Battle Red Blog
What was good, bad, and ugly from the 2024 season finale?
There is one good thing about Saturday football: it gives me 24 hours to process my feelings after watching that. One thing I will say off the bat is that I hate conspiracy theories. They are lazy and have maybe a one percent chance of actually being true. The officials were not in the bag for the Kansas City Chiefs. The NFL is the biggest entertainment product probably on the planet. They could promote any team in the conference championship game.
Yes, the Chiefs have Taylor Swift and all of the guys in the State Farm commercials. The Houston Texans could probably drag out Beyonce and several other local celebrities. There were bad calls, but the Texans likely lose the game without those bad calls. I could see the game being a lot closer, but there are other structural issues at play here. The worst part of conspiracy theories is that it causes you to ignore the real reasons why the Houston Texans lost the football game.
Total Yards: Texans 65/336, Chiefs 50/212
Rushing Yards: Texans 30/149, Chiefs 21/50
Passing Yards: Texans 35/187, Chiefs 29/162
Sacks: Texans 3, Chiefs 8
Turnovers: Texans 0, Chiefs 0
Penalties: Texans 8/82, Chiefs 4/29
Time of Possession: Texans 33:26, Chiefs 26:34
I could focus in on the penalties as an example of how unfair the officiating was, but that would ignore what we have seen all season. The Texans normally commit more penalties than their opposition. They were one of the top five most penalized teams in the league. Neutral fans will focus on the discrepancy because the “fact” that the Chiefs get the favorable calls has become gospel now. Sure, two of the penalties were bogus, but if you look at every game, there are bogus calls.
We have a good six months of offseason before we get back to football. There will be free agency, the draft, and training camp but there will also be plenty of time for Monday morning quarterbacking. Believe me, I will dive pretty deep into this game and other games, but let’s focus on the basics for now.
When you go to the mountain top and look down on the ground from that height you start to see things a little more clearly. Big time players make big time plays that win games. Each team has two or three stars on offense and defense and usually the team that has their stars play the best win the games. The Texans’ collection of stars all played well. C.J. Stroud didn’t throw any touchdown passes, but also didn’t turn the ball over. He also made plays with his legs for the second consectutive game.
Will Anderson had two sacks and a tackle for loss while Derek Stingley helped the secondary shut down the Chiefs’ wide receivers. Joe Mixon scored the team’s only touchdown and Nico Collins made some big plays in spite...
