[jettio]

Originally Posted by Rain Man

The question came up in the first half of the excellent game on Sunday, so I did a little research. Here are the 10 Chiefs wins with the fewest offensive yards. The figure on the right is the Chiefs' offensive yards.

1971 @ DEN W 16-3 159
1985 SEA W 28-7 165
1990 RAI W 9-7 169
1986 DEN W 37-10 169
1986 @ PIT W 24-19 171
1974 @ HOU W 17-7 172
1997 NOR W 25-13 176
1995 HOU W 20-13 181
1991 @ SDG W 14-13 182
1992 @ SDG W 24-10 188

It's an interesting mix of the mid-80s teams with Art Still and the great defensive backs, and Marty's teams in generally his best years. What's interesting is that they scored 20+ points in half of these games, which implies that defense and special teams probably came through.

The Chiefs had 273 yards in Sunday night's game (albeit in 5 quarters). If it was a four-quarter game it would be the equivalent of 218 yards, though that's irrelevant. This is the 85th-lowest offensive yardage total in a Chiefs win, but only the third lowest this year in a Chiefs win. They had fewer in the wins against Jacksonville and Carolina.

If you want a positive thing to take away, here are the ten Chiefs wins with the most offensive yards. You see a lot of Priest Holmes and gang here. If you're curious about the 2009 game, that was Matt Cassel going off for 207 yards passing, aided by Jamaal Charles adding another 259 yards on the ground.

1966 @ DEN W 56-10 614
2004 IND W 45-35 590
1990 DET W 43-24 566
1962 BUF W 41-21 551
2001 @ WAS W 45-13 546
2004 ATL W 56-10 540
2005 CIN W 37-3 537
1961 HOU W 26-21 528
2009 @ DEN W 44-24 524
2003 DET W 45-17 521

The interesting thing here is that they scored 40+ points 8 times in 10. It's almost like there's a big correlation between getting lots of yards and scoring lots of points.

What are the Chiefs highest yardage games in which they lost?