Chiefs at Cowboys Thanksgiving Game Officiating Debacle

Please stop.

Please, stop. It'd be nice if more people knew what is going on.

Stop. Really, please stop. Forgive me but it is simply foolish to not stop saying foolish things. It is just as foolish to just try to slough aside what's really happening with a sneering "Don't blame the refs. Don't make excuses. Get over it." Please stop. It is contemptibly foolish.

I get that the players, coaches, and other kinds of people must say the painfully conciliatory things. That is thoroughly understandable. Their livelihood depends on the facade, whether they make their money legitimately or illegitimately -- not going to say anything about the latter.

But everyone else? Everyone who actually wants there to be something of a competitive integrity...

Please stop.

Please stop blaming anything in these Chiefs losses on anything unrelated to the officiating. We did not lose yesterday to our lack of talent, focus, or desire.

Please stop blaming "the little things," like those times we fumble or don't get a fumble at inopportune times. We aren't losing these games because of an inordinate number of unfortunate twists.

Please stop blaming the coaching, and while I too have blamed the Chiefs coaching staff for not doing one thing or another at the right time, every team has those things happen.

Please stop blaming absolutely anything except the one single thing that is afflicting the Chiefs this season -- in fact what has afflicted the Chiefs quite often over the course of the past couple of years --

The NFLer-driven wildly unfavorable officiating.

Really, what should Patrick Mahomes say instead of what you see in that Arrowhead Pride headline posted there? It really should be "We have no margin for error because the officials are making so many terrible calls against us. We played well enough to win, in all these games, really. But the officials are crushing us very clearly in every single game." Again he won't because he knows he shouldn't, he fears they'll make worse calls in the future because they'll all take it personally, and he's supposed to comport himself as above it all. That's fine, we all know that.

What should Andy Reid say in his postgame presser? As he typically does he said, "We've got to clean up the penalties." Further in he did actually say he personally didn't like those calls, but what if he went all the way and said, "There is something going on with the officiating because so many of those calls in critical moments were not penalties." The headline really should read "Reid blames antagonistic officials for loss..." He won't say that either, understandable.

In my game post from yesterday I expressed a hope that people would call out all this. Well, peeking around, guess what, some are. Some are actually saying something meaningful about it.

I happened to catch a number of them, and this one from Dan Orlovsky is typical. (Orlovsky is a former NFL quarterback and is now some kind of regular television commentator.) Another mentioned how the officials simply do not know what PI really is. There have got to me much more than just these things I've found, if any of these pundits are honest about what we are all seeing clearly. Okay, good. Now go further and start examining why they are doing that so much against the Chiefs. Now let's hope they start calling out why it is happening.

Some will say the Chiefs lucked out last year and got favorable reffing since they won an NFL record 17 straight one-score games -- that has to be result of favorable officiating, it has to be. No, that doesn't follow, and sorry, it is foolish to think so. Yet so many do. No, the truth is the officiating went against the Chiefs in spite of our winning -- in fact (a point I've made before) we should have won many more of those games by blowouts but couldn't because of the detrimental officiating.

So please stop, again, stop saying anything about this team not being good enough. No. The truth is this is a phenomenally good team, all around, across the board. Do we have certain weaknesses in some areas? Of course, all teams do. But the Chiefs weaknesses are really not nearly as debilitating as the foolish bleats like "Blow up this team and start over!" I even saw one that said "Fire Brett Veach!" What idiocy. 

It is indeed why when I do look at those comments in each of those Arrowhead Pride stories I don't get very far because most of them are just idiotic. It is hard to take. The good thing is, about every tenth comment (glory be!) will actually be an intelligent remark about how much it is truly the officiating that is killing us. 

When will there be more?

I mean, I do think most in the Kingdom who don't put anything in comments sections of web things do know what is happening.

Funny, at one point in the game, I believe it was the Jaylen Watson officiating call on the non-PI (which again was actually an offensive PI, which makes all this so galling), afterwards you heard a very clear moan from the crowd. Yes, there was a sea of red there, enough to make their abject disappointment known when they saw the play on the big screen in the stadium. You could hear their boos over the broadcast audio.

That's something.

The Kingdom knows.

I'd like to think most of them are intelligent and observant and insightful and get it. Ultimately it is not because the Chiefs are deficient in that area or that area, it really is because they are too good. A 40-17 drubbing of the Cowboys in a major holiday game broadcast is death to the NFLers. So we get what we got yesterday. Whether or not it is just something we need to accept, I agree, is one thing. It is another thing to be in denial about what is happening.

I can't neglect to post right now about all this because writing this now is mostly just therapy, I get that. I accept what's been happening and move on. But I need to comment just as much as the next guy. I get that I like my Chiefs too much, but I also can't give in to the silliness about what the NFLers and many blithering fans are telling us we're supposed to believe about what is going on. 

The main thing related to all this is the idea about why I get so intense about all this, because, yes, it is true: There are indeed so many other things more important than a silly football game.

It doesn't mean I don't care about those things. I do put efforts into making my world a better place for all the other not-so-good things that need to be addressed all around us. There is indeed so much deceit and dissipation with really destructive things out there, but then again, this football stuff is kind of the point -- it is indeed a microcosm of those things, and if we just shrug and make excuses for the rotten things that happen out there, then why can't they be reflected on the football field?

How about we don't have deceit and unfairness anywhere? If we can't work to have that on a simple football field how much harder is it for us to have that out in real life? Yeah I could be making more of this than it is, I get that too.

But just blogging about it, that's all. Would love to see rightness happen everywhere, whether on the football field or some benighted battlefield out there somewhere. Pounding out words to process it isn't a bad thing.

Truth and Grace will reign no matter what anyway.

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