Ten Things About Today’s Game, Week 6: KC 26 - BUF 17
10. Buffalo is a beautiful place for about a month: May till June. The rest of the time, it sucks out loud. Lake Erie sucks. Lake effect snow five feet high. Niagra Falls isn’t even in Buffalo, and the best part of the Falls are on the Canadian side, anyway. Their local beer is Genesee, which is basically a nastier Natty Light. Their food is nuclear hot chicken wings; the kind of food you regret eating the next morning when you singe your colon. Their stadium is a 1970’s era high school field. I’m sure the Bills Mafia enjoyed drunken stage diving into folding tables in their rec rooms, as it was pissing rain and 50 degrees this entire game. Played on a field made up of wet, ground up bald Goodyear tires, this is one of those games where you just fly in, do your damn job, get wet, kick ass, towel off, come home. This year of NFL Covid Ball has been so weird. I don’t think the Chiefs have ever played a 4pm game on a Monday. This was our fourth national prime game this year; Opening night vs. Texans, Monday night vs. Ravens, weird Covid Monday game vs. Pats, now this one. Bills have only had two national NFL games, including tonight. They’ve lost them both. Bills are not ready for prime time. And Joe Buck? Thank God we can turn on Mitch and Danan Hughes for the play by play. Joe Buck makes me want to kill my family.
9. After the Vegas game, we all agreed that both sides of the Chiefs lines got pushed around and beaten. Flip the scrip this week. Chiefs rushed 46 times for 245 yards, mostly running behind Fisher and Allegretti. Defense gave up only 206 total yards. KC ran 23 more plays than Buffalo. Bills leading rusher was Allen, who ran 8 times for 42 yards. The two Bills TD drives were both sustained by KC penalties, mostly on third down. More on that later.
8. On defense, early on Chris Jones and Frank Clark both showed up this week with good pressure. Chiefs had no sacks, but chased Allen all over the field and forced many bad throws. Allen only threw for 122 yards and one of his TD passes was on an all pro toe drag by Diggs. His other TD to Mrs Beasley was just a basic crossing route in front of Thornhill.
7. Buffalo had 20 first downs; five of those were on Chiefs defensive penalties. Breeland had a pretty bad night. He was responsible for at least three of those first downs on DPI or Illegal Contacts. Our defensive backs seemed to jam John Brown in the grill over and over again. Nnadi played well, team only gave up 17 points on the road. Dirty Dan got a game closing pick. Major turnaround from last week, and kudos to Spags for getting things cleaned up and back on the rails.
6. Mitch the Kitch walked very gingerly to the locker room after the first series. Austin Reiter was replaced by Kilgore, who except for one snap exchange fumble by PMII played a great game. Fisher showed why he was worthy of a first round pick. He road graded for CEH, who ran for 161 yards and averaged over six yards a carry. Line busted Darrel Williams on a fourth and one for a game dagger 13 yard TD scamper.
5. Kelce caught five for 65 and two big TDs. Patrick set the Chiefs record for 16 straight games throwing a TD pass. And big kudos to Byron Pringle, who came up with a huge 37 yard catch on 3rd and 14 to sustain the drive where Buttkicker got his final field goal. Hardman has yet to surface as a replacement for Watkins. Robinson was the man tonight with five for 69 yards. Patrick only had eight incomplete passes. He continues to mature.
4. Chiefs caught a couple breaks, despite the fact that Buffalo didn’t get a single penalty in the first half. On Buffalo’s first drive, they ran Brown deep into the end zone, flag was thrown, then picked up in the end zone. That would have given the Bills the ball first and goal on the four. Instead they settled for a field goal. With five minutes left in the game, Kelce digs a ball up off the turf for a first down. Chiefs hurry to the line and snap the ball before it can be reviewed. They hand the ball to CEH, who gets swallowed up, and the ball popped out on the way to the ground. Luckily his knee hit a nanosecond before the ball was ripped out. Close...could have flipped the game momentum. Buffalo actually received a beneficial penalty. At the beginning of the fourth quarter, Buffalo tried a quick snap QB sneak on 4th and short on their own 30 yard line. Chiefs stoned him. Refs then threw a flag and said Bills O-Line false started. That waived the play off, and the Bills then punted, Chiefs fielded the punt, held on the play, got the ball on their own six yard line instead of on the Bills 30. So…sometimes the refs bail your ass out with a penalty.
3. Patrick had only one pass over 30 yards to Pringle late in the fourth quarter. Everything else was short to intermediate. Very patient. And Patrick continued to look like vintage young Horse Face. Bills were playing deep over the top to stop Tyreek, tried to keep everything in front of them. When they did, Patrick would just roll out, and either wait for somebody to break open, or simply run for the first down. He ran 10 times, which is a lot more than I’d like to see, but he’s been pretty smart about getting down when he needs to.
2. Buttkicker still shaky on XPAs. He seems to be fine on field goals, but he’s having some kind of yips with the XPAs. Luckily he hasn’t cost us a game yet. Our special teams have been in the bottom quarter of the league so far this year. Still having penalties on kickoffs and punts. Buffalo’s guy out punted our guy by a ton, averaged 14 more yards per punt. Something to work on, anyway.
1. So KC goes to 5-1. Vegas gets a red hot Tommy Boy next week, while we get a shaky Drew Lock and the Donks. Lock tried like Hell to blow the Pats game last week with two fourth quarter picks, but Newton just couldn’t get that last drive together. At the six game mark, if we were told we’d be 5 and 1, I think we all would have said we’d gladly take that. Looking at the schedule before the season started, everybody had Baltimore and Buffalo on the road as possible losses, and we won both. So things are looking pretty good. On to spanking those Donks! [Reply]
Originally Posted by TomBarndtsTwin:
They're complaining about the refs? Really??
At the midpoint of the 3rd quarter, the Bills didn't even have a SINGLE penalty till they got 2 late hits OOB (which were clearly late and legit) on the Chiefs TD drive that put them up 20-10.
They finished with 4 penalties for 39 yards on the game.
So take out the 30 yards for the 2 obvious late hits OOB on the Chiefs TD drive in the 3rd quarter and they had 9 penalty yards for the ENTIRE game.
Buffalo has NOTHING to complain about from that game when it comes to the refs.
Ummmm. Really? How the hell do they get off bitching about the refs? They should be bitching about their QB missing dudes. They had some really nice open looks. [Reply]
Originally Posted by luv:
Butker and Townsend need to find their stride. Townsend was a rookie free agent. I think that he's just wet behind the ears, and that there may just still be some trust issues there.
Bojorquez has two years under his belt already with the Bills, so he's more comfortable, especially at home.
I'm hoping that Townsend's issue is just a confidence/trust thing and that he works through it soon.
They seem to work well together on 50 plus yard field goals. Missing xps has to be something in Butkers heads. Maybe take a few delay of games before kicking them? [Reply]
The problem I have with running the ball down their throats, even when successfully, is that our time of possession is greater, the number of offensive drives is less, so that even when it appears we are dominating the game, it stays close and within reach. We may score five out of seven times instead of eight out of ten. And it can’t be good ultimately to play in a way that minimizes the effectiveness of the greatest talent of all time. It would have made more sense if our defense still sucked. To give them more rest. [Reply]
Originally Posted by njchiefs:
The problem I have with running the ball down their throats, even when successfully, is that our time of possession is greater, the number of offensive drives is less, so that even when it appears we are dominating the game, it stays close and within reach. We may score five out of seven times instead of eight out of ten. And it can’t be good ultimately to play in a way that minimizes the effectiveness of the greatest talent of all time. It would have made more sense if our defense still sucked. To give them more rest.
This isn't some kind of trend. They did it once because of weather, injuries, and the need to prove to teams that playing 7-8 DB's wasn't going to work. [Reply]
Originally Posted by njchiefs:
The problem I have with running the ball down their throats, even when successfully, is that our time of possession is greater, the number of offensive drives is less, so that even when it appears we are dominating the game, it stays close and within reach. We may score five out of seven times instead of eight out of ten. And it can’t be good ultimately to play in a way that minimizes the effectiveness of the greatest talent of all time. It would have made more sense if our defense still sucked. To give them more rest.
You mean you don't like "Martyball?" Its such a cool feeling to totally dominate a game, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I wouldn't worry about it - As others have said, KC had to show it to make other teams think twice before they decide to continuously drop everyone back into coverage. [Reply]
Originally Posted by TEX:
You mean you don't like "Martyball?" Its such a cool feeling to totally dominate a game, only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
I hate Martyball.
But I can handle Martyball for one game to prove a point like they did yesterday. [Reply]
Buffalo refused to stop lining up like that, you have to be able to run teams out of that strategy and if they refuse to change just keep doing it. [Reply]
Originally Posted by BWillie:
Got nothing for love for those table jumping dumbasses. They know how to tailgate and party. They endured going to four straight Super Bowls and failing. We owe them our compassion.
We don't owe them shit. They drafted Kelly and the Chiefs drafted Blackledge.
Do you remember who took out Montana in the AFCCG? Remember where that happened?