The Kansas City Chiefs: Frustratingly Awesome
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before….
The Kansas City Chiefs walk onto a field against an inferior opponent, play ugly, make their fans pace the floor and throw things at their T.V. and then find a way to pull the game out and extend their winning streak.
The story of the 2015 Kansas City Chiefs is an unbelievable one. Literally, if someone told you that they would be 1-5 and then reel off nine straight wins and clinch a playoff birth with a game still left to play no one would believe it. If you threw in that along the way the Chiefs would struggle and play down to the level of a struggling team multiple times it makes what they have done this season all the more surreal. It’s easy to criticize this team despite their dramatic turn around in the win/loss column. Just this past weekend they allowed a bad Cleveland Browns team to completely dominate them in the second half in Arrowhead, in a game that had playoff implications. It would be easy for fans to say that this team still isn’t among the elite in the AFC despite their win streak because of how they’ve played in some of these games. But in the words of immortal Lee Corso….
“Not so fast my friends!”
Yes, the Chiefs may have had some games during their nine game win streak that have been really hard to watch. The thing is, every other good team in the AFC this season has had those same ugly games and lost. Don’t believe me? Take a look for yourselves. Since the Chiefs started their run the following has happened to the other AFC playoff contenders:
The New England Patriots lost a home game to the 6-9 Philadelphia Eagles and may have given a game away this week when they couldn’t get the coin toss call in overtime correct.
The New York Jets lost a home game to a 7-8 Buffalo Bills team that KC was able to beat AND lost a game in Houston to a Texans team that was playing TJ Yates at quarterback.
The Cincinnati Bengals also lost a home game to the Houston Texans and that was before Andy Dalton got injured.
The Pittsburgh Steelers lost this past weekend to a then 4-10 Baltimore Ravens team (that KC had just beat on the road) despite the fact that Pittsburgh’s playoff lives were riding on that game.
The Denver Broncos lost a home game to the 7-8 Oakland Raiders and also couldn’t put away a struggling 7-8 Indianapolis Colts team.
It’s not just the AFC either, as some of the best teams in the NFC have lost games everyone thought they would win as well.
The 10-4 Green Bay Packers have lost home games to both the Detroit Lions and Chicago Bears.
Just this past weekend the 14-0 Carolina Panthers saw their dreams of a perfect season go up in smoke as they lost to a then 7-7 Atlanta Falcons team that they had beaten 38-0 just two weeks prior.
In today’s NFL there are no safe games. Almost every team in the NFL loses games that they should have won on paper. The good teams in the NFL are the ones that can find ways to win even when they don’t have their “A Game”. By those standards there is simply no denying that Kansas City is a good football team. Let’s not forget that the Chiefs have also put the smack down on some teams as well. Five of their nine wins during the streak have been by 14 points or more and two of them by 30+ points. Yes, they need to clean some things up. Yes, they need to be more consistent. Yes, they need to get Tamba Hali and Justin Houston back on the field. Yes, Andy Reid needs to stop calling screen passes. The point is, every team in the AFC can make a list like that of their own. The Chiefs are now locked into a playoff spot and with this field in the AFC anything is possible.
The Chiefs have proved a lot of people wrong during this win streak, myself included. At 1-4 I wrote a piece asking “Is it time to root for the Chiefs to lose?” where I wondered out loud if it would be better for the Chiefs to keep losing so they would make drastic changes since the playoffs were now out of reach. The next week when they hit 1-5 I wrote a piece entitled “Stop The Insanity” where I hammered the Chiefs for not making drastic changes to shake things up. I insisted that doing the same things over and over and expecting different results was the definition of insanity. Apparently there is a very good reason that John Dorsey and Andy Reid are running a NFL football team and I am not. Reid’s calm under pressure and belief in his system and players is the reason the team kept the faith and that belief has now been rewarded with a playoff birth.
The entire Chiefs organization from the players all the way up to the front office deserve to be commended for their perseverance and resolve when everyone else on the planet was telling them that they were terrible and the season was already over.
I won’t be shocked if the Chiefs have another ugly game next week at home against the Raiders. In fact, I’m expecting it. That doesn’t mean that this team can’t break the playoff losing streak and make a run in the AFC. I wrote this team off earlier this season and I’m not making that mistake again. The Kansas City Chiefs have never stopped believing in themselves and I for one am going to follow their lead and see what happens.
As always, thanks for reading and GO CHIEFS!!!!!!!