The Race For Luck: Still On

It’s time for us to revisit some discussions we’ve had in the not-so-distant past about the nature of this Kansas City Chiefs team.  I’ll make this short and sweet.

First, the Chiefs competing with the Chargers was totally predictable:

"1.  [The Chargers] just lost their Super Bowl of September against the Patriots.2.  The law of averages favors the Chiefs, two times over.3.  The emotional advantage is totally on KC’s side.4.  Todd Haley’s Chiefs compete after tough road losses.5.  Teams that aren’t total disaster cases like the Raiders tend to tense up and play up and beyond their best when they lose their franchise player(s).6.  The Chiefs aren’t as bad as everybody (including themselves) are making them out to be."

These were all clear trends that favored the Chiefs to compete outright for a win yesterday, even if they didn’t escape with the victory.  But the clear point we were trying to make: that this team really is as bad as the first couple of games made us look, and that a statistically-probable close game with the Chargers would not change that.

That’s important to keep in mind.  Because we’ve also said that it will be easy to forget how bad this team is once it strings a couple of competent performances together:

"The Chiefs are not going to get drilled all season long. They’re going to lose some heartbreakers, they’re going to be outplayed, they’re going to lose more guys to injury, and they’re going to win a handful of games (I’m guessing four) that they have no business winning."

The Chiefs have two games coming up in Weeks 4 and 5 against two opponents (the Vikings and the Colts) who are also Bottom 5 teams (Vikings are more Bottom 8, but the point stands).  The Chiefs will look sane and composed and competitive, and probably win at least one of these two games.

But please, please remember September.  Don’t forget August.  HC Todd Haley and QB Matt Cassel are praying that you do.

If you want this team to hoist the Lombardi Trophy in your lifetime, however, you must stay true to the facts, and ignore the myriad of smokescreens that comes with the territory of doing so in the world of the NFL.