ChiefsPlanet - Chiefs Ten Things About Today's Game: Week 6 KC 13 PIT 19

Ten Things About Today’s Game: Week 6: KC 13 PIT 19

10. Well, that wasn’t so good, was it? I’ll start with the obvious that nobody except maybe that drooling tool Bob Fescoe thought this team would seriously go 16-0. I felt a bitter disappointment that the Chiefs have not shown an ability to play AFC North football. When they play an AFC North team like the Steelers, Bengals or Ravens, all those teams seem to line up and just smack the Chiefs in the mouth. They just come out and bitch slap the Chiefs. I said during the week that if I were Haley, I’d run Bell until the Chiefs proved they could stop him. Guess what? Not much has changed from last January. We still can’t stop Bell. Biggest change from last January was this time, we gave up a couple TDs instead of six field goals. Pittsburgh only scored four times -and one of those was a gift safety- but the score was not a true indication of what this game really was. Pittsburgh kicked our ass. They played four quarters. KC played a quarter and a half. Only a few guys showed up to play today. We’ll talk about the no-shows on both sides of the ball.

9. Let’s start with the defense this week. They only gave up three scores: One three yard TD to Bell, one bomb on a totally botched pass defense to Brown, and a 24 yard field goal. The offense gave up a safety. If I were to tell you the defense would give up less than 20 points to Pittsburgh at home, you’d think with this years offensive production that would be a win. Problem was, KC was catatonic for literally the entire first half and for a good portion of the third quarter. The first half was arguably the worst half of football at Arrowhead during the Andy Reid era. It was Herm pathetic. It was Romeo pathetic. It was —dare I say- Frank Gansz pathetic. At the half KC had 6 yards of total offense. We could have QB sneaked every Goddamn play in the first half and beat that output. Steelers had 232 yards of offense. Bell had already run for more than 100 yards. KC had one first down….One. At home. Erving had twice that many offsides penalties in the first half alone. He must still think he’s playing for Cleveland. You simply can’t disappear for an entire freaking HALF against a smash mouth team and expect to win. It was truly an act of God that we were only down 12-3 at halftime. We actually had the lead at the end of the first quarter 3-2, which was even stranger.

8. Alex has some responsibility for today, but he wasn’t the worst guy on the field. O-Line gave him little or no time to pass, and when Alex did have time, he either missed guys streaking wide open, AGAIN, like the playoff game, or he was off-target. Pittsburgh is a cheap shot team, and I’m just relieved he got through the game relatively unscathed. He got whacked in his passing arm once in the first half, but shook that off. Look at how Green Bay and Tampa Bay’s season has been drastically altered with QB injuries today. I kind of had a feeling Alex was going to have a rough day when the snap for the safety went like six feet over his head. Alex was sacked three times and completed 56% of his passes for 246 yards, one TD and no picks. That’s passable if you have a ground game. Problem is, Andy only ran the ball 15 times the whole freakin’ game and the Steelers were all over Hunt. Their Defensive Line pushed our line around all day and that made Andy abandon the run in the second half. Can’t win without balance, can't win without a ground game.

7. Another thing I say for Alex is that he went into the game without his number two and number three wide outs. Conley out for the year, Wilson out for the week. Kemp didn’t see much action, and Robinson didn’t seem to be on the same page for several routes. Then West got concussed and Kelce was not a factor. He had one decent catch and that was it. Tyreek Hill did little to help. He’s playing on a tweaked ankle, and he got smacked in the head on his last punt return, so we may lose him Thursday vs. the Raiders in the Concussion protocol. With all that going on, Alex was down to Kareem Hunt shovel passes, DAT, Harris and Robinson as his receiving corps.

6. Peters forced the only turnover with a pick on a poorly thrown ball by Rapistburger. He only had three tackles, and he got steamrolled by Bell on several runs. I’m seeing a disturbing trend with our defensive backs. All the corners suck at tackling or just arm tackle and pull at the ball instead of bringing the ball carrier down. Sorensen and Parker still tackle reliably. But none of our corners can come up and put down a runner. Philip Gaines is awful. He totally mis-played that TD to Brown. Ball bounced off his hands. Ball bounced off his head. At worst it should have been picked, at best it may have been a pick six. Instead it’s a how do you do TD for Brown. That was his biggest catch in a 155 yard receiving game. He leads the league in targets. If you had that guy, why wouldn’t you throw him the ball twice an much as any other receiver?

5. Defense did not play well at all. Dee Ford gets one sack early, then the entire pass rush disappears. Chris Jones did nothing. Alan Bailey did nothing. Bennie Logan, nothing. Houston, nothing. DJ, nothing. Sorenson nothing. Ben had a clean pocket most of the day and passed Pittsburgh out of third and long situations multiple times. It was frustrating that when the Chiefs actually did slow down the run, they couldn’t get a pass rush to get Ben off the field. TOP was 37 to 23 Pittsburgh, and that’s because they had the ball for most of the first half.

4. I know you guys probably had a lot of discussion about Andy going for the TD instead of the field goal. Well, that’s the hard thing about that call. It was 4th and 2, and the offense has been excellent in the red zone thus far. So, no guts, no glory. The offense had shown so little up to that point, that I think being at home, he just decided to roll the dice, and he lost. Then, the defense let Ben bomb his way out of the hole, so you lose the advantage of having the Steelers on their own two yard line. It was just one of those days where the ball didn’t bounce our way. Steelers had all the luck, and had a running game we couldn’t stop. Still, KC had the ball with two minutes at mid field and had their chance. Alex just didn’t have a fifth gear this week. Tyreek being out after being concussed on the punt return took away our biggest deep threat. If he would have been healthy and able to line up, we might have been able to hit him deep for the winning TD. Not to be. He didn’t even see the field in the final series. We had Robinson instead. Again, bad luck at a critical time.

3. Pittsburgh is a team we just don’t match up well against. Rapistburger is now 7-1 career against KC. That stat really hurts. I was really hoping we’d get some payback on his ass, like the way we kicked Five Heaad down the stairs his last game against us in Denver. Only getting to him once is on Bob Sutton. Every team in the league is going to run right at Dee Ford or Zombo the rest of the year. Until the Chiefs can show any ability to stop it, that’s the simple formula to win. That’s what Fournette and the Jags did to the Steelers last week; ran them to death, and put Ben in a position to have to throw the ball. They got pressure on him, and we did not.

2. If we have to find silver linings, our kicking game is solid. Buttkicker hit both his FG attempts and had great kickoffs, and Colquitt had his best day of the season. Penalties were fairly even, KC with 7, Pittsburgh with 6. Akeem Hunt played OK. Terrance Mitchell led the defense with six tackles. Just about everybody else had a bad to terrible day. That’s just the truth of it.

1. If in August you would have been told KC would start the year 5-1, you’d probably figure the only loss would be against the Pats to open the season. The Fade got beat by Phyllis today (thanks Phyllis) and at the time of this writing Donks are down 17-3 to the Giants at the half. So losing today may not be so bad. Worried about the short week going into Oakland and worried about our injuries although it could have been worse (again, see Green Bay, see Tampa Bay). Hopefully the entire state of California will not be on fire when we arrive on Thursday, KC will be able to breathe without a painter's mask, and can get back on the winning track. I just hope Andy and Sutton can figure out a way to stop a sweep, or we may be in for deja vu all over again come playoff time in January.