It’s been a long offseason of waving goodbye to free agents and arguing about rookie potential, but in two weeks the real deal starts up again as Chiefs training camp kicks off in St. Joe.
This means a few things. Most importantly, it means Chiefs players doing things in pads. It means preseason games that, while they generally fall short of what one might consider “a game,” certainly fit the description of “football.” It means Hard Knocks, the best sports documentary series on the planet.
But, alas, all of that is still 13 days away, so here are 10 things to feed your football jonesing until then.
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10.) Read (or re-read) this profile on Tony Gonzalez from MMQB last year. Like I said before, I love Hard Knocks, but my one knock on it (see what I did there?) is that they waited to go to Atlanta until after my favorite player of all time retired from the team. Which brings me to #9 …
9.) Watch the 2007 season of Hard Knocks that focused on the Chiefs. There are a lot of things that are remarkable about that particular season of the show. First, it is the only one not narrated by Liev Schreiber. Instead, that season was narrated by native Kansan and Chiefs fan Paul Rudd. It also makes for a crazy time capsule back to the days when the major story lines were: the QB battle between Damon Huard and Brodie Croyle, RB Larry Johnson holding out and RB Priest Holmes trying to return to the league after major injury, and the development of D-linemen Tank Tyler and Turk McBride. Basically, it chronicles the lead-up to disaster.
8.) Revisit Riggle’s Picks, the weekly FOX preview videos performed by KC native Rob Riggle. They’re all great, but I particularly like the Riggle’s Picks videos from the 2012 season, because, as a Chiefs fan, Riggle provided self-deprecating, but cathartic gallows comedy throughout that awful, awful season.
7.) Watch RB Jamaal Charles’ spot on being named the 8th best player in the NFL as a part of the NFL’s Top 100. Low, yes. But it gives him some room to keep climbing this year.