Well, that was fun. There are only a handful of games in the past decade or so that conjured up the level of dog-hears-doorbell confused outrage that Sunday's 186-0 loss to the Seahawks just smacked us with. It was so bad that you're not even going to fact-check the final score or notice that I blew it out of proportion by 930%. Because the way it felt was much worse than what it actually was, and the thoughts and fears that it stirred up right in the heart of spooky season are unsettling, to say the least.
There was a lot of bad. So much bad that it's hard to even spell the word gud right now. But let's dig deep here. If I took my normal approach to these overreactions this week, I would just be driving home the points of thousands of the charred masses in Chiefs Kingdom who have spent the last ~24-36 hours engulfed in the flames of football rage. How did we let it get to this point?! This team is so broken!
Maybe, maybe not. This was a bad game, but let's try to peek into the bright side of things for just a moment. I originally planned to go scorched earth on all of the things you've all been going scorched earth on for the past two days, but after some consideration and sound advice, I decided it best to remind Chiefs fans that it's always, in fact, darkest before the dawn. Chiefs Kingdom, you need some positive spin. And I've got just what the doctor ordered.
1. No one remaining on the Chiefs' schedule is the defending Super Bowl champs at home in primetime with their backs against the wall
Rarely is a headline nearly a paragraph, but if you've read my work, then you know I'm the guy to make that anomaly a reality. Did I leave much to the imagination here? No. Did I need to? Also no.
Seattle came into this game 3-3, sure, but was still silently dominant. They had not lost a game yet by more than 3 points, dropping a game to the Niners by 3 and losing at Denver by 3. They also lost to the Commanders in Washington by 2 points, but that seems like a misprint that we'll have to have the league office and Kash Patel look into. Surely it will get solved. But for God's sake, this team hasn't allowed a passer to cross the 180-yard threshold yet this season. Doing that in the first seven consecutive games of a season hasn't happened in 43 years.
This defense is (stupidly) known as "The Dark Side" for a reason. And even though it ruins a Pink Floyd album title for me temporarily, it's a phenomenal reminder that what the Chiefs ran into last night was not unexpected. It was a high-level, well-coached group of dudes operating in an elevated adrenaline scenario with more at stake for their season-long goals with a loss than Kansas City had. Sometimes those scenarios are going to trip you up when you're in KC's position. Luckily, no one else on the schedule has that combination of talent, setting, and scenario blatantly pointing towards a colossal ass-whooping for the Chiefs.
2. The Chiefs played their worst possible game, and yet a win was still within reach late
I don't need to drown you in the stats you've already pity-soaked yourselves in from this game. It sucked, the Chiefs' offense sucked, and the Chiefs' defense couldn't get off the field on third down. I know it never really felt close, or like the Chiefs had a snowball's chance in hell of doing anything all night long, but the reality is they actually were still in this game until garbage time.
KC had its longest drive of the night, one that ended in another Harrison Butker missed field goal with about 8 and a half minutes to go in the fourth quarter. Put yourself in an alternate universe for a second. If Butker connects on that field goal, suddenly we've got a 13-6 game with nearly 9 minutes to play. All 3 timeouts for Kansas City. Zero momentum, but still! Crazier things have happened than Patrick Mahomes finding a way to win a game like that, right?
Maybe. Shortly after we all started cursing Butker and Dave Toub started catching strays again, Emmanuel Wilson broke off a 21-yard touchdown run that put the Seahawks up 20-3. And, to be frank, 20 points feels like an amount that last night's Chiefs' offense would have trouble getting to in 5 lifetimes. But hey, for a unit that was on the field for about 97 of 60 possible minutes on Sunday night, the Chiefs' defense did still technically bend more than it broke for most of the night. Let's count our small victories here.
3. Chris Jones is taking the LeBron James approach, and Harrison Butker is a golfer
You're going to have to track my logic here and abandon any sense of reason you may have that relates to career length, player age, and athletic decline. Those things, fortunately, do not matter in the world I'm about to illustrate for you.
The NBA has a "load management" problem at the moment. Star players are taking games off while seemingly healthy in order to make sure they're ready for playoff runs. This practice was first pioneered by "The King" himself, LeBron the Bold and Brave. While some of us (myself and Skip Bayless) may have been critical of LeBron all these years for milking his PTO allowance in our faces, just take a look at how he's lauded now. Wow, he's 41 years old and he can still jump! He's still 6'8"! Incredible. Maybe Chris Jones is just doing the same thing?
Look, it hasn't appeared that Jones has given top effort maybe at all this season. I would have to go back and look at the All-22, but I don't recall any eye-popping CEO of Sack Nation moments just yet. But you don't win Lombardis in October. And you don't fix your swing without messing with your grip a little. Which brings me to my next point.
Harrison Butker is a golfer. He enjoys the game, I think, anyway. When I crafted this analogy mentally, I was confident that I would be able to find his handicap index online, point towards the fact that he's likely tinkered with his golf swing numerous times to get there, and link it to his current kicking struggles. All I could actually find was a photo of him with Kevin Sorbo at a charity golf event that he spoke at. Evidence is evidence. Butker golfs.
If you've ever tried to change your swing on the golf course, you know every little detail feels uncomfortable. You can either ride with the discomfort and fix your swing, or you can just learn to play the sport the wrong way. I did the latter, but a man of conviction like Harrison Butker would almost certainly always choose the former. We're watching swing tinkering in real time right now with Butker's right leg. Is he broken? Temporarily. Will he end up coming back out and striping the ball right down the middle with the beautiful draw we've grown accustomed to over the last decade?
God, I hope so. Otherwise, this entire portion of the blog is going to be null and void, which it may be anyway if the Chiefs elect to bring in another kicker as competition this week and shelf Butker.
4. The Chiefs are rare loyalists in a world consumed by instant gratification
Hyperbolic discounting is a type of cognitive bias that points folks towards preferring smaller, more immediate rewards over ones that take more time to accrue. If someone offered you $100 today or $5 a week for the entire year, most would take the $100 now. Who knows if this mystery ATM person proposing hypothetical financial gain will even be around next week? It's also a concept that has infiltrated NFL fandom and media coverage in epidemic fashion.
We're all prisoners of the moment, living in a week-to-week, mental-health-defining hellscape where our perceptions of and appreciation for our favorite teams are defined more by what they did for three hours on the most recent day they played than by their entire body of work for a given season or tenure of a coaching staff. Say what you will about what happened on Sunday. You have the right to be upset about an outcome that poor, but don't discount what got the Chiefs here.
It's not stagnation. It's not the mindset of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." It's not nepotism or favoritism or being stuck in the mud. It's loyalty! And that's a positive thing! In a society where so many people are arrested by the "what have you done for me lately?" mentality, the front office and coaching staff of the Chiefs have zigged. What a refreshing thing.
Andy Reid may have seen the offensive trends in the NFL move towards downfield passing concepts with big wideouts who can make contested catches. But when society tells you to get big, strong, fast pass catchers who can catch with their hands and run routes, sometimes you have to be loyal and true to yourself and keep drafting small, gadgety players who can run only crossing routes and trap the ball on their bodies.
When the world tells you athletic linebackers are the way of the future, you have to remind them that Ben Niemann and Dan Sorensen had good games against Houston and Tennessee in the 2019 playoffs and put guys like Jack Cochrane in games for meaningful snaps in 2026. If Skyy Moore isn't working out as a punt returner, you find a guy named Nikko who is the same player but has tattoos and wears a different jersey number. Because if you don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything.
In all reality, Kansas City is a loyal organization. That type of commitment to process and personnel comes with its fair share of bad to go along with the good. We are witnessing some of the bad unfold before our eyes at the moment, but the good will find its way back to us. It just might take some time and some cold calling from Brett Veach to create a little roster spark to make it happen.
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