KingPriest2
10-28-2004, 07:39 AM
RAND: Arrowhead Needs to Get Back its Bite
Oct 28, 2004, 2:32:55 AM by Jonathan Rand
If the Chiefs have learned anything this season, it’s not to take anything – or any opponent in any stadium — for granted.
The Indianapolis Colts will come into Arrowhead Stadium as a slight favorite on Sunday. Seems hard to believe, right?
Just a year ago, the Chiefs were perfect at home in the regular season and enhanced Arrowhead’s reputation as one of the NFL’s most inhospitable places for visiting teams.
But this is a different season and not just for the Chiefs. If it seems to you that an awful lot of teams are getting embarrassed at home. it’s more than a perception.
Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com has done the match, which shows road teams stand 47-55 for a .461 winning percentage. The last time road teams were more successful over a full season was 1986, when their winning percentage was .469. Of four teams unbeaten at home in the 2003 regular season – the Chiefs, Rams, Seahawks and Patriots – only the Patriots are unbeaten at home this season.
The Chiefs, of course, have been capable of losing at home to the Colts amid any trend and in any year. The Colts, amazingly, have beaten the Chiefs seven straight times since 1990, including five times at Arrowhead.
And the Colts have shown they can win here any way that’s necessary. In Arrowhead playoff games, the Colts have won a defensive struggle, 10-7, and a slugfest, 38-31.
So maybe the Colts, 4-2, aren’t the most favorable opponent for the Chiefs, 2-4, when they’re playing a home game they can’t afford to lose. For the Chiefs, the keys to victory are simple: keep their offense at full throttle and get the defense to prove its surprising rise to ninth place in total defense is not an aberration.
As the football people like to say, that’s simple but not easy.
A 56-10 pounding of the Atlanta Falcons seemed to bring back a semblance of normalcy to a Chiefs’ home performance after two straight home losses last month. But now the Chiefs have to beat a team that’s beaten them at Arrowhead Stadium after the Chiefs posted 8-0 regular-season home records in 1995 and 2003.
You can probably find a dozen plausible arguments for the success of road teams this season. But two stand out as relevant to Sunday’s game at Arrowhead. Once a team has won in a hostile stadium, it comes back with the extra confidence of knowing it can overcome road weariness, unfamiliar surroundings and crowd noise.
Home teams like to talk about their 12th man, the boisterous home crowd. But visiting teams figure out pretty quickly that the 12th man (or woman), given enough tailgating and suds, really isn’t trained to last the entire 60 minutes. For a visiting team, the sooner it can take the crowd out of the game, the better.
And the worse their team plays, the sooner the home fans are likely to stop screaming every time their defense tries to stop a third-down play. By the end of the Chiefs’ 28-17 loss to the Panthers last month, the Arrowhead stands were barren and the 12th man was replaced by 12 men.
And face it, no matter how often quarterback Peyton Manning beats the Chiefs, Arrowhead fans can’t get as riled up about him as they did John Elway.
When the schedule came out, you could have circled this game as a chance for the Chiefs to get a small measure of revenge for last season’s playoff loss. Instead, it’s a game the Chiefs must win just to entertain reasonable hopes of getting back to the playoffs.
The Chiefs have won two games convincingly, lost two games convincingly and lost two games in the final minute. Losing the close ones has been the story of their season so far, and they’ll probably need to win a close game Sunday to make something of their season.
They’ll have to bring the advantage back to Arrowhead to make that happen
Oct 28, 2004, 2:32:55 AM by Jonathan Rand
If the Chiefs have learned anything this season, it’s not to take anything – or any opponent in any stadium — for granted.
The Indianapolis Colts will come into Arrowhead Stadium as a slight favorite on Sunday. Seems hard to believe, right?
Just a year ago, the Chiefs were perfect at home in the regular season and enhanced Arrowhead’s reputation as one of the NFL’s most inhospitable places for visiting teams.
But this is a different season and not just for the Chiefs. If it seems to you that an awful lot of teams are getting embarrassed at home. it’s more than a perception.
Len Pasquarelli of ESPN.com has done the match, which shows road teams stand 47-55 for a .461 winning percentage. The last time road teams were more successful over a full season was 1986, when their winning percentage was .469. Of four teams unbeaten at home in the 2003 regular season – the Chiefs, Rams, Seahawks and Patriots – only the Patriots are unbeaten at home this season.
The Chiefs, of course, have been capable of losing at home to the Colts amid any trend and in any year. The Colts, amazingly, have beaten the Chiefs seven straight times since 1990, including five times at Arrowhead.
And the Colts have shown they can win here any way that’s necessary. In Arrowhead playoff games, the Colts have won a defensive struggle, 10-7, and a slugfest, 38-31.
So maybe the Colts, 4-2, aren’t the most favorable opponent for the Chiefs, 2-4, when they’re playing a home game they can’t afford to lose. For the Chiefs, the keys to victory are simple: keep their offense at full throttle and get the defense to prove its surprising rise to ninth place in total defense is not an aberration.
As the football people like to say, that’s simple but not easy.
A 56-10 pounding of the Atlanta Falcons seemed to bring back a semblance of normalcy to a Chiefs’ home performance after two straight home losses last month. But now the Chiefs have to beat a team that’s beaten them at Arrowhead Stadium after the Chiefs posted 8-0 regular-season home records in 1995 and 2003.
You can probably find a dozen plausible arguments for the success of road teams this season. But two stand out as relevant to Sunday’s game at Arrowhead. Once a team has won in a hostile stadium, it comes back with the extra confidence of knowing it can overcome road weariness, unfamiliar surroundings and crowd noise.
Home teams like to talk about their 12th man, the boisterous home crowd. But visiting teams figure out pretty quickly that the 12th man (or woman), given enough tailgating and suds, really isn’t trained to last the entire 60 minutes. For a visiting team, the sooner it can take the crowd out of the game, the better.
And the worse their team plays, the sooner the home fans are likely to stop screaming every time their defense tries to stop a third-down play. By the end of the Chiefs’ 28-17 loss to the Panthers last month, the Arrowhead stands were barren and the 12th man was replaced by 12 men.
And face it, no matter how often quarterback Peyton Manning beats the Chiefs, Arrowhead fans can’t get as riled up about him as they did John Elway.
When the schedule came out, you could have circled this game as a chance for the Chiefs to get a small measure of revenge for last season’s playoff loss. Instead, it’s a game the Chiefs must win just to entertain reasonable hopes of getting back to the playoffs.
The Chiefs have won two games convincingly, lost two games convincingly and lost two games in the final minute. Losing the close ones has been the story of their season so far, and they’ll probably need to win a close game Sunday to make something of their season.
They’ll have to bring the advantage back to Arrowhead to make that happen