The Road To Glory II: Part VI

Denver Broncos 24, Kansas City Chiefs 9

A loss is a loss is a loss, I just don’t think there is very much to learn from this game. It was kind of bizarre when I took my first break at work on Sunday and checked my phone to see that the Kansas City Chiefs official Twitter — er, X account — tweeted, er, posted, that ‘QB Patrick Mahomes (Illness) – No Game Status Designation.’ I immediately texted my brothers in our group chat ‘Wtf is this.’

Of course at that time I still believed the Chiefs would win some weird game against the Broncos, a thought I carried with me when they were down 7-3 and 14-3 and later 14-9. But the question that I asked my brothers, that wasn’t really a question, turned out to be my own personal postscript for the game itself: What the fuck is this.

Again, what am I supposed to say? What lingering lesson am I left with after a 24-9 loss to maybe one of the three-worst teams in the AFC? Local Kansas City media who need to talk about something and over-reactionary Chiefs fans are stuck pondering the wide receiver room, or lack thereof, and I was kind of checked out from everything before the game even started. Obviously wins are more beneficial than losses. But here is where I am:

(1) The Chiefs entered the game with a 6-1 record; the next-closest team in the AFC West was the Las Vegas Raiders with a record of 3-4. I hadn’t had to invoke the whole ‘motivation in the NFL’ theory that drives so much of these blogs that I write about my favorite football team, because they at game time were riding a six-game winning streak. The Broncos, meanwhile, had lost 16 consecutive games against Kansas City. They clearly gave a fuck, and they won a football game.

(2) The Chiefs this week, this coming week, have to travel to Germany — my own personal ancestral motherland — to play the Miami Dolphins, who unlike the Denver Broncos are actually a good football team. As a man I can’t help but picture myself in a similar spot that the Chiefs were in heading into Week 7, playing a divisional opponent that they had defeated every time they played since 2015, when I was 25 fucking years old, and imagine all the nonsense and bullshit and change in schedule and routine that comes along with it.

(3) For the Chiefs to go on with saying ‘Patrick Mahomes (illness) – No Game Status Designation,’ literally an hour before the game against the Broncos started, signaled to me anyway that some serious bullshit performance was coming down the pike. I’m aware that these all sound like excuses. I mean, they are excuses, in a way.

Am I worried about the Chiefs, though? Nah. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if they came out and won like 38-28 against the Dolphins in Germany. I only say that because I know the media is all week going to be talking about what’s wrong with Kansas City. Maybe it’s something. Maybe it isn’t. I won’t be worried until they lose a game that matters.