Ten Things About Today's Game

[gblowfish]

Ten Things About Today's Game:

10. Today we got our asses handed to us by our biggest rival. KC may have thought they were simply unbeatable at home. Today proved that you can't just show up and mail it in, even at Arrowhead. There was a little bit of good, a lot of bad, and a huge heaping helping of ugly in silver and black.

9. First, the good: We're going to the playoffs. That's good, that's very good indeed. Think about what a hollow victory this was today for Oakland. They go undefeated in the division, and don't make the playoffs. That's a super duper badge of futility. What was the difference? The difference was, KC beat Arizona, San Francisco, Jacksonville and Tennessee, and the Raiders didn't. Curiously, it seems except for AFC West teams, St. Louis and Seattle were the only teams they managed to beat this year. Oakland didn't even finish with a winning record. They're 8-8. And although it's mildly humorous that they kicked our ass when it didn't really matter, Coach Haley better figure out a way to beat the Raiders soon or fans will not be so forgiving in future years.

8. More Good: Tamba Hali had 2.5 sacks today - 14.5 for the year. He got screwed not getting picked for the Pro Bowl. It wouldn't surprise me if he didn't get added later as an alternate if somebody drops out. Eric Berry led the team with seven tackles, as he continues to play strong -mostly- on run support. (Berry will also appear later in the bad news with the rest of the defense.) Eric Dorsey played pretty well today, and most of the Raiders running plays were away from his side. Succop was perfect on field goal attempts. Jackie Battle had almost as much offensive production as Thomas Jones. Tyler Palko had the best QB rating (95.1) of all QBs to play today on either side. OK...now I'm stretching for good things.

7. Bad Things: Where to begin? Offense? Defense? Special Teams? There was plenty to go around. Offense looked like the KC we saw in Pre-Season. Cassel ran for his life most of the day. Passes were dropped. Offensive line couldn't run block OR pass protect. KC has less than 60 yards of total offense at halftime. You can't just sleepwalk through an entire half of an NFL game and expect to win. Fat Albert got beat repeatedly by anyone and everyone. And Richardson was even worse, if that's possible. Go back and watch Richardson if you recorded the game. He gets beat over and over and over on both running plays and in pass protection. Worse, he dogged in on several plays. Once he lost his guy, he just quit. He didn't trail the play, or look for somebody else to hit, he just flat dogged it. If O'Callaghan wasn't so terrible, I'd bench Richardson after this game. Surely offensive tackle has to be high on next years draft list. KC averaged 2.8 yards per offensive play, and gave up seven sacks -two of those on Palko. Cassel just killed any comeback chances with a bad pick that led to an Oakland TD, followed by a pick six. By that time he had happy feet and was just chucking the ball to keep from getting killed. They should have taken him out right after the pick six. The game was out of reach at that point.

6. More Bad Things: Defense was extremely shaky against a Raider offense that isn't all that. Raiders played two different QBs. Their second string running back went for 137 yards and averaged 5.5 per carry. Raiders won battle of first downs, total offensive yards, and time of possession, despite having twice as many penalties as KC. The first TD the defense gave up was a monster drive, and the Raiders first TD drive in the second half was sustained by two stupid defensive penalties. The face mask on Belcher was especially hurtful. A word about Belcher: He better watch his ass next year or he may be on the street. Last week he whiffed on geriatric Kerry Collins on a blitz, Collins threw a TD bomb because Belcher "Ole'd" him. This week, Belcher pulled Jason Campbell down by the face mask for no good reason. The play was already disrupted. That was just a bone headed, drive prolonging, killer penalty. Inexcusable, and the kind of play that gets you beat. It was the kind of play a Raider would make. Run defense gave up too many big plays right up the gut. Berry was out of position on the longest runs, and that's more rookie baggage. Today's run defense looked a lot like last year's run defense. Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou, Romeo?

5. Even More Bad Things: Our special teams have been disturbingly non-productive, especially when comparing the last few weeks to the first few weeks of the season. Colquitt only averaged 38 yards a punt today. That about seven yards less that we should get from him. We had one decent punt return very late in the game when it didn't matter. Neither Arenas or McCluster has done much for a few weeks now. Today Sea Bass kept kicking off mortar shots that were fielded by the up-men to negate any long kick returns. But on punts, we need to block better. Arenas was having a hard time judging the wind, and when he did get room to run, nobody blocked for him. We can do better, we've seen it work earlier in the year.

4. The Ugly Things: There were lots of ugly Raider fans in the stands today. I have a theory about Raider fans. I'd guess there were maybe fifty fans who actually live in or near Oakland. The rest of them are just sleaze balls, convicts, loser misfits and tough guy wanna be's. There's a lot of greasy scum who just identify with the Raiders, because frankly, they worship evil. Just about every Raiders fan I've ever met -who has never even been to California- is a sociopathic waste of skin. Every dog has its day. Today was ugly dog day at Arrowhead. I hate their fans and every time I see them en masse, I realize there's no way in God's Green Earth I could EVER be a social worker (or in the case of these people THEIR social worker). Also ugly was that Cassel, Bowe and Charles all got beat up pretty good today. The sacks on Cassel and hurried throws were the reason for his picks. Charles got dinged up a couple times. Bowe took a stinger to the shoulder in the fourth quarter. I don't think any of the three took anything that will keep them out next week, but they all got beat up.

3. The Charlie Weis thing: This AM Petro was saying this is a family thing. Charlie wants to go to Florida and start teaching his son how to be a coach. OK, I can understand that. I think there's probably more to it. I think there might be some friction between Charlie and Coach Haley, but they'd never say that in public. The Chiefs PR Gestapo is pretty good at covering up anything that would smack of discontent. But why couldn't Charlie had sat on that until AFTER the playoffs? Why does it have to come out now? Timing seems a bit weird. I hope it was not a distraction, but after having less than 60 yards of total offense in the first half, you have to wonder if Charlie's head was in the game today.

2. I'm glad they did the Marty Hall of Honor induction thing this week instead of next week. We don't want Marty getting ANYWHERE NEAR our playoff game. People were very kind to Marty today, and a lot of his former players came back for his halftime ceremony. Marty looks old now, and seeing him look old makes me feel old too.. because I am getting older. The cold today works a lot harder on me now than it used to. My aging also makes me itchy for success. I won't live through another twenty year five year plan, that's for sure.

1. KC finished 10-6, and won the AFC West. That is a major accomplishment, no matter what happens from here on out. I am very skeptical about how we'll fare in the playoffs. I think we're clearly the weakest team in the AFC side of the tournament, and Baltimore is built very much like Oakland. Strong front seven on defense, good cover guys in the secondary, and a decent ground game. And Flacco is farther along in his development process as a starting QB than Cassel. If we get the same effort next week that we got today, it could be a Manning Style playoff butt kicking all over again. Again, in a strange way, The Raiders may have done us a favor today. Hopefully KC will take this as a wake up call that they are not unbeatable at Arrowhead. The home cooking and home crowd helps, but in the end, you have to go out and earn it. Now it's all about earning it. Good luck to us, and let's try to enjoy at least one more week. We're in the playoffs baby!