[Chiefspants]

By the way - if you haven’t - give the 9ers broadcast a listen on gamepass. Greg Papa gives a HOF worthy broadcast but what really makes it stand out is Tim Ryan’s analysis. For a rival broadcast, it’s about as fair as it gets (some homerism, of course, but it’s minimal). And Tim and Greg genuinely give great calls to Chiefs highlights.

A good example was the DPI on Kelce. While Kurt Warner was lamenting a “bad NFL rule” on Westwood One that allows QB’s to take advantage of easy DPI’s (I think Warner was trying to balance Harlan’s obvious KC bias he had in the game lol). Ryan went into detail about how great of a play Kelce made and that he made a perfect, veteran move to engage contact and that it was, ultimately, on Moore for not turning his head around. Both Papa and Ryan had massive praise for Kelce throughout the game (a stark contrast from 9er fan homerism that since he’s not Kittle, he must suck).

They also suspected Damien’s sweeps right were all a ploy to gas/put hits on Sherman. Papa literally says “expect the Chiefs to try to go over the top on a tired Sherman sometime this quarter.” You could just tell that both of these guys have exceptional IQ’s of the game (and even seemed ahead of Shanny in some capacities).

They were pretty much ready to dare the Chiefs to stop their run up 20-10 (after Jimmy's high incompletion on 2nd and 9) They went on to not hide their criticism of Kyle's playcalling in the 4th quarter. At the beginning of the Niners drive up 20-17, Ryan said the worst possible thing they could do was stop the clock and at worst, immediately give the ball back to a warmed up Mahomes. They said this was the time to lean on their team's biggest strength and hottest player (Mostert) they were baffled that Shanny went to the air on 2nd and 3rd and 5 of that drive. Before the final drive, they pointed out that with 3 timeouts, nothing was preventing the Niners from running the ball and playing their normal offense down the field. They said the Niners shouldn't go for home runs and give the ball back to Mahomes with any time left, but get into their rhythm. Instead, they eventually turned it over on downs with 2 batted balls in that series. Hearing that kind of criticism from their own team's announcers was... a bit refreshing?

They were pretty bummed by the end, but that's to be expected. It pains me to admit, but their analysis also ran circles around Kendall’s from start to finish (and I like him more than most).