Arrowhead Pride
That wasn’t fun. It was annoying.
I think the Kansas City Chiefs are clearly the better team than the Jacksonville Jaguars. They just weren’t the better team in this game.
The Chiefs squandered a 14-point lead and then regained it with under two minutes remaining — only to lose on what has to be the most uncoordinated and awkward-looking game-winning touchdowns in the history of the sport.
Still, we should give credit to the Jaguars; they made a play when they had to, and winning ugly beats losing pretty any day of the week.
Unfortunately for the Chiefs, they didn’t do either. They dropped their third game of the season, losing 31-28 on “Monday Night Football.”
Here are five things we learned.
This might have been the worst special teams performance I’ve seen in a game where the kicker didn’t miss a field goal.
However, Harrison Butker decided to take it a step further, kicking the ball out of bounds with under two minutes left to play when the Jaguars had only one timeout remaining. On top of that, the Chiefs committed so many holding penalties on kick returns that I had to double-check to make sure Jawaan Taylor wasn’t playing special teams.
At the end of the day, this performance falls squarely on special teams coordinator Dave Toub.
Last week I wrote this:
The Chiefs rolled zone coverage against Nabers. This week, Spagnuolo put a linebacker spy on Jackson. It will be exciting to see what he draws up next week when Kansas City travels to Florida to face a sneaky Jacksonville Jaguars team.
Spagnuolo reverted back to the comfort zone that got them in trouble against the Los Angeles Chargers and the Philadelphia Eagles. It’s no secret that the Chiefs struggle to generate quick wins with their pass rush. To compensate, Spagnuolo decided to blitz the pants off the Jaguars. The problem? More often than not, the gamble didn’t pay off. The rushers failed to get home — and with their pants still firmly in place, Jaguars’ quarterback Trevor Lawrence was able to find favorable matchups — which are inevitable when against a blitz.
That included blitzing the slot cornerback, which left safeties in one-on-one situations against a pair of elite athletes: Brian Thomas Jr. and Travis Hunter.
The problem wasn’t just schematic. Without the blitz, the Chiefs still couldn’t generate consistent pressure — and it was a lot easier to lock up Rashod Bateman and DeAndre Hopkins than Thomas and Hunter.
We’ve all seen the graphic on Chiefs broadcasts. Last season, the team went 11-0 in one-score games and set an NFL record by winning 17 straight one-score contests.
But nobody wins every single close game forever. It’s the Law of Averages, right?
False. The Law of Averages is a gambler’s fallacy.
While randomness exists in football (the ball bouncing...
