Babb: Chiefs realize West could have been won

[Tribal Warfare]

Chiefs realize West could have been won
By KENT BABB
The Kansas City Star

Damion McIntosh will be paying attention Sunday night. That’s when two teams he thinks the Chiefs should have — and, more important, could have — beaten will play for the AFC West title.

He’ll be rooting for Denver over San Diego. McIntosh said he doesn’t like the Chargers’ style.

“It’s cockiness,” said McIntosh, the Chiefs’ right tackle. “Like they deserve to be there.”

Whether San Diego deserves the division title or not, it will have a chance the Chiefs might have been a few victories, and maybe a few players, from contending for. If the Chargers beat the Broncos on Sunday night, they’ll win the division with an 8-8 record.

The Chiefs, 2-13, enter this weekend with five fewer victories than San Diego, but seven of Kansas City’s 13 losses have been by seven points or less. And at the end of a season in which the AFC West is stumbling through its most winnable year ever, that leaves a particularly bitter taste in the Chiefs locker room.

“If we could have won just six of those games,” veteran cornerback Patrick Surtain said. “Yeah, you think that way, especially when you see a team that’s 8-8 going to win our division. I don’t think any amount of veterans would have helped us; we’ve just been snake-bit for some reason. It’s been that kind of year. It kind of hurts.”

What hurt the Chiefs most was their head-to-head contests against those teams atop the division. Kansas City beat the Broncos at Arrowhead Stadium in week four. But three weeks ago, the Chiefs blew a halftime lead to Denver a week before blowing another halftime lead to San Diego, the Chiefs’ second one-point loss to the Chargers this season.

Those kinds of games left players in bad moods for many reasons. Now that it’s clear a few more victories might have included the Chiefs in the division-title conversation, some players don’t even want to talk about it.

“That’s wishing,” backup defensive tackle Ron Edwards said. “I don’t wish. I don’t hope. Hope is for next year.”

The Chiefs have been playing for next year almost as soon as this year began. They underwent a massive rebuilding movement that coach Herm Edwards estimated this week is nearly complete. He said another offseason that includes signing the right free agents and being smart on NFL draft weekend might put the Chiefs in next year’s playoff chase, a year earlier than Edwards predicted before this season.

Edwards lobbied last offseason for the Chiefs to abstain from signing major free agents, instead preferring to shift playing time to the team’s many youngsters. Edwards has said the Chiefs will be better for it in the long run. Then again, that was before a team with a losing record was one win from winning its division.

Edwards said this week he will not be haunted by speculation that the Chiefs could have contended with a few more experienced players and some better luck. He said he would have liked to win more games this season, but that’s all but over now.

One of Kansas City’s few veterans, left guard Brian Waters, said the parity in the AFC West is a good sign for next year’s Chiefs. He said after the Denver loss that he thought Kansas City was as good as any of its division opponents.

He was asked about that statement this week, and Waters said he still thinks the Chiefs weren’t far this season from being competitive.

“We’re not as bad as our record may look,” he said. “You look at the way we played against Denver, you look at the way we played against San Diego, and you tell me that we’re that much worse than either one of those two. I mean, seriously.

“One or two players, one or two plays — where they come from, where those plays come from, that’s essentially what this football team has got to learn.”

Maybe it was San Diego’s preseason pick as a Super Bowl favorite that stuck in McIntosh’s mind. Maybe it was that, even when the Chargers were all but eliminated from playoff discussions, they kept coming back.

Maybe McIntosh isn’t over the fact that the Chargers twice beat the Chiefs this season, the last time with quarterback Philip Rivers throwing a go-ahead touchdown pass and running up the field at Arrowhead with his hand raised.

Or maybe it’s that the Chiefs just couldn’t win when they most needed to, and now they’ll be watching a pair of mediocre teams playing Sunday night for a division title the Chiefs were never close to.

“It’s boiled down to this now,” McIntosh said. “It really doesn’t matter because they’re both our foes. It’s wide open. We could’ve had that opportunity if we were able to pull out some of those games. But it leaves a bright spot for next year. We can win this division. We’re getting there.”