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!
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