The Kansas City Chiefs played their first preseason game on Saturday and while the score doesn’t matter, there are several things that we did learn.
The Kansas City Chiefs played their first football game against another team in over six months on Saturday. While the Chiefs officially lost the game against the Chicago Bears, 19-14, the end result isn’t what matters. First and foremost, it was good to see our favorite team play football again. You can only have hypothetical offseason debates for so long. Now we have actual gameplay to discuss and while the final outcome doesn’t mean anything, there were several important takeaways from this first preseason game.
If you’re looking for a player-by-player, stock-up/stock-down piece, that’s not what this piece is going to be today (with maybe one exception). Single-player performances can vary from game to game, but there are some bigger picture takeaways about this team that this first preseason game shed a light on. So while I’ll mention some players, what I really want to focus on are three big-picture reasons why this first preseason game has me feeling optimistic about the 2022 Chiefs.
Before I jump into the first important takeaway, I would like to take a quick moment to vent about how inexcusably awful the Soldier Field playing surface is. This was the FIRST PRESEASON GAME of the year. In other words, this is when the field should look its best. If it’s that bad now, what is it going to look like 10 weeks into the season? It was so bad that after the game the NFL Player’s Association’s President, JC Tretter, sent out the following tweet:
The NFL said that this field met minimum testing standards. We clearly need to re-evaluate what is an acceptable surface for players to compete on. We need new testing metrics looking at the performance and safety of every field. The NFL can and should do better. pic.twitter.com/Vh1NDgLQBk
— JC Tretter (@JCTretter) August 13, 2022
Blake Bell’s non-contact injury (which I’ll touch on later) was likely a direct result of this awful playing surface. It is absolutely inexcusable that a league that brings in an endless stream of revenue like the NFL has a playing surface that terrible. I’m glad the Chiefs don’t have to play there again this season, but I feel bad for all the teams that do.
Rant over, now onto the important takeaways for the Chiefs.