Raiders at Chiefs - Week 13 - Record: 11-1

Okay I really can't wait to ferociously blap about this game. Yes, I know there've been a dozen times it seems in recent years when the Chiefs go down early to the Raiders and come back to win comfortably.

But as I feel the need to type this out here about half-way through the 2nd quarter, since I've got a lazy Friday to enjoy Chiefs football while the wife is out shopping with other family, I can't help but be again extraordinarily perplexed.

So far what we've all witnessed was a Chiefs offense that is playing about as impotently as it can. With the exception of Travis Kelce, everyone has been caw-caw. Mahomes is missing open receivers. Our receivers are not getting open and when the ball is put in range of catching they either give up on it or just drop it. Our running game is non-existent, even with the vaunted Isiah Pacheco back in there.

The Raiders' offense, on the other hand, is far less able than the Chiefs' offense, but they're making plays. They're running around like the proverbial Chinese fire-drill dudes but they're still matriculating. They're just making the fine plays they need to make, particularly by their receiver Jacoby Myers. Just now their 2nd-string QB was running for his life and flung the ball wildly whereupon their strong new TE swept under the ball to make the grab. And their running game they've been saying is the worst in the NFL? They've been chewing up yards like they're the best. Whudd?...

On defense we're just not making the plays. Now I see Nick Bolton not make an interception he should have made -- but hey, their really good kicker didn't make the long FG. ::Whew::

But why a bunch of ::Whew::s. How is this looking kinda like that nightmare last year on Christmas, that tremendously silly loss to Raiders at Arrowhead when the team just farted around the whole game against a woefully inferior team and lost. Remember after the middle of the 2nd quarter in that game, their QB, the same one playing in this game, completed zero passes.

It is kinda looking the same this time.

Let's see. It is now almost the end of the 1st half and we do have the ball at midfield... annnd...

Bam. There you go, a good, nice, Mahomes-slip-away-from-the-rush long completion to Noah Gray. The question now is, will we finish. Will this actually pretty decent team get the touchdown here. Will Andy Reid dial up some plays that get the job done?... Um...

Well, okay, but it seemed much more of the patented Kelce no-look catch-&-lateral to Perine to get that 1st down. Super neat. And then FINALLY, the floating pass to Watson at the side of the end zone who makes a terrific hold-on-to-the-ball catch. And the replay: just that Mahomes got clobbered from his left forcing him to make that pass across his body as he went down.

Wow. That's truly part of the amazingness of this dude, that he can kinda suck for a few plays but if he has one chance to make a truly spectacular, very necessary, quite astonishing big-time play, he does.

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Okay, that was it with my 1st-half venting. Now the game is over. We won.

But uggh.

There was one thing that was very pronounced about this game.

It was far too painful to have to endure. Not just at the very the end but the whole thing.

We had two chances to put this away late in the game. With six minutes left we had the ball, up 19-17, three-&-out. With two minutes left we had it again at midfield after a very fortunate missed Raiders long FG attempt, again three-&-out. But really, it should have never come down to that. Really, there are so many things wrong with the Chiefs, and actually right with the way the Raiders played today.

That last-second mess-up-snap fumble recovery to save our asses when they were in easy FG range not withstanding. 

The Raiders, a clearly far inferior team, just played better. They played with the intention of making the plays they needed to make. They are, after all, an NFL team. Their new tight end is the next Travis Kelce, and he played lights out for them.

The Chiefs showed the whole country that they cannot win a game with the offensive tackle play they have and without the defensive backfield play they need. 

The Raiders also won the game in the trenches just like they did last year. The TV guys kept saying over and over and over again the Raiders were the worst rushing team in the league. Except they outran us 2-to-1. Derrp. Add to this our pass rush is just not the best. Chris Jones and George Karlaftis had some decent stops, but it is just not getting enough pressure on the QB. Double derrp.

Mahomes was frustrated not making the plays he can make with the pocket not as securely protected as it should be. He was sacked five times AGAIN today -- remember last week he was sacked five times, by the Panthers. When he is ready D.J. Humphries can't help but help over there at left tackle. I really think the Chiefs thought that really good-looking draft pick Kingsley Suamataia was going to step right in and be the second coming of Anthony Munoz. That he wasn't by miles has really hurt us.

Even when he had protection Mahomes was just missing, missing, and missing again. Our receivers did not help -- while they did make some fine plays, too many other times they just never got open, made some drops, or simply made poor attempts to get up and get that ball.

Meanwhile their QB was set up for success from his coaching staff. Step back, throw the ball to the spot, and let the receivers do their jobs in the routes he knows they're running. Our defensive backfield certainly helped them out. They gave up big play after big play to Raiders receivers who weren't going to mess up.

We just didn't seem to care enough on offense to make the plays or on defense to stop them.

This Chiefs team should have won going away, really, 30-7. At least. But again, maybe, really just maybe those deficiencies at tackle and the inabilities to replace Jaylen Watson are just far too glaring.

As it is we're assured of a playoff spot. 

But dang.

This kind of effort won't get it done against, coming up...

The Chargers.

The Texans.

The Steelers.

And yes, nowadays, the Broncos.

And and and...

Whatever playoff teams we'll face.

Last year after that horrific Christmas Day Raiders debacle, we ran the table, most notably against very very very good Bills Ravens and Niners teams to win it all. 

Will we keep that phenomenally unprecedented run going for the three-peat?

Errrgmpf.

Not playing like this.

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The photo is from Kyle Rivas at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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

Over the course of the week following the Buffalo loss everyone was blaming someone. Even Brett Veach got the treatment for just not making the right picks in the draft. Please. How many times have other teams' GMs not picked the Creed Humphreys and Trey Smiths of the team before the Chiefs got them.

But I am now officially concerned. What is going on with this team? I do think, however, about the many times the Chiefs have had grave disappointments mid-season but we've come back and been amazing. And I didn't think the Carolina game would be a pushover game by any means.

Still I do think our injuries have hurt us more than we think. I truly believe the biggest loss was that of Rashee Rice. It didn't help that we lost Marquise Brown after the very first play of the preseason.

On the other hand, picking up DeAndre Hopkins was a coup, and getting Noah Gray (another fine Veach draft selection) in the mix have helped a ton, especially in this game. Of course Kareem Hunt has been a godsend, but as we all know he simply cannot carry the whole load. He's got to be exhausted with how much we've been giving him the rock.

I am also concerned about Andy Reid -- it just seems he's gotten back to being too conservative with his play-calling especially late in a game. Come on, you've got Mahomes, and D-Hop, and Kareem and Samaje for great screen action, and Gray who'd been great today, and Travis, and...

Putting the hammer down like we should? Today we were up 20-6, and again later in the game 27-16 -- annnd we let them back in it.

Why is Patrick getting sacked at any point in this game, like he did twice when we could have put the game away with just a few minutes left? And once during the drive before that putting us out of FG range? You really want to blame our tackles? Again, please. Sorry, but that is on Andy. He can do it, he always has -- he can make plays that work.

And defensively? By the time the 4th quarter got going -- Carolina had six possessions and got five scores each time? They stormed down the field late and got the TD and 2-point conversion they needed to tie it. One could easily make the argument that the loss of Jaylen Watson to injury was the most impactful. I wouldn't argue against that, actually. It seems to be really hard to find good solid cover guys, and when you get a major gouge in your secondary it can be very bad.

Thing is, with less than a minute left and the ball, Patrick did rescue us from all this by making a spectacular scrambling run for 30-something yards to get us safely in FG range to snatch up this win.

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I wanted to take a moment to share some thoughts about all the penalties. It does seem like every other play includes some yellow flag thrown. Too many penalties just makes the games drag. We can easily say it is the players' fault for just not following the rules and doing bad things on the field causing all the flags.

Particularly troubling are the flags thrown for passing and catching plays, namely those pass interferences and holding calls on pass defenders. One of the problems is the interpretations of what those are, and really, half the time you wonder. Either it was so blatant but not called, or it was barely anything and it was called. (And yes, the Chiefs don't get favored with those kinds of calls, especially in today's game...)

One pundit, I think it was Trey Wingo, pointed out in a social media post that the officials on the field are seeing the game in a linear fashion, while we are all watching in 360 degree digital. Absolutely. Somewhere else it was pointed out that the Chiefs had been asking for more attention from officials "in the sky" for some time. They are just starting to get around to doing that, and yes, just getting the call correct.

But it isn't enough. I really think there should be changes in the rules with regards to the passing game on the field. Consider the following.

After five yards off the line, defenders cannot touch at all any eligible receiver. No touching at all, meaning no jostling, no hands lifted up on the body in any way. If it is incidental such as the receiver happens to touch the defender while on his route that can be allowed, but really, for the most part: 

HANDS OFF. 

Totally. No reaching out or touching the opposing player, on either side. Don't even bump the player before the ball arrives unless you are clearly in a position to play the ball.

If you don't keep off, it is a penalty.

It may be said this will increase penalties. Hold on, just a minute. There is more.

The penalty should be much more severe, in a number of ways.

One, get the "interpretation" from the official in the booth, or in New York, or wherever. Again, let the people who see the game on the monitor from the 360 perspective make the call. Communication technology is so advanced officials on the field can get word when there is really a penalty.

Two, if a receiver has gone past the defender and he is PI'ed or held, put the ball at the one yard-line. This is kind-of the same as the breakaway rule in the NBA for a player clear to make a dunk and he is impeded deliberately to keep him from scoring. This should prevent all the contact that mess with the big explosive pass plays we all like to see.

Three, the one that I think will do the most to empower the players to not commit the penalties we are so tired of seeing: if a player gets flagged for two such fouls, they are ejected from the game. I know this sounds excessive, but if you want the players to be incentivized to not make those penalties on those pass plays, then mean business about it. Again, take a page from the NBA. Players there must take a seat if they commit too many fouls. Let's do this in the NFL. In fact, it would be much easier for them to just back off and play the passed ball.

Just play the game.

It may be said "But so many scores will be 57-54!"

Awesome. What is wrong with that? As it is too many games are 10-6, defenses are too unnecessarily aggressive, they get away with too much, and penalty flags fly left and right. If your defenders are good, they'll play the ball, not impede the receivers. If your players are smart and good enough, they'll play with the best they can bring and not commit stupid penalties costing their teams games when they get ejected for them.

And really, this applies to offensive linemen holding. This actually helps the defenses! The number of times I see offensive linemen hold and it isn't called. On the other hand, stop calling phantom holds, like the Chiefs got last week in the Bills game. Critical holding call against us helped them in a major way when the D-lineman was really just flopping.

Hey, more attention to doing it right and proving your football athleticism, I'm all for. In a very real sense, that is what we really want to see out there.

We definitely want to see way fewer penalty flags.

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The photograph is by Sam Lutz at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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

As much as we own the Bills in the postseason, they own us in the regular season. We lost to them yet again, this loss ending our perfect season record and 15-game winning streak.

Not going to get much into this one, except to note that we still really should have won this game. My own concern was with the defense, especially in the 2nd half when we've traditionally activated the halftime adjustment plan and put the hammer down.

Today we did the patented Spags blitzing way too much, because their fine QB Josh Allen was killing us when we did it. Halfway through that half I was screaming at Spags to stop blitzing. But he kept doing it. And we kept getting beat. Hey, I'd've been great with them rushing three for that matter with a shadow just to force him into some of those errant throws he'll always make at some critical time.

And that run he made for the dagger TD late in the game. What was with Nick Bolton totally whiffing on that? Sure it'd've been nice for us to stop them on that 4th-&-2 play, but wow, Allen had no business doing that. 

I know many will say Patrick had an off day, and he did, really, but mention must be made of the amazing Mahomes TD throw to Noah Gray for his 2nd TD. If you watch the replay he threw a bullet whizzing past three Bills defenders to the back corner of the end zone while running full-speed to his right with a pass rusher a millisecond from pulverizing him. Look at how he threw the ball. Just more of the kind of QB we've got there.

No worries. Let's just see what happens when it really counts in January.

Good thing about this one is simply we got that loss out of the way, we did lose to a very good team, and it is again an opportunity to regroup and address the things that went poorly for us today. At 9-1? We are still so much in the driver's seat.

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Broncos at Chiefs - Week 10 - Record: 9-0

When the Chiefs failed to score a touchdown down around the Broncos' 5 with a little over five minutes left I knew we were in trouble. It'd've been nice with a mere FG and a 16-14 lead for our defense to clamp down on the Broncos' defense just like they had throughout the 2nd half, employing the patented Spags surprise blitz packages at just right moments. The Broncos could not cope with any of that, yet here at the end of the game they were matriculating just fine to get into game-winning FG range.

So getting it all the way down to one second left to make sure there weren't the two seconds making it easier for Mahomes to go 60 yards for Butker to come back at them for the Chiefs game-winner, the Broncos lined up for the gimme FG until the Chiefs did something that only championship teams do.

They actually played as ferociously as needed to block the kick.

Which they did.

Peeking around briefly at the social media posts related to this event I saw many of the standard blaps, including "The refs are Chiefs fans" over and over. Yeah, whatever.

But this one stood out.

"The Chiefs hate is about to be at record levels."

So much fun.

Thing is, the Chiefs should never have gotten down to having to do that. There is no reason in the world they shouldn't have scored a couple more touchdowns today. Granted the Broncos defense is really pretty good -- not neglecting to give them all the credit they deserve. But all I heard this week was how DeAndre Hopkins was going to make it impossible for an opponent to keep the Chiefs from scoring touchdowns in the red zone.

Um, yeah.

It is really good, however, that since Hopkins got here Kelce has been reanimated. Today he had eight catches and a nifty touchdown. Thing is, we can't get JuJu and Hollywood back soon enough. The Chiefs just can't seem to get it going with Xavier Worthy who had a number of targets but only caught one pass. It wasn't even that D-Hop wasn't good, he was, he had four fine grabs on the day. The other WRs? Iggh.

We also can't keep running the ball going to the well too much with Kareem Hunt. As well as he's done so far he needs a break sometimes. They're stuffing him and when he's getting a breather there is no one else to go to. We ran the ball only 16 times today and only Carson Steele got other carries, two total. Eee-yee. So yeah, Isiah Pacheco can't return soon enough, and hey, where is CEH? 

So yeah, this one might have been one to be okay with getting a loss and taking the pressure off the whole "being undefeated" thing. Not that I don't want the Chiefs to win the next 57 million straight.

But it was nice to see them still sell-out to block that Broncos game-winning kick. Just says we are the championship team we are.

All haters welcome.

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The image is simply a video screenshot of the television broadcast of the blocked field goal.

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Buccaneers at Chiefs - Week 9 - Record: 8-0

Another primetime game. Ho-hum. Well, actually, it can't be any better. I can't help but think of the too many lean years when the Chiefs never saw a nationally televised evening game. This one is also on ABC, and that is nice as it is precisely where the traditional Monday Night Football game experience should be -- meaning it is not just on cable.

Since I can blog and watch this thing unfold at the same time I'm just going to track our drives with the score posted after each one. Make it simple tonight in a game we should win, but then... yeah...

1st drive - We moved the ball well, getting it nicely to Travis Kelce. We finally throw the ball deep and a wide-open Worthy near the goal line can't adjust and not go out of bounds on a sure TD. On 3rd down Mahomes lets himself get sacked to keep us from any points. We punt. 0-0.

2nd drive - We moved the ball well again this time with DeAndre Hopkins making the plays. Then we try a double-reverse to Worthy but an unblocked defender messes it up.  Big loss. We must settle for field goal. 3-0.

3rd drive - Matriculated well again. This time Justin Watson is the key receiver. A swing pass to Worthy goes nowhere -- just seems Worthy is playing like a rookie tonight. But then, DeAndre Hopkins. Dang. As Mahomes is getting hammered he drops a deep pass into Hopkins' breadbasket around three defenders. Then the TD pass to Hopkins in the back of the end zone. Dang what we're seeing from this guy is truly something the Chiefs have not had at wide receiver. He is looking like the future Hall-of-Famer that he is. 10-7.

4th drive - With two minutes left in the 1st half we started okay, but, well, turnovers. At midfield with a minute left Kelce had the ball knocked loose. Bucs recovered. 10-7.

5th drive - We got the ball once again but now with :30 left. Got nothin'. Halftime 10-7 us.

6th drive - Now in 2nd half, 1st possession. Fat zero. Three-&-out. Mahomes was totally flummoxed. Bucs just making plays tonight, on both offense and defense. 10-14.

7th drive - Worked Kareem Hunt much more. Also started raining more heavily. Matriculated well, yet again. Got down to 3rd-&-goal and Mahomes magic happened again with a run to the line-of-scrimmage then a quick flip to Perine for the TD. 17-17.

Except the magic came at a price.

Mahomes tossed that ball awkwardly, landing weird on his left leg, and it looked bad. He was helped across the field to the Chiefs sideline, but it did appear he straightened up when he got there, walking decently. At the time of this writing right this minute we have no idea what happened.

After the commercial break we saw that he came out of the medical tent and jogged along the sideline. Oh my. Apparently it was just an aggravation of the left ankle issue he'd been having. Major ::whew::

8th drive - Mahomes back in there, doing decent matriculating. Hunt getting called upon a lot again, and what a runner. He finds creases wonderfully. Thing is they simply don't take advantage of that workload, employing more play action off Hunt's success. But with about 4:00 left we get the pop slant at the goal line to who else, the guy who's going to for-sure make the clutch catch, D-Hop. 24-17.

9th drive - Now we have the seven-point lead with 2:30 left. It is pouring rain, and it is funny that the greatest downpour during an NFL game happened back on the last game of the 1979 season when, you guessed it, the Chiefs played the Bucs in Tampa. Thing is now we're just giving hand-offs to Hunt and they are predictably stuffing him. The only thing that really does is get the Bucs to burn timeouts. Yep. Erggh: Three-&-out.

10th drive - After the Bucs drove right down the field to score a game-tying TD -- something we could have done -- actually just run some decent plays on that drive just before to at least try to get some 1st downs -- derrp, we were left with :30 to try to get down to try to win it. We did squat. Had to punt to take the game to OT. 24-24.

11th drive - We get the ball to start OT. Matriculating the ball really well yet again. Now we're mixing it up brilliantly. Showing different looks -- giving it to Hunt sometimes, getting it to D-Hop, Travis other times.

Finally.

From the one, give to Kareem and he powers his way into the end zone.

Thuh end.

Still undefeated. 8-0. Now holding a 14-game winning streak, longest ever in Chiefs history. Before the game I happened to catch the odds for an undefeated season at 4%, and with the win tonight that goes up to 8%. That's pretty amazing actually -- just fun that it's even there. No big deal if we lose one though, take the pressure off really. Tonight it was pretty close to being the one.

Except this one should not have been this close. The Bucs were without their two best WRs, but give them credit, their other guys actually played extremely well. We kept messing up too many times. Even though Patrick did not have a pick for the first time in, how many games? It's been a few. 

Still there were too many things we did that got us derailed against what they said was a pretty weak pass defense. Again, kudos to them, their pass rush was stout, their heart was fully in it, their offense messed with our defense quite effectively -- I mean I watched our defense just get taken like it never had before.

But then for the Chiefs, what an addition is D-Hop. I honestly do not think we win this game without him, and we just got him a week-&-a-half ago. Yeah, I can only echo what so many are thinking -- they even mentioned it on the broadcast tonight, "It just isn't fair."

All good for us.

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The photo is by Sam Lutz  at the official Chiefs site. Thank you.

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