Well, a few questions were answered with the results of the very first game of this very young NFL season.
The first question was how much the Patriots would miss Julius Edelman. Obviously, they missed him very much last night, and will need to make adjustments to avoid the offensive woes that they were continually plagued by yesterday.
The second question is just how effective Gronkowski would be. This question will need more time, but judging by the way he looked last night, he clearly looked like he had slowed down, and was hampered by those persistent, nagging injuries.
The third question is whether or not the Chiefs were a real threat. It seems clear to me that they are, and that I was wrong to overlook them. The thing with Kansas City is that they always seem to disappoint, and my own expectations of them this season was that this season would be no different in that regard.
Trust me, I do not like to criticize the Chiefs. It's just that they always seemed to me to be the AFC West's answer to the Jets, just a team that is bound to disappoint, time and time and time again. After all, every time you think they might do something or go somewhere, they fall short. That was the case in the very early nineties, when this team had a wicked defense. But they went nowhere significant. Then, they got Joe Montana, and for a while, it looked like they might be a serious contender. Unfortunately, they just missed out on a playoff bye, which might have made a difference. Montana still got them to their first AFC Championship Game in forever, but they lost to the Bills, and Montana suffered a concussion. The next season, they were not that great, even with Montana, and he retired.
Kansas City surprised many, including myself, with a 13-3 mark in 1995. But once again, they disappointed in the playoffs, losing their first and only contest to Indianapolis. Two years later, they surprised Denver by beating them out for the division title again, and once again sported that very impressive 13-3 record. But in the playoff showdown against the Broncos, they stumbled and lost, and again failed to reach the AFC title game.
For a while things slowed down, but then out of nowhere in 2003, the Chiefs started off 9-0, and ended up yet again with a 13-3 mark. And yet again, they lost their first and only playoff contest.
Then, more recently, they had that 28-point lead against Indianapolis in the Wild Card Game - twice (28-0 and 38-10), but lost it. It was the second biggest playoff collapse in NFL history. They responded the next season, however. After starting off 1-5, the Chiefs pulled off 11 straight wins, including a mighty impressive 30-0 shutout victory against the Texans in Houston, and then gave the Pats all that they could handle up in Foxboro. But they did not follow up with an overly impressive season after that.
Last year, the Chiefs were 12-4, and won the AFC West once again. But predictably, when they had that big playoff game against Pittsburgh, a game which was played in Kansas City, they fell short. Granted, it was a close game. But they lost, and that felt all too predictable.
Again, the Chiefs are the AFC West's answer to the Jets, or at least have been to this point, so that is why I did not take them overly seriously going into this brand new season.
However, they looked incredible last night! The defense kept getting to Brady, pressuring him, sacking him, forcing errant passes. To hold Brady to around 40 percent pass completion? Unbelievable!
Also, their offense looked like a high-powered unit! They just seemed to have all of the pieces in place, and they were simply on fire!
Still, I remain cautiously optimistic. After all, it is one game, as impressive as they were. They still have the Broncos and Raiders to contend with within their division, and there is still a long way to go before anything is decided, in terms of qualifying for the playoffs.
This was one of the most impressive wins that I ever saw Kansas City enjoy, so there is reason for fans of the Chiefs to hope.
As for New England, they looked clumsy and surprisingly ineffective. This will probably give the legions of Patriots haters hope. However, do not count them out.
A few years ago, they got blown out to - you guessed it - Kansas City. It was a fiasco, and many were suggesting that this marked the end of the Patriots era of dominance. But they bounced back in a big way, earning home field advantage, and exacting a measure of sweet revenge on the Chiefs when they played them up in Foxboro. The Patriots wound up winning that Super Bowl, and then followed up with the championship last season, too. You can just never count these guys out, even if Brady had a horrible game, and Belichick, for once, seemed to have no answers. After all, in all of his years of coaching, no team ever scored as many points on a Belichick coached team as KC did in this opener. And rarely have the Patriots given up a halftime lead at home. Many of these things just do not generally happen, yet the Chiefs made them happen this time.
What was perhaps most amazing about this particular game is that it seemed to fit the way that Patriots games go, only in reverse. We have often seen teams flirting with possible victories against New England through the first three quarters, only to watch them unravel in the end. That happened with both the Seahawks and the Falcons in both of the last two Super Bowls that the Pats were involved with. Seattle looked well on theri way to victory in Super Bowl XLIX, leading 24-14 entering that final quarter. But Tom Brady led his team to two touchdown drives, and then, of course, there was that infamous 2nd and 1, which iced it for New England. Then last year, the Falcons at one point in the third quarter led 28-3 against the Pats, and went into that final quarter with a still comfortable 28-9 lead. But they did not score a point afterward, and New England outscored them 19-0 in the fourth. Plus, we have seen other teams come close to beating New England, only to seemingly unravel in the end.
But the Chiefs managed to do something strange. They were the one who came on strong in the fourth quarter, and it was the Pats who did the unraveling. Quite a change. Brady was sacked and hurried and forced into a bad passing game, and you could see it on his face. He was frustrated. And Bill Belichick looked like he was at a loss, clearly feeling that both the offense and the defense played poorly. He even suggested that he had been out-coached! It was just an all-around beat down that the Chiefs delivered to the Patriots.
So, it was a role reversal. We kind of got used to seeing Kansas City as that team that unravels in the second half when all the chips are down, and of course, we have grown used to New England absolutely thriving in the second half, especially in the fourth quarter, when the stakes are the highest. The season opener was surprising because New England was flirting with victory for most of the game, even seeming on the verge of breaking the game wide open in the first half, seemingly on their way to a convincing, possibly even a blowout, win. Yet somehow, the Chiefs hung in there, kept in it. They made it a close game until the fourth quarter, and then they really turned up the juice, pressuring Brady and the Pats offense and effectively shutting them down, while exploding offensively for three touchdowns to seal the deal.
I certainly would not go so far as to suggest that this is what we can expect to see more of all season long, but it surely made for an interesting, even intriguing scenario following the new season's first game. At the very least, we know that the Chiefs probably should be taken seriously, while we can surmise that overconfidence, at the very least, will not likely be a problem for New England going forward, after being embarrassed at home like that in a nationally televised game.
Good stuff, and we are only one game in! If the rest of the season throws as similar curve balls, we might just see a ful-fledged changing of the guard. But it is too early to suggest that kind of a thing, before even the first full weekend of the regular season has been completed yet!
No comments:
Post a Comment