Chiefs Chronicles: NFL Week 16
Watching Chiefs Games Has Been Torture, Things That Can Happen in Seven Seconds, KC's Unfortunate Draft Habit or Maybe It's Sabotage, More GIFs/Videos, plus Other Stray Thoughts
These are getting hard to write. I may have said that in a previous post (I don’t remember), but it gets more true after each disastrous loss.
Watching the game against the Raiders brought out that helpless feeling that longtime members of Chiefs Kingdom know all too well from the pre-Andy Reid days. Even when the offense got it together for that one beautiful drive against Vegas (capped off by the sweet Isiah Pacheco Wildcat TD), every Chiefs fan was thinking, “That was great! Now what are they going to do to blow it and lose the game?” It felt like we were watching Thanos first gather and then use the Infinity Stones- inevitable.
At this point, Chiefs Kingdom’s only option is to support the team completely. The Chiefs are what they are for the moment and the season isn’t over yet. A great Defense, competent Special Teams, and an Offense that can (on any given Sunday- or whichever weird day of the week they play on) either win or lose the game for them. It’s a coin flip every week. They may clean it up a bit, but big changes aren’t going to happen until the offseason/next year. It’s frustrating, but booing and getting bent out of shape (which may feel good in the moment) isn’t helping anyone.
And, who knows? The game last week was so bad that they may come out focused and angry, destroying all teams in their path on their way to another Super Bowl. The Defense is certainly good enough to more than hold up their end of the bargain. If the offense (they deserve the lower-case “o” at the moment) can just become reliable (doesn’t need to be flashy AKA sloppy and risky) and limit their mistakes, the Chiefs will be good enough to make some noise in the playoffs. Then we can go back to seeing this version of Patrick and Travis…
The Defense was fantastic on Monday. Zero completions and passing yards allowed from the second quarter until the final whistle. It was seven seconds of terrible offense that gave the Raiders the game on Sunday.
Seven seconds.
In case you forgot what happened, here are those seven horrible seconds:
After the initial post-game depression subsided (temporarily), I started thinking about things that can happen in seven seconds or less. Here’s what I came up with:
An almost successful bull ride- You got up the nerve to sit on the back of an angry 2200 lb. bull and managed to avoid being crushed in the chute and/or peeled off its back when the gate opened. You kept your balance as the bull jumped and twisted trying to throw you off, probably so it could gore or step on you. At the seven-second mark, you lose your focus (due to your fear of being surrounded by clowns- why are there so many?!?) and fall to the arena floor. Good job, you lost. Not like this guy:
Food to travel from your mouth to your stomach- It’s crazy to think that a mouthful of delicious Kansas City BBQ can go from mouth to stomach in the same amount of time it took for the Chiefs to lose the game.
I wish I was in KC right now- Credit: Gary Davis The Sun produces 2,660,000,000,000 terajoules of energy- Wow! From a-z-animals.com: “All combined, the sun produces 380,000,000,000 terajoules of energy each second. One terajoule is equivalent to 1,000,000,000 joules. 3,600 joules are equivalent to one Watt Hour, and, to offer some perspective, most cell phones hold about 5 Watt Hours of charge.
If you add up the amount of energy used by all humans on the planet each year, we come to around 580,000,000 terajoules. The largest-ever nuclear bomb produced contained about 0.00034% of that energy, blowing out at around 200,000 terajoules.
So, the largest nuclear bomb that humans have ever deployed is an infinitesimal 0.00000053% of the amount of energy that the sun produces each and every second. This is a useful example, too, because nuclear bombs and the sun share the same method of producing energy.”
Fascinating stuff!
As you can see, a lot can happen in seven seconds. Not sure where this was going, but there it is. No more time for this section.
“Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action”
―Ian Fleming, Goldfinger
I had an idea that the Chiefs have passed on good receivers (and other pass catchers) in past drafts, but I couldn’t remember all of them, so I decided to do some digging. Going back to Patrick Mahomes’ rookie season (2017), the Chiefs have made some pretty poor draft decisions at the WR position. You say you want proof? Here you go:
2017 NFL Draft- Round 2- Pick 59: Chiefs select DE Tanoh Kpassagnon
Still Available: WRs Cooper Kupp, JuJu Smith-Schuster & Chris Godwin/RB Alvin Kamara
2018 NFL Draft- Round 2- Pick 46: Chiefs select DE Breeland Speaks
Still Available: WRs Christian Kirk & DJ Chark/TEs Dallas Goedert & Mark Andrews
2019 NFL Draft- Round 2- Pick 56: Chiefs select WR Mecole Hardman
Still Available: WRs DK Metcalf, Diontae Johnson, and Terry McLaurin/RB Tony Pollard
2020 NFL Draft- Round 1- Pick 32: Chiefs select RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire
Still Available: WR Tee Higgins/RB Jonathon Taylor
2021 NFL Draft- (The Chiefs did well early in the draft this year) Round 2- Pick 58: LB Nick Bolton & Pick 63 C Creed Humphrey
They took DE Joshua Kaindoh at the end of the 4th (he made no impact and is no longer with the team) & WR Cornell Powell near the end of the 5th Round (he was unable to make the team). No WRs of note were drafted after either of them. Between those two, the Chiefs did pick TE Noah Gray (5th Round- Pick 162) who has been a decent TE2.
2022 NFL Draft- Round 2- Pick 54: Chiefs select WR Skyy Moore
Still Available: WRs Romeo Doubs, Khalil Shakir/RBs James Cook, Rachaad White, Brian Robinson Jr. (only 9 fewer catches than Skyy), Dameon Pierce, Tyler Allgeier (I was surprised Andy didn’t draft the BYU RB), Jerome Ford, & Kyren Williams (a lot of decent RBs)/TEs Trey McBride, Cade Otton, Jake Ferguson, Daniel Bellinger, Isaiah Likely, & Chigoziem Okonkwo (This was a deep TE class!)
The Chiefs did get the RB steal of the draft with Chiefs Kingdom’s favorite “angry at the ground” runner, Isiah Pacheco.
After looking at proof of the Chiefs WR misses in numerous drafts (I know that hindsight is 20/20), I’m wondering who they have that scouts WRs and if that person is secretly a Raiders (or any/every other AFC team) fan. Five of the last six drafts is a pretty bad track record- unless you’re trying to make bad picks. Like Mr. Fleming said at the top, “Three times is enemy action.” Just sayin’.
Alright, that’s all I’ve got. For anyone who made it this far, thank you for reading. Chiefs and Bengals tomorrow. Is it ok to be cautiously optimistic? GO CHIEFS!!!
What a terrible 7 seconds 😒