Ten Things About Today’s Game: Week 3 KC 33 BALT 28

10. Home openers are always great no matter what year it is. The season is still young and anything can happen. For 2019, it’s the first time to see the Chiefs at home in a game that counts. The old school yellow end zones looked great, and the new seats in the upper deck were a bright stunning red, which made the “sea of red” seem even redder. Jamaal Charles was on the big drum, and the crowd seemed in good spirits despite a soggy tailgate. For those of you outside KC, we’ve been under a flash flood watch this weekend. it started raining about 3am, and rained real hard from about 8am up to around 10:45. The parking lot looked like an Arabian tent city with a river running through it. As each year goes by, the tailgaters get more sophisticated in their set ups, and today there were hundreds of tents with charcoal smoke wafting as far as the eye could see. Mrs. B and I went in around 10:30, because it had stopped raining, and we didn’t know long it would take to get inside. We got in quickly, and got to watch pregame warmups. We had a B-2 bomber flyover, which is amazing if you’ve never seen one in person. Rain held off the entire first half, which was a true blessing. Sitting in driving rain for hours is no fun.

9. Looks like Mahomes is doing OK on his bad ankle. Didn’t notice any limp or mobility issues in warmups. Fisher was in a Chiefs sweatsuit and was moving gingerly along the sideline. Looks like he may be another month till he’s good. Our number three tight end Deon Yelder was active but didn’t see much action. McCoy didn’t show any signs of his bad ankle either. He ran hard and ran tough and had a pair of critical TDs on a tough goal line run and later on a perfectly executed screen pass. He earned his paycheck with a 6.8 yards per carry average. Darrell Williams was good as well, especially salting the game away getting the game winning first down on a screen pass. Williams averaged 6.9 yards per carry. So whether Shady or Williams got the ball, the results were the same. Jamaal Charles would be proud of both of them.

8. Two weeks in a row KC came out sluggish and got shut out in the first quarter. Offense came alive and put up 23 points in the second quarter, and shut out the Ravens. Even up 7-7 in the third quarter, then the Ravens made the game close by putting up 15 in the fourth quarter. John Harbaugh did some squirrelly stuff in the first quarter by going for two and going on fourth down. I think we’re going to see a trend of a lot of opposing coaches going for broke against Reid and Mahomes. Field goals aren’t going to win against this kind of offensive firepower. Imagine when Tyreek comes back. OMG…

7. I was impressed with Lamar Jackson. Jackson -who looks kind of like Samuel L- threw for 267 but had no passing TDs and should have been picked three or four times. He was sacked three times. If I was a Ravens fan I’d be afraid he’s going to get injured like Watson in Houston did last year. He was running around like Daffy Duck back there; and he got away with three or four passes he never should have thrown. He reminds me a little of Randall Cunningham but he’s not nearly as accurate. He’s got a chance to be a very good QB if he doesn’t get killed scrambling.

6. Mahomes does some risky gunslinging too, but he’s getting better at protecting the football. He was only sacked once, and took some cheap shots from the Ravens as well. It looks like the refs are serious about protecting him, so he’s kind of a “made man” like Tommy Boy and the Five Head used to be. Besides the spectacular TDs to Robinson and Hardman, he threw a pass to Sammy Watkins that just stuck in his hands like a Fred Biletnikoff stickum job. Kelce had seven catches for 89 yards and several important chunk plays. In all eight guys caught passes, including a Byron Pringle sighting.
Mahomes has a 374 yard day with three TDs and ZERO picks.

5. Not sure what to think of Spags defense so far. One thing I’ll say is they’ve been actually able to get the opponent off the field on third down a few times. Run defense looked a lot like last year, giving up eight or ten or fifteen yards on first down. Ingram had a three TD day -I laughed when he fell down after the second one trying to spike the football against an Arrowhead Logo on the side wall. Edwards averaged almost eight yards per carry. Throw in Jackson’s scrambles and the Ravens had over 200 total yards rushing. That is certainly cause for concern. Perhaps that would be offset by the secondary giving up ZERO passing TDs and doing a decent job keeping Hollywood and Andrews in check. 31 yards is the longest pass play surrendered, and Seth Roberts grab near the goal line was just dumb luck.

4. Frank Clark had a sack, but that was only one of three tackles he made all day long. Ogbah out played him today with two sacks and several pressures. Chris Jones was not a factor today either. Those guys need to step it up, especially Jones if he expects to be paid like Suh or Campbell. Hitchens and Fuller led all tacklers with eight each. it was nice to see Derrick Nnadi step up to stop Jackson on the first two point try, and good to see Mathieu be effective on the safety blitz. Wish Spags would do that more often.

3. Another mixed bag for special teams. Buttkicker missed an extra point. The snap was a little low, but he just pushed it left. He did hit a couple important field goals, one before halftime and another in the fourth quarter to get a five point lead. DAT didn’t do anything stupid this week; and no holding or block in the back penalties on punt returns. Penalties were actually better this week. Ravens had a couple personal fouls, and an OPI, but the crowd never made them jump offsides. I don’t remember KC having a single DPI. I remember one play had three total penalties, two by KC and one by Baltimore so they all offset. Schwartz had a holding penalty protecting Mahomes. But overall a pretty clean game by both teams. Kudos to our front line for keeping Mahomes relatively safe from a tough defensive front.

2. Kudos to Andy as to how he handled the last two minutes. The third down screen to Williams was a perfect call. There’s been so many games where one first down would salt it away, and the Chiefs under Huard, or Alex Smith or whoever, didn’t have the balls to put the game in the QBs hands and let him win it. I’m still having to alter my thinking to factor in we have the league MVP, and this guy is nothing we’ve seen around these parts since Joe Montana. Andy seemed really fired up coming off the field after the game. I think if we can get him to a Super Bowl this year, he’ll wind up in the Pro Football HOF.

1. So as of this writing, the Raiders, Donks and Bolts all lost, so we open up a two game lead in the AFC West. Things got a little uncomfortable in the fourth quarter today, but I think Spag’s defense is going to be good enough to keep us from losing shootouts like we lost against the Rams last year. So 3-0 is a beautiful thing, and next home game we face a Colts team that won at home against the Falcons(we go to Detroit next, thanks KC Nut). Finally, wanted to give a Ten Things shout out to all the guys who showed up for dinner at JJ’s last night. And special thanks to Twisted Chief who treated us all to a fabulous meal. It was a really nice evening, and if you have a chance to meet some CPers face to face, you’ll find the folks who populate this site are some pretty cool cats. Can’t wait for next week!
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