Ravens at Chiefs - Week 1 - Record: 1-0

At the beginning of the game I did get an idea why fans may think the refs make the best calls for the Chiefs. They called illegal lining-up on the Ravens tackle a number of times when it looked like he was pretty good there on the line. When the Chiefs had the ball it looked like Jawaan Taylor himself was in the same position, but it was never called. I honestly don't know what the deal was with that. But you "Chiefs are favored by the refs" detractors had a case with that one.

When the Chiefs could really take care of some business at the end of the first half, Mahomes threw an ugly interception trying to do too much when the pocket was collapsing. Then there was the play early in the 3rd quarter Mahomes showed how well he can move around in the backfield. It is such a critical part of his fine game, he has such a great sense of place on the field. Early in that 3rd quarter a charging lineman had him dead-to-rights, and sure enough he stopped, slipped away from him, then hit Justin Watson wide open down the field. Just wait a tick and you'll make the slip -- and the play.

Our pass rush was eh, not great, and the defense as a whole let Jackson go off and get down the field on things a bit too often. Guess you gotta live with that and just contain as much as you can. Stopping Derrick Henry was okay, and going up 27-17 in the middle of the 4th made him less effective. 

The worst part of this game was the very first play of the 4th quarter. We're up 20-10 and the Ravens have a 3rd-&-17. A 3rd-&-17. Jackson is scrambling, is almost smothered by three Chiefs players, and he manages to float a desperation pass to his tight end -- and it was a duck. The receiver had to come back to get the ball. 

We then just lost track of the whole thing. The tackling was pathetic -- you couldn't even call it even an attempt at tackling. It looked like we didn't even know where the guy was so we could even look like we were playing any kind of football at all. A total embarrassment for a defense that is clearly way better than that, and playing really pretty well on the evening. Leo Chenel. Turk Wharton. Our defensive backfield as a whole.

Well, back to the play. With the Chiefs playing no real football at that time -- something of a weird time warp disturbance of some kind, I'm sure, -- the dude with the ball now, running at a speed equivalent to about a 28.74 time in the 40 at the Combine, rambled for a 50-yard touchdown. Yeah. Uggh. Uggh infinity. Later the television broadcast said that play had a 0.3% probability of happening. I mean. I mean, it was quite truly an abysmal thing to watch. I hope Chiefs officials are able to just mercifully just take replays of this game and just very surreptitiously excise the clip of that play from the game. We won't miss it.

With about 2:30 left and Baltimore having no timeouts, the Chiefs at midfield on a 3rd-&-10 and now ahead 27-20, the Ravens bat a Mahomes pass into the air. Mahomes catches it and down he goes. Not an incompletion. Great play since it allows those last :30 seconds to run off before the two-minute warning.

The Ravens got the ball after the punt at about the 10, again needing to score a touchdown with no timeouts. They then moved the ball all the way down to the Chiefs 10 and with 4 seconds left and one more play to go, the receiver caught the ball in the back of the end zone, but his toe was on the white line. It was out of bounds. 

We win.

We win by a toenail.

And the player who made that allllllmost great play was Isaiah Likely, who by the way was that receiver who got that ugly touchdown earlier. Give the dude credit. He had a monster game on the whole. Don't want to diss him too much as he was the guy who did score that 50-yard Ravens TD. 

Anyway, here his play did look really good, he did make an amazing play to reach up, snatch the ball, and work brilliantly to try to get both feet in. Crazy, if it was a touchdown, the Ravens were even going to go for the two-point conversion to try to win it. It is almost too bad Likely didn't clip his toenail juuust a bit more before the game, so that foot could be in-bounds for the TD, and we all could enjoy that attempt. Would've been a great finish to a pretty good game.

Except for that ugliness at the beginning of the 4th quarter.

As it is, final note, the off-season has been wonderful, just hearing "Will they three-peat?" every other time you turn around. I mean, this is our Chiefs. Wow. I was thinking after tonight's game that'll be over with, but now I realize, not really. Unless the Chiefs totally tank, we can still enjoy it through the season, and of course hopefully very very very deep into the postseason.

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The posted photo is courtesy of Andrew Mather at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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