In case you missed it, the Kansas City Chiefs did not have a very good preseason. In fact, it was pretty abysmal. This has caused uneducated football fans around the city to declare “THIS TEAM IS GONNA BE REAL BAD NOT GOOD OH GOD FIRE CARL PEDDERSON NOW!”
Now, before I receive scores of threatening hate-mail (by which I mean “comments on this blog“), please allow me to assure you that I do not expect big things from the 2014 Kansas City Chiefs. As a matter of fact, I think they will be a very disappointing team and will be quite lucky to amass seven wins. (And eight wins would take a miracle, I bet.)
But they won’t be bad because of their preseason struggles.
The preseason– long, arduous and pointless– is complete bullshit. Preseason only matters if QB Johnny Dickbag tears his shoulder-bones in a meaningless contest, effectively ending his season. The preseason only matters if you’ve got two quarterbacks and WE DON’T KNOW WHO TO PICK, HELP YOU GUYS! The preseason– played at varying speeds, but rarely “full“– is a way to get loose and work out kinks and determine if your seventh round draft choice from Peter Brady College is really fucking ready to be your third-strong tight end.
It means nothing.
And numbers don’t lie about shit like this. Look, here are the Chiefs preseason records versus what they did in the regular season for like, the past 20 years or something:
Really paints a picture of… well, nothing, doesn’t it?
And while eventual Super Bowl winners over that same stretch seemed to fare a little better (when nothing fucking mattered), there are clearly many, many exceptions to the rule. Let’s look at another chart I put together that illustrates what I just said:
Grantland’s ridiculously nerdy and talented football writer Bill Barnwell took it a step further with regard to teams and their preseason results. In a big, long piece about why the preseason doesn’t matter, he took the 22 teams since 2000 that went undefeated in the preseason and compared them to the 31 teams who were winless.
It should probably come as no surprise (mostly because I wouldn’t talk about it if it didn’t help my point, I guess) that the undefeated teams averaged 8 wins in the regular season. The teams who went 0-4? They won an average of 7.3 games. Completely negligible difference.
And just to really drive the point home, he cites the 2008 Detroit Lions. Maybe you remember them:
“Detroit, for one, went 4-0 during the 2008 preseason, outscoring the opposition by a league-high 48 points. It promptly went 0-16 during the regular season.”
Like the fact that turtles can breathe out of their butts, it’s just good science.
Look, the Chiefs are going to struggle this season. Frankly, they’ll probably suck. But it won’t be because they blew goats in the preseason.
It’ll be because they have what is arguably the worst offensive line in football. It’ll be because their secondary is almost as bad. It’ll be because Alex Smith doesn’t really have a wide receiver to throw to. (Thanks to the aggressively bad o-line, though, he’ll be dead by week three, so, lucky him.)
It’ll be because they’re not a very good team.
And it wouldn’t have mattered a single bit if they’d gone 4-0 in August.
Lefty, I think the commenters are saying what they see on the field, how the Chiefs actually played leads them to the conclusion that they will be lucky to win 6 games.
The actual record is indeed superfluous, but the execution at various times during the preseason games reveals a dearth of talent top to bottom with few exceptions.
They still haven’t cleaned out their underwear from New Orleans sneaking up in front of them and stealing Brandin Cooks. I realize everyone has a lot of fun tortuting Glazer, but he is dead on the money here in my opinion. If they win 6 games it will be because Andy is a quality coach. Off of the top of my bald head, I gotta think at this point, Zach Fulton is their biggest steal in the draft after 2 years.
That in combination of what was a below average class in 2013 (Mingo, Eifert and Austin are going to be good, but the only real big stud, was Cordarelle Paterson at #29 for the Vikings.), hurt the Chiefs bad. The first pick in a first round with so so talent. The Chiefs and most of the other teams in that first round, would easily exchange who they took for Patterson.
Just my opinion.
🙂
By the way, the MGM and a couple of other casinos have the Chiefs as 5 point favorites over the Titans. Take the points. Watch Hunter in the end zone.
Ouch!
The Chiefs’ struggle can be boiled down to one sentence: In a league where the rules have been modified to reward passing and quick scoring, the Chiefs are built to neither do that or stop that.
Chunk thank you. Lefty, so I take it this is a faint shot at me. First off, NO preseason records in and of themselves don’t matter, if your team is ‘set.’ The Chiefs are and have been a lower end NFL squad. As I explained several times they needed to see if some players were going to step up. Key players like number one draft choice Eric Fisher. It’s clear Eric can’t hold down left tackle. He is not NFL ready, great guy, not good enough for a starting role. That is a big blow. You lose Don Stephenson, who would have replaced Eric, for four games. That I think sealed the fate of the offense.
There are no good corners or safeties on this team, none that I see are ready. I like the Cooper kid, but he needs more time. Our receivers are at best C level even with the tight end upgrade if he stays well. We have no wide receivers. Our D line was smoked in the red zone several times. YES THEY WERE TRYING.
Our first string offense went three games with no touchdowns, not one. See we do learn from all this.
Lefty not too cool to say, well the pre season doesn’t matter but Chiefs will take a step back. For them, not everyone, it did matter. It is better to win in the pre season than lose. Teams that go 4 and 0 are in the post season more than 4 to 1 over those who are 0-4. OK we did win the one game.
Look old pal I said this team was bad, very bad before anyone in the KC media. Now everyone sees what I did at the end of last year and after this front office lost five players they needed to be average and gained little, even in the draft.
Give me some credit as does Chuck. I post my picks every week, nobody else does. To review I took the under on the Chumps twice recently and won them both easily. I didn’t take it last year due to the easy schedule. I said they were a 7 win team maybe 8 with Smith. We all know they got breaks and in the end were not a good team, but hey they racked up 11 wins. I was wrong about their record but right about them not being very good.
I said and I think wisely as did nobody else, this is a repeat of 2011. The year following the phony western division title Chiefs with Matt and Todd and Scott. Pioli surrendered the season, 2011, due to a tough schedule. We did it this year. I think it will lead to the end of Reid and Dorsey after next season. Just my opinion. I see nothing from them so far. Yes Reid seems to be a good qb coach, not an overall good coach thus far. Hey he has little to work with and Dorsey screwed him with the draft last year and this offseason failures.
Everyone said I was wrong on the Royals. I hope so…..but psssst…their core group can’t hit well enough to win when needed, they don’t have ONE bigtime hitter, not one, that includes Gordon. If they don’t pitch their asses off, they won’t win the division. I hope they do. But right now they are sweating, no hitting no runs in a week. Now a 1/2 game lead over Tigers. It will be a tight race. The Royals have to this point had much better pitching than anyone expected. The hitting is not there at all.
Don’t call me “chunk.” It fills me with rage.
I didn’t post that.
Rage is good though.
sorry I meant Chuck.
Chuck imitators are now everywhere.
Truffle shuffle!! Truffle shuffle!!
you werer way off glaze last year…..you need some reading glasses..
you’re never right.
you count those teasers the wrong way and say you hit 70%….factis that
thebooks in vegas said that was not unusualdueto the fact that there
were fewer upsets….come on ….get real
agreed — pre-season games meaningless — wish that during the last contract talks — they would have reduced preseason to two games, as some wanted.
College non-con games not much better — with Mizzou, K-State and KU all kicking off seasons against Podunk U. teams.
oh well.. Sept 4 the real fun begins..Pack vs Seattle Thurs nite!
Does preseason matter? Yes, in the sense trying to protect your star players / keeping your starters out, limiting play as a means genuflecting to the bottom line, try stave off lo$$ of fan interest (same reason so many also-rans qualify post season today, chumps and eventual Champions loading up their coffers, together.) Can’t have money maker$ ending up on season ending IR too soon – or revenues might too; bow to the Benjamin, W & L results beside the point in a league which would embrace 32 8-8 teams if it were possible.
The NFL does its best inject mediocrity, ‘no team left behind’ into each parity-imbued season, the ‘best’ are almost indistinguishable from the ‘worst’. Otherwise, a 2-14 team one season (Chiefs 2012) would be incapable of going 11-5 the next (Chiefs 2013); the NFL is a farce.
Today’s preseason ‘games’ are not what they used to be. The days of yore, much more interesting watching a few rookies sprinkled in with the veterans, rather than watching a glorified JV scrimmage for 3 quarters or more, as happens too often today, only thing ‘regular’ about the preseason being the price over-inflated scrimmage tickets.
For what said is worth, when Hank Stram coached the Chiefs he always tried to win – preseason was no different than regular. In fact, Stram/Chiefs ended with the best regular season AND preseason record in AFL history 1960-1969. Player gripes aside, Stram felt it mattered & in hindsight one can’t argue with the results. Old time Chiefs players told how their legs would be shot before the regular season ended, due Stram liking to play his vets a lot preseason. Then, teams played 6 or sometimes 7 preseason games, the equivalent half a regular season, 1970 defending Champion Chiefs example.
Upshot: Stram’s ‘you play to win the game’ instilled a winning attitude and cultivated expectations, which equated 3 Championships. It’s different 2014, but ‘everything will be ok when (insert a player/s, Charles Chiefs case) is playing’ (and by extension ‘when we really start trying’, nod modern tack holding starters out of preseason), epitomizes where priorities lie today. Such is no more likely produce W’s than it is L’s, element of surprise(‘were holding something back’ being overrated. Chiefs stink with Charles and without him, 2-7 end 2013 affirming, and is nothing more than a bottom line move.
Chiefs will (Hoover vacuum) in 2014… only question is, how forcefully and by how many will L’s outnumber W’s.
Chiefs are 50-1 to have worst NFL record, 17th from bottom, which is Oakland…at 5 – 1…I think the 50-1 is not a bad bet against KC…I like them to be in the hunt, likely they’d need to go 2-14 to win the lost pool, I see them more 4-12, 5-11, but hey an injury to Alex or Charles and yeah 2 wins is possible, worth a 200 buck shot…I’ll try that one…and the under 8 1/2 oh boy now its 220 to win 100, Christ…keeps dropping…opening NFL pick…Philly at Jacksonville is a 10 point fav, and Indy at Denver, Broncos are a 7 point fav…so tease this one big..Eagles -4 over Jags and Denver -1 over Indy…that’s my big pick Sunday
“So you’re saying there’s a chance Chiefs will win the Superbowl”- Lloyd (if not Merry) Christmas
Week 1, Chiefs are leading the Titans 16-14 with under :30 seconds to play in the game. Ryan Succop (who will reportedly sign today with Tennessee) is in to attempt a game-winning field goal. From 43 yards away: the snap, the hold, the kick – it’s ‘up’ and it is…
TEN 17 @KC 16
… good
K no clue what you are talking about I’M SAYING THEY HAVE A CHANCE 50 TO 1 TO HAVE THE WORST RECORD IN THE NFL, NOT THE BEST…no their winning a super bowl should be a million to one…having the NFL’s worst record is 50 to one I’m betting 200 in vegas they will do that…the worst…its a good shot, not great but worth a shot, hey I’ll gamble 200 to win 10 grand on a team that might win only 3 games…I think they will not be the worst but close, worth a shot.
PS on a mid size bet game one I take Titans on a teas with Eagles..so I get 11 points, plus Titans here, I like that a ton…Eagles – 4 over Jags, I like that too..on a two team tease…yes I think Titans straight up beat Chiefs…like you do in a close one.
Agree with you re: odds, CG…merely comparing Christmas (Jim Carrey’s character in ‘Dumb & Dumber’), with kool-aid drinking faction Chiefsdom, each prone confuse foregone conclusion with snowball’s chance in hell. From “In Pioli we trust” to “in Dorsey” same, only difference the season’s, 45 and counting, mounting.
The subplot: Cairo Santos makes 3 of 3 field goals to Succop’s single attempt/make, only to see Ryan ‘s Revenge’ one prevail (for an added twist, Santos misses a 4th fg try earlier, in which case KC could have forced TEN to go for a TD in order to win.)