Well that was fun.
We had nothing to gain with the No. 1 seed sown up, and the Broncos had everything to gain by trying to win a playoff spot. We had very few of our best players in there, and the Broncos had the full complement of a team that is actually pretty good to begin with.
I actually had a slight vision of Carson Wentz making this something of a game, but as good a quarterback as he is, even he can't do much with a team of 2nd and 3rd stringers. Here were our six possessions up to the end of the 3rd quarter:
Five three-&-outs, effectively, and one decent one that was really just made up of a single long pass completion to Nikko Remigio. That drive ended with a missed Butker field goal.
Meanwhile, with a fine QB fully motivated the Broncos torched us. It was 31-0 at that point. After that it never got any better.
We can chalk this up to all these factors just putting this one fully in Denver's favor, but it is hard to take a butt-whooping this bad. These are still NFL teams with NFL players. Maybe this will be a motivating factor for us to be ready to go with our best in two weeks, but still.
Our tackles today were guys we were really hoping would be on the A-team, DJ Humphries and Wanya Morris. Neither did very well. How many times did Wentz get sacked? I lost count. And our top kicker, Harrison Butker, who the last couple of years was automatic from anywhere on the field and never gave us any worries winning everything for us at the end of game after game, missed another field goal.
On the television I watched some of the Rams-Seahawks game with the playoff-bound Rams having nothing to play for and not playing all their best guys while the Seahawks were playing their best, and it was close the whole way. The Rams were actually playing NFL caliber football however many scrubs were in there.
The Chiefs today?
A complete embarrassment. Doesn't matter how much the Chiefs Kingdom pundits say they don't care or it doesn't matter or whatever whatever, this is still a Chiefs team on the football field, and, um, wow.
Again, this may just be a wake-up call to get us working extra hard over the next two weeks, that's really the only thing positive from this ugliness. Doesn't matter what the reality of the stakes and all that, it was ugliness, pure and simple.
__
