As it is for this one some quick thoughts.
It's imperative Mahomes stays healthy through the playoffs if we want to get to the promised land again. Backup Blaine Gabbert certainly has the talent but just looked off too much. I do believe some of that is his having to deal with these receivers. Our guys still had too many drops, not enough cleanliness on routes, not enough toughness battling defenders.
It is also very concerning what will be happening with our offensive line for next week. We had a number of players on that line go down with injuries. We also had Deon Bush and Chamarri Conner suffer some kind of injuries today. Errgh... these "exhibition" games.
It was a nice little meaningless win today, but it was close and it is tough to get it when all of our best are on the bench. That's for the best for sure. Our defense of mostly reserves was still pretty stout even playing against many of the Chargers reserves. It was nice to see that spiffy Mike Edwards length-of-the-field touchdown run off the fumble recovery. But again, those were the only touchdown points we scored the entire game. I kind of liked what La'Mical Perine did at running back. There was some good play from people like Mecole Hardman and, yes, Justyn Ross at wide receiver, but we still really need to hope our starting slate of receivers next week really step it up.
Meanwhile, just some notes of things I'd been thinking about Chiefs and pro football-wise, since this game was mostly an exhibition game one way or the other.
This morning I was watching a bit of the Saints-Falcons affair, and the Saints guy scored a touchdown, but barely. It was hard to tell and on the field the line judges signaled that he was short. Replays clearly showed that he got that ball across the plane just before his elbow and butt hit the ground.
Touchdown -- but again, to the refs' credit it was hard to tell.
So, have the officials in the booth make the call. They can see it on their monitors, all of us at home watching on television see it, my goodness, God, Walt Disney, and everyone sees it. Thing is, oh, yeah, they have no officials in the booth.
So here's what happened. The Saints' head coach threw the red flag, and almost immediately the head official turned to us all, raised his arms, and announced, "The play was a touchdown." I thought, wow, how nice, he doesn't have to spend five hours looking at a monitor to see what the replays show us all in five seconds.
How'd that happen?
It happened because they do have officials watching all this in New York. They radioed in to tell these guys it was indeed a touchdown.
GLORY BE!
I do know there've been other instances like this, where the New York guys have radioed directly into games to tell the officials what to rule. Maybe the NFL is getting going on just, sorry-- to be painfully redundant --
GETTING - THE - CALL - RIGHT.
The problem with that is the NFLers don't always want to get the call right... They just want the outcome they like. Let's just see what happens when they allow the New York dudes to start calling in on those egregiously bad pass interference calls or non-calls. Or even, hope-against-hope to actually start making the calls that don't unfairly impede Chiefs success simply because they all know the NFLers are loathe to see the Chiefs keep going far in the playoffs.
The NFL also needs to get its act together on this lining up thing. Last week the Lions lost a game because they didn't have the proper alignment eligiblity going or something like that. It turned out the Lions inadvertently (or "advertently" as some presumed) got the officials all mixed up about which linemen were eligible and which were where or not-where or -- I'm sounding like Dr. Seuss here.
Thing is, why on earth do linemen have to announce their pass-catching eligibility? As far as I know the rules for professional American football are pretty simple. You must have five players on the line of scrimmage who are ineligible by rule. They are generally the guys you want blocking for you. As positions they are typically LT, LG, C, RG, and RT.
Thing is the rules also state you must have two guys on each end of that line. They are generally the WRs or a TE, depending on your chosen formation. So to elaborate, still not complicated at all, you must have seven total guys up at the line of scrimmage when lining up for an offensive play. And in whatever formation you want, the two on each end is eligible to receive a pass.
Here's the trick. If you want your left tackle to be eligible, that's fine, as long as he is the one player on the left end of that front-seven line of players.
The point is, all the line judge needs to do is look at the formation and see who the player is on the end of the line. If it happens to be the peanut vendor pulled from the stands for that particular play and he catches a pass, then great! He was the guy on the end of the line and as such he was the guy eligible to catch passes.
Thuh end.
The problem seems to be when all these guys line up in their established formation. An important corollary to the lining-up rule is there are four backs, including the quarterback, who are also eligible to catch passes but they must all be situated behind the line of scrimmage before the ball is snapped.
This is where it gets complicated because, let's be honest, 93% of the time I watch a team line up and, let's face it, it looks like there are eight, nine, ten guys on the line. Sometimes I see only the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage ready to take the snap, with the other ten guys in some mish-mash of a formation close to to the line.
Theoretically those three guys not-supposed-to-be-on-the-line are lined up a step behind the line. And there are times you can see that those guys are a distinct distance back, off the line, yes, we do see that sometimes. But again, far too many times I can't tell which players are the true ends, by rule, and which players are the backfield receivers.
And yes, because it is most times such a mish-mash is precisely why the Kadarius Toney offsides call in that Buffalo game was so monumentally unfair. 93% of the time the formation is a mess and it is never called. And for the 57th time, that is not a bad thing. Stopping the game every time a backfield player is just lined up too close to the line or not close enough to the line or wherever he is supposed to be by virtue of some line judge's weird line-of-sight judgment skills would get really tedious really fast.
So how about this. How about this off-season the NFL just make it much more pronounced. Get it so those backfield players are a full player's length behind that line. Not a step, not a foot, not anything that keeps the line judges from looking at the player who is on the end of that line and knowing for sure that he is the one who is eligible.
This is just not rocket science, it isn't. And it can be digital electronic measurement science, really. Technology is so advanced that the NFL could easily have some kind of device that, say, lights up if a backfield player is too close to the line. That player will be instructed to look for where the light is, and, say, if it is red, he's too close and he knows he must back up. If green he's okay. Something like that.
Please, this is just not hard.
There were a few other things I thought I'd pound out here, but not going to today.
As it is Chiefs-playoff-wise, right now we're looking at playing Pittsburgh next week if Miami wins, and Miami next week if Buffalo wins. Who do you want? As always I'm thinking about what I always think about with these things. It really doesn't matter, we'll be good, as long as we don't do anything ridiculously stupid.
And, yes, again, our receivers help out Patrick Mahomes and make the plays they need to make.
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The photo of Mike Edwards' touchdown run is from Adam Parker at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.
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