about those calls or the whys and wheretofores about any of it now. I do want to point out right here and now that I do remember a time when Chiefs fans needed to convince themselves This time will be different. This time will be different. There is no way those wretchedly unfavorable and unjustified calls or non-calls will hurt us this time. This time they'll be good officials. This time will be different this time will be different this time will be different...

January 4, 1998.

Chiefs are playing the Broncos in the divisional game, at home, with one of the best defenses in the league. We've got a good shot at this. 

I then look and see who's reffing.

Jerry Markbreit.

Great.

I don't remember details but I do remember Markbreit's crew screwing the Chiefs on a number of different occasions previously. Of course looking at this situation, all I could stream through my skull was THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME WILL BE DIFFERENT. I'm thinking we've got such a good team we'll overcome the reffing thing. He can't be that bad that often that we'll get hurt in this game too.

This time will be different.

It wasn't. It was a nightmare.

One of the main things that happened was the Broncos linemen put some kind of petroleum jelly substance all over their jerseys. It was caught early in the game and a clear violation of NFL rules against cheating. Did those players get expelled like they should have? No, of course not because that would've seriously compromised the NFLers desire to get John Elway another shot at a Super Bowl. What happened was the linemen were allowed to go take towels to wipe off those substances, which actually took a few minutes of real time for them to do that. The team was not charged a time-out, they were not penalized in any way for it, and even though I'm sure they could not possibly get all the material off those jerseys they were not required to change their uniforms.

The Chiefs lost one of the greatest heartbreakers in the history of the team by less than a touchdown score.

Thanks, Jerry Markbreit.

The one single point in this preview post is this:

This game should be very close. As a Chiefs fan I'd like to think Patrick Mahomes will not let us lose this game. Even in that ugly Super Bowl loss to the Bucs a couple years ago Mahomes was the clear-cut MVP, not Brady or whoever they gave it to. There is even a brief video going around now that shows clips of Mahomes' play in that game interspersed with remarks made by non-plussed Bucs players about how phenomenal Mahomes was playing in spite of having a Division II college O-line and butterfinger receivers the whole game.

But if this one is close in spite of Mahomes' heroics, in what ridiculous way is this officiating crew going to hose us? Legitimately, that means they make a legitimately rotten call (that for the 57,000th time officials with monitors in the booth would be able to correct by the way) -- a call that does substantially impact the outcome to our detriment?

Will that happen? If it does, we can lose this game. If it doesn't, I truly think we win.

That's the key. That's my prediction. Sure I could be wrong as any prediction may be, but that's the take, and certainly one you will not read in any major NFLer intimidated publications.

We'll see come Sunday!

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The image was from Getty Images and clipped from Yahoo Sports, thank you. 

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