You have to admit this has to have been one of the ugliest two-game stretches of Chiefs games ever. Really. Last week was an epic failure by the team, this week it was simply an epic stupid meltdown. Two major uglies in a row. Not fun.
I wanted to simply post this to include a screenshot of a question and the first response shown at Arrowhead Pride. I peeked at it last night to see a bit of what some said about this travesty.
Before I put it up here, please do not get me wrong. There are indeed things the Chiefs are suffering from on their own. The gritty ganas to finish this thing off was just not there yesterday, and the chief culprit in this failure was unquestionably Andy Reid. He does do this once in a while, sadly. We all know that.
Our offensive line is a major issue, and not having Josh Simmons in there and having to endure this lunacy with whatever is going on with Kingsley Suamataia has decimated Mahomes' ability to make plays and our runner's ability to get something of a push up front. Add to this Creed Humphrey's sudden inability to make crisp snaps to Mahomes in the shotgun mean we do deserve measurable blame ourselves, straight up.
But the fact is, we should have won this game yesterday because we had fine performances from several others.
And yes, we lost primarily because of the officiating.
Here is that screenshot from Arrowhead Pride, first, then I'll comment.
Nearly every comment in the thread that followed this one mentioned the officiating. Those other strictly Chiefs things are legit, as I've said! That's fine I agree. But beside Mr. Jlmst and the others that followed the cybersphere exploded about the anti-Chiefs officiating -- with several detailed citations of the wretched calls that went against the Chiefs costing them the game.
Funny though, even though I do like them and check in every once in a while, Arrowhead Pride is sadly a rigidly toadying sports blog that will never call out that officiating. When they ran this feature today, the day after, with that exact same question yet this time with their own selected responses, none of those responses mentioned the officiating.
I don't even mean to pick on Arrowhead Pride in particular; any and all of them are the same -- I won't name names (I did in an earlier version of this post but, discretion...) They all go way out of their way to not only expressly reject any suggestion that the officiating alters game outcomes against the Chiefs but often go so far as to ridicule those who suggest as much.
Thing is, look carefully at that response I posted there above.
He mentions the gambling connection.
I'm not the only one who knows the official gambling associations mess with the integrity of the game.
It is exactly like it is with AI now. You know what we all do now! We are all questioning whether something amazing we see in a video or such is real. We are now always bound to ask, "Is that AI?"
And even worse, you do realize with these official gambling associations for all intents and purposes everyone out there on the field, including the officiating individuals, are working for bookies. They are. DraftKings and FanDuels and BetMGM and all the other online betting services are just gussied-up bookies. That's all they are.
And the more they have reign over any of our delightful sportsy pastimes, the more we have to wonder what is really going on with all this.
Let's just look at one play in particular, the one everyone who can put something of a take in the web somewhere is saying something about. It is the one at the very end of the game with the Chiefs on the Broncos one-yard-line in which Jaylen Moore turned his head just before the snap on what would have been the game-winning touchdown, taken away because of the false start call against him.
Know what? Looking at the replays shown all over the web, I think it was a false start, I do. As much as it hurts, I can accept that it was a false start. But you know? Here is the real issue:
I see offensive linemen make motions like he did ALL - THE - TIME, and it is rarely called. Sometimes with a very slight flinch, an O-lineman will get flagged for it. But what Jaylen Moore did was something that happens all the time: heads bob and turn, arms move in and out, and so forth. No calls are made, no big deal, let the game move forward.
Yet they must flag OUR guy, THIS time.
Yes, it does bring back those horrific memories of Dee Ford in the 2018 AFC title game. Yeah, he did it. He did! He was offsides. But how many times do we see it done and it is never called, yet WE get flagged for it NOW, THAT CALL literally costing us the game.
None of this stuff is ever called all the time because it would indeed just drag the game down. Every other down a flag for an O-lineman dropping spittle from his mouth? I get it, that's fine, don't call that kind of thing all the time.
This is the most loathsome thing about it.
The interpretation.
Flag them then but not this other time. Flag them for that but not this other more blatant infraction.
This game not only felt like the Dee Ford game, but it felt like just about every game the Chiefs played in the second half of the season last year. All that needed to happen to the Chiefs in almost every game they lost last year was for the refs to make two or three poor calls/non-calls against us keeping a close game favoring the opponent. That's how it works. Last year exasperation upon exasperation for Chiefs fans because of that, and everybody in the toadying blogosphere regularly shrug it all off.
There's more -- I was already pounding out more on this related to the whole gambling thing, but I stopped. Enough, I'm done. Maybe another time. It is extraordinarily discouraging, yet I'd again remind you if you haven't to read that piece by Debra Soh about the contemptible destruction that online gambling stuff brings. Even if it has nothing to do with Chiefs anything, the much too widely embraced organized gambling thing destroys lives, period.
And the Chiefs? The encouraging thing is -- one last thing that I keep in mind -- is maybe the Chiefs know what they need to do to step it up and will use the terrible ugliness of these two losses to really improve their preparation and be ready to win some good, solid, "putting the hammer down" games this season. Right now they are still 5-2 which is not a bad place to be at all.
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Oh but wait! Bonus feature!
I was bopping about the web but a scant 30 minutes after finishing this post, and found this. I absolutely have to add it.
There it is, that the beautiful, beautiful satirical website Babylon Bee would mention specifically the Chiefs tells you everything about what I've been saying for years now.
Delightful, absolutely delightful. Does actually reduce the agonizing sting of what happened yesterday just a tinch.
A profoundly thorough and quite poetic vindication is a very gratifying thing indeed.
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