The [American] Football Thread

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Okay, i've reviewed the film (ugh), read the analyses, but here's the nutshell:

The Chiefs were hosting the banged-up Indianapolis Colts at Arrowhead. The Colts were 2-2, having just lost to the Raiders, a pretty terrible team that the Chiefs crushed 3 weeks ago 28-10. Their star quarterback, Andrew Luck, retired at the start of the season, age 29, because he felt he was getting too injured to keep playing football. The Chiefs were undefeated, having won 3 road games to start the season, and Arrowhead is one of the toughest places in the league for visiting teams to play. Plus, in January, when the two teams last met (in the playoffs), the Chiefs absolutely crushed a stronger Colts team than this one. So, the Chiefs were 11-point favorites in Vegas.

And then they played their worst game of the Mahomes era.

The defense did okay, actually. They couldn't stop the run for shit, letting the Colts dominate time of possession, but that doesn't really matter as long as they could keep the Colts out of the endzone - which they did. Indianapolis only managed to score 19 points in an offense-heavy league. The Chiefs offense, on the other hand, has never failed to sore 26+ points in every game they started Mahomes, plus a bit before, for a record 24 or 25 games or something (the 2nd place team is only 19 games in a row). So the defense did its job.

But the offense, man...

1)First, the Chiefs' injuries are getting out of control. The Chiefs' #1 wide receiver, Tyreek Hill, has been out since Week 1 with a collarbone injury. Their #2 wide receiver, Sammy Watkins, went down early in the first quarter with a hamstring. Their starting left tackle, Eric Fisher, has been down since Week 1 with a groin injury, and his replacement, Cam Erving - well, we'll talk about him. Their starting running back is out. One of their starting linebackers is out. Their starting defensive end, Chris Jones, the best single player on the defense, went out this game. And, worst of all, Mahomes' ankle injury from earlier in the season flared up and he was playing on a gimpy leg. If Mahomes goes down, this team is done, finished.

2)Starting a whole bunch of rookies and backups at wide receiver meant it was a terrible time for TE Travis Kelce to have an off day, but he did, dropping a couple passes sent his way. The rooks couldn't get open against the man coverage the Colts were running, which is inexcusable when the Colts' secondary was as banged-up as it was. Then - I HAVE to find a video to share of this - they made baffling decisions after the catch, too. The Chiefs were THIS close to converting a 3rd and 28 if the receiver had just run in a straight line. Instead he ran a slanted route and the defender was able to reach him just short of the marker. Normally, Mahomes can stay in the pocket and scramble until someone gets open, but today he couldn't, because...

3)The O-Line play was horrible. The worst I'd ever seen. Mahomes had only been sacked once coming into this game. Today, he was sacked four times. Cam Erving was worse than useless, he was an actual detriment. He was beaten regularly. He missed blocks he was supposed to make. A few times he double-teamed a guy and let an unblocked defender blast past him to get Mahomes. And once he even stepped on Mahomes' bum ankle. Pat had no time at all to make throws, so he needed his receivers open. They couldn't do that. So he needed Kelce to make catches, and Kelce didn't. Finally, he couldn't scramble, because...

4)Mahomes' ankle injury really kept him from using the mobility that has made him so dangerous. He made a few highlight throws and still got over 300 yards, because Mahomes cannot be stopped, but the Colts kept him out of the endzone pretty effectively.

Final score: Colts 19, Chiefs 13. Most putrid offensive performance we've ever put up under Patrick.

Bottom line: the Chiefs are banged-up and starting more than half the team as backups. Worse, their best players are the ones getting hurt, not the role-players. Mahomes and Kelce are the only really elite players on the offense now, and with Pat hobbled and Kelce having an off day? We were hot garbage. And thus losing a game every analyst picked us to win, which 538 gave us a 90% chance of winning - our literal easiest game of the year on the schedule. Ooof.

In the end, it's not so bad. The Chiefs played sloppy against Baltimore and Detroit and needed a wake up call badly. Most of our missing pieces should return during the season. And, ultimately, the only game that matters is the AFCCG in January. We have to beat the Pats in Foxborough at some point this season, either when we meet them in December or on the road in the playoffs, and if we can't do that, nothing else matters. So there's no reason to panic about a lost season yet.

I just hope that this game lights a fire under the team to play better. They CAN be better, we know it. But I haven't seen it yet.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Another tough loss to the Texans Sunday. The Oline again just let Mahomes get totally pounded, while his receivers couldn't get open, and the defense this time was swiss cheese to the run. And they didn't get a single sack on Watson, who up til now had been behind the worst Oline in the league.

Then a short week and a game in Mile High - which the Chiefs won!

...but Mahomes is injured. Dislocated knee.

D:

[Dark Savant]

Mahomes' injury doesn't appear to be too bad, both from the latest report and just how it actually looked.

I've been shaking my head over the Packers-Lions officiating in the meantime.  Lions fans don't even seem to be mad because it's what they expect.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The Dolphins won and the Patriots lost.

no further comment necessary.

[darrelljs]

The Dolphins can't even tank right. They traded real talent for Rosen to a) evaluate him and see if he's the QB of the future and b) suck something awful and guarantee the first pick. Playing Fitzpatrick blows both goals.

Darrell

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I hate the Chiefs.

Play brilliantly when Mahomes is out. Get the MVP back and HE plays brilliantly, and the rest of the team falls back into, "Eh, Pat's got it." Same attitude that cost us against the Colts and Texans, and now we're down to 6-4 having lost 3 incredibly winnable games through our own blunders.

[T-hawk]

I believe that's called the Ewing Theory

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Currently, who are some possible Ewing Theory candidates?
All right, I'll bite. Remember, we're targeting stars on teams that haven't won anything, as well as teams that would probably be written off without the stars we're about to mention:


[*]Drew Bledsoe: Every Patriots fan is nodding right now.

[*]

Jesus Christ.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA- 

-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA -

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

okay, so, I know basically no one but me even follows American football here

hell, I don't even know if anyone but me is reading this thread 

but I don't care - I'm too hyped. 

So, let me try and explain for those of you who don't follow just what exactly the last two months have meant to me, as a fan of the Kansas City Chiefs. 

For 50 years, the Chiefs have been the most snakebitten franchise in the National Football League. Fifty years ago, in Super Bowl IV in 1970, they defeated the Minnesota Vikings for their first and (so far) only championship title. Two years later, the Chiefs missed their chance to return when they lost in double overtime to the Miami Dolphins, the longest playoff game in NFL history. They have not been that close since...until recently. 

Over those years, while the Chiefs were consistently a strong team in the regular season, they consistently lost in the playoffs. The single-elimination tournament never broke the Chiefs' way. They would make it every year, and then lose, usually disastrously. Let me quote Rany:

After 20 years of wandering the desert, the Chiefs emerged in 1990 as one of the better teams in the NFL, averaging more than 10 wins a season from 1990 to 1994 and reaching the AFC Championship game in 1993. But the 1995 team was our best yet — an NFL-best 13-3 record behind a defense that allowed barely 15 points a game. A Super Bowl was just two wins — at Arrowhead, where the Chiefs had not lost all year — away.

And then came the Lin Elliott game. In the annals of NFL history, has any kicker done a more thorough job of single-handedly derailing his team's championship hopes? ...

Elliott missed a 35-yarder. And a 39-yarder. And a 43-yarder, on the final meaningful play of the game, giving the Colts — the 9-7 Colts — a 10-7 win. This game remains the biggest playoff upset of the last 15 years; only the Vikings' loss to the Falcons in the 1998-99 NFC Championship Game comes close.

And thus began an uncanny stretch of what-ifs and could-have-beens for the Chiefs, a stretch which shows no sign of ending.

Two years later, the Chiefs once again went 13-3, and this time their kicker was the reliable Pete Stoyanovich, who drilled a 54-yarder as time expired to beat the Broncos in Week 12, which proved the difference between home-field advantage throughout the playoffs (for the Chiefs) and a wild-card berth (for the Broncos). When Denver came to town after waxing Jacksonville in the first round, Stoyanovich got his chance late in a scoreless first half and nailed a 34-yarder.

Except Greg Manusky got called for a phantom holding penalty — it has been nine years, and I still haven't found it on replays — so Stoyanovich had to try again from 44 yards. This time what he nailed was the left upright.

Stoyanovich would kick a field goal in the third quarter, but only after Tony Gonzalez scored a touchdown that was nullified when the side judge ruled his elbow landed out of bounds before both feet touched down. Replays showed he was in bounds, and he was clearly pushed by the defender to boot. The next season — at least in part because of the legacy of this play — the NFL voted to bring back instant replay.
So in the final minutes, instead of being tied at 14 or even down 14-13, the Chiefs were down 14-10 and had to reach the end zone. They moved the ball to the Broncos' 20 before a last-gasp fourth down toss fell incomplete. For the second time in three years, the Chiefs lost a home playoff game after going 8-0 at home during the season. The only thing that could make the situation worse was if the Broncos would go on to win the Super Bowl. Which they did.

This was the Chiefs' version of the Bucky Dent game, only if Bucky had hit the ball a foot foul and the umpires gave him the benefit of the doubt.

The loss to the Broncos heralded the onset of a dark era for the Chiefs, six years of coaching changes and player arrests and the death of Derrick Thomas, but no playoff appearances. The Chiefs should have made the playoffs in 1999, when a Seahawks loss to the Jets meant that the Chiefs needed only to beat the Raiders in their final game — at home, where they had beat Oakland 11 straight times — to win the division. The game was tied 38-38 when Stoyanovich lined up for a game-winning 45-yarder on the last play of regulation. Wide right. Kickoff specialist Jon Baker then sent the overtime kickoff out of bounds — his third OOB of the day. The Raiders won three plays later.

Three weeks later, Thomas would be paralyzed in a car accident (dying two weeks later from a pulmonary embolism). He was driving to the airport to see the Rams play in the NFC Championship game - a trip he could not have taken had the Chiefs still been playing.

The blue period finally lifted in 2003, as the Chiefs stormed out to a 9-0 start, Priest Holmes set the all-time rushing touchdown record with 27, and the Chiefs once again finished 13-3. Once again, they had a bye in the first-round and home-field advantage in their first playoff game. Once again, they had gone undefeated at home all season. Once again, they lost.
It's hard to blame bad luck for losing when your defense doesn't make a single stop the entire game, but what is forgotten about this game is that the Colts' defense was just as bad; neither team punted all day. The Colts won 38-31 because the Chiefs failed to score on only two possessions:
1) Holmes, who had fumbled once all year, lost the ball at the end of a 48-yard run early in the third quarter;
2) Tony Gonzalez's touchdown reception in the first quarter was called back by "a suspect offensive interference call" — the Associated Press's words, not mine.

Just for fun, after Gonzalez's nullified TD, the Chiefs called on Morton Anderson, one of the most prolific field goal kickers in NFL history, to hit one from 31 yards out. He shanked it.

You may be sensing a trend here.

Since that 2006 article, the Chiefs didn't get any better. They lost to the Colts in 2006, again. They lost to the Ravens in 2010. They went 4-12, twice, they went 2-14, once. A player killed himself in despair in the middle of the season, in front of the entire team at the practice facility. And I began to think that I would never see my Chiefs even play in the Super Bowl. 

In 2014, the Chiefs made the playoffs again. They took a 38-10 lead over the Indianapolis colts halfway through the third quarter. With just over 20 minutes left in the game, though, the Colts rallied. Bit by bit they chipped away at the Chiefs' massive deficit. The Chiefs tried to hold them off, but imploded completely. Everything broke the Colts' way as Chiefs players were injured, or fluke plays bounced to the Colts. For example, at one point the Colts were stopped short of the end zone - except their runner fumbled the ball. The Colts' quarterback recovered the fumble and lunged into the end zone to score anyway. The game ended, 45-44, Indy. 

In 2016, the Chiefs made the playoffs again. They faced the New England Patriots in Foxborough, the toughest team and place to play in all of the NFL. The Chiefs were trailing by two touchdowns with just over 5 minutes to play. They took absolute ages to drive down the field and score, handing the ball back to the Patriots down only one touchdown...with just over 2 minutes to go. The Chiefs did not touch the ball again.
In 2017, the Chiefs made it again. This time they held the Pittsburgh Steelers entirely out of the end zone, forcing them to settle for field goals. The Steelers kicked 6. They won, 18-16. 
In 2018, the Chiefs made it again. They led the Tennessee Titans 21-3 at half. In the second half, everything broke the Titans' way, again. The Chiefs forced a fumble - but the referees blew the play dead, saying that the runner's "forward progress" had been stopped (it had not. It remains one of the most baffling calls in the history of the NFL). The Titans scored a touchdown on that drive. Later, the Titans' quarterback pass was deflected. Instead of the ball falling to the ground, like tens of thousands of other passes in the NFL had throughout history, this one flew straight back into the quarterback's hands. He scored a touchdown and the Titans won, 22-21.

Finally, though, in the fall of 2018 the Chiefs' fortunes started to turn. They drafted a new quarterback, Patrick Mahomes - and he wound up being the best thing ever to happen to the franchise. Mahomes has physical talent like no one the league has ever seen. He does everything at the position perfectly, it seems - he could run. He could throw the ball further than anyone. He could throw it more accurately than anyone. He threw across his body, left-handed if he needed to, without even looking where he threw sometimes. Whatever needed to be done, Mahomes could do it. He was literally The Quarterback That Was Promised. Under Mahomes, the Chiefs stormed to the #1 seed in the league, with an explosive, unstoppable offense. They crushed the Colts once and for all at Arrowhead that January, ending the 25 year playoff curse. Then they played the new England Patriots in the title game, for the right to go to their first super bowl in 50 years. 

The AFC Championship last winter was an explosive, wild, back-and-forth clash of titans. The Patriots unbelievably held the Chiefs scoreless in the first half, taking a 14-0 lead at halftime. But in the second half, Mahomes had adjusted and the Chiefs came storming back. Tom Brady and his Patriots are the most successful dynasty in the history of American sports for a reason, though, and they answered. The lead changed multiple times in the second half. With the Chiefs leading 28-24 with just over 2 minutes to go, Tom Brady threw an interception- which shoudl ahve been the game. Except...Dee Ford had lined up off-sides. The refs threw a penalty. The play was run again - and this time, Brady was better. The Patriots scored instead, Mahomes led one last-game-tying drive in the final 40 secondds, and the game went to overtime, 31-31. 

In NFL overtime rules, the first team to score a touchdown wins. A coin flip determines who gets to try first. The Patriots won the coin flip. They scored a touchdown. The game ended, with Mahomes, who was voted the Most Valuable Player in the whole league, not having the opportunity to even touch the ball. The Patriots got to go to their 9th Super Bowl in 19 years. The Chiefs, meanwhile, saw their drought extend to 50 years. 

That's where things stood when I started this thread.

A video summary of the events of last season: