Chiefs vs Chargers: Making sense of the madness!

What Went Wrong Early

Making a list of everything that went wrong in the first two or three quarters of Sunday’s game is a daunting task, but here goes.

Bad pass blocking, especially on the interior against stunts
Bad handling of interior pressure by Alex Smith
Bad offensive play calling that didn’t consistently get the ball in the hands of KC’s best players
Bad all around run defense
Bad angles and gap discipline by both Derrick Johnson and Justin March
Bad tackling by the KC secondary after backs (or receivers) got past the front seven
Zero outside pass rush
Poor pass coverage by the Chiefs cornerbacks
Poor all around effort and execution

You could probably add some more to that list but I think those nine are a pretty good summary of what went wrong early that lead to that 24-3 lead for the Chargers. It was about as bad of football as I’ve seen Kansas City play. I’m talking Tyler Palko quarterbacked kind of bad. I’m talking 2-14 season and fans are wearing black to Arrowhead kind of bad. If you’re reading a Chiefs blog like this then you know what I’m talking about. We’ve seen some REALLY terrible football played here in Kansas City and that first half was as bad or worse than anything I’ve seen before.

I’ve already established that ultimately what matters from this game is that they overcame that horrible start and won and I’ll address how they did that in a minute. Before that happens I do think its worth taking a minute to stop and discuss how many of those early problems we should be worried about popping back up throughout the season? Was this just a case of everything going wrong early and once they snapped out of it those issues are gone forever? I wish I could say that, but I do have some concerns going forward.

Next: What the hell happened?