Billl

This is the correct answer. With :13 seconds left and a 3 point lead, you really just want to avoid a catastrophe. Here’s what we know to be true… Kansas City has fast players. Byron Pringle has returned multiple kickoffs for TDs. Tyreek Hill in the 2 playoff games against the Bills has a 71 yard catch and run on a short pass, a 64 yard TD catch and run on a short pass, and a 45 yard punt return while Mecole Hardman had a 50 yard run and an ankle breaking 26 yard TD run. These are facts. So the question the coaches have to ask themselves is who do they want on the field defending those guys? Do they want it to be a bunch of special teams guys who are fringe roster players, or do they want their starting defense? It’s 100% reasonable to decide that they want to trust their big money players and that kicking it through the end zone checks the “avoid a catastrophe” box. If they’d squibbed it and an up-man fell on it at the 40, that would have been a disaster. If they’d pooched it and Hardman, Hill, or Pringle had housed it, that would have been a bigger disaster. The narrative would have been “just kick it through the end zone instead of trying to burn 2 seconds”. Instead, people are blaming the special teams for not getting cute and burning 3 seconds off the clock. Seriously, if your mentality is that the defense can defend for 10 seconds but not 13 seconds then you don’t belong on an NFL sideline. The special teams did their job. They put the defense on the field with a 99% chance to win.

I have no idea why people are so willing to believe that the coaching staff that has taken a moribund franchise and turned it into a perennial Super Bowl contender are a bunch of imbeciles. Mistakes were made. You don’t blow a lead with :13 on the clock otherwise, but to think the Special Teams coach is going “gee whiz I didn’t realize that it’s important to tell the Kicker the plan for the kickoff” is just a bizarre coping mechanism.

Some fans will gobble up any BS they’re fed. There is zero chance this is true. My God, people.

That’s not quite correct. If multiple coaches get hired in the same year, 2 comp picks are awarded for the first and only 1 is awarded for additional hires.

Anything can happen, but those red hot Bengals have scored 3 TDs in the postseason. Kansas City has scored 11.

What could possibly go wrong with allowing a last second kick return in the playoffs? Steve Christie, if you’re reading this please weigh in.

Did nobody watch the Rams game? The Buccaneers defended against the shorter throws and Kupp cooked them over the top. If Kelce had been bracketed, you’d have Hardman and Hill to deal with over the top. Your Safeties are great, but they can’t run with those guys. If your strategy is to force Hill to beat you, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Sunday’s game was basically two historically talented QBs playing perfect football. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. The comparisons are inevitable. The only question that has been answered so far is ‘who has a higher ceiling’ and the answer is neither. They are both capable of squeezing every drop out of a game. There’s simply no other way to put it. Brady and Manning were never capable of doing what those two dudes did on Sunday. I’ve always said that Manning was the most perfect QB I ever saw when things were going well, but Brady was the best when things weren’t going his way. Manning simply couldn’t overcome adversity as well, and he had more bad games than Brady. If I’m arguing for one over the other between Josh and Pat so far, I’m taking Pat because his bad games are less bad and less often than Josh’s. The difference on Sunday may have been what happened on November 7th. Both of them had bad days. Pat’s bad day was 20/37 for 166 yards, 1 TD, and no turnovers. Josh’s was 31/47 for 264 yards, 0 TDs, and 3 turnovers. Chiefs beat Green Bay without Rodgers, and Buffalo lost to Jacksonville. Change either outcome, and that game would be played in OP. These guys are both getting better, and it’s hard to imagine what’s next for them. Mahomes is learning how to take what the defense gives him and be methodical while Allen is learning how to stay calm and harness his ability. I’m biased for my guy, but there’s no doubt in my mind that Allen is the biggest threat to his legacy for the next several years. (And the Bills had better be careful not to Cam Newton his career by letting him take so many hits.)

Pick play? There was nobody to pick. There were 4 linemen and 7 deep in coverage. It was essentially a downfield screen where Kelce and Pringle were clearing the way and Tyreek just ran behind them as fast as he could.

For starters, it would have been played in OP. I don’t know how that affects the outcome, though.

Chiefsplanet is an interesting animal. I used to be a frequent poster there but stopped a few years ago due to the level of right-wing extremism that started drowning out pretty much everything there. Sucks because it used to be a really great forum. That said, much of the “toxic” football related stuff is tongue in cheek, so you have to take it with a grain of salt.

This is an awesome thread. I’m glad those of you who came had a great time even though it didn’t end the way you’d hoped. If you ever come back, shoot me a message and I’ll buy you a beer and a folding table. My office is literally a block from Taps on Main that @AdrianW mentioned. I had no idea it was owned by a Bills fan, and I go there quite a bit. This has all the makings of an annual event. Maybe someday you can host it if you ever get a domed stadium downtown.

Yeah, what a disaster that was…

You can make an argument that the two worst coaching decisions in that game were made by Reid. At the end of the first half the Chiefs were in position for a 50 yard FG. The Bills were conceding the run, but Andy elected not to take it and settled for a long FG that hit the upright. In the 4th quarter, Hill had the long punt return that put the Chiefs in position to take a 2 score lead. He handed the ball off twice setting up a 3rd and 1 where he lined a backup TE at QB and ran an option to the short side of the field for a big loss. You know who didn’t line up a backup TE at QB instead of his franchise guy when the game was on the line? Greg McDermott.

This place is unreal. Your OC and DC are among the top HC candidates. Your defense was #1 in yards and #1 in points. Your offense scored 984 points in the past two seasons which were the two highest scoring seasons in team history. The team led the NFL in point differential with 194 which was the best in team history by a mile. But you lost the greatest game in history on the road against the best team in the NFL, and it’s time to clean house. Perfect. Find me the coach who could coach circles around Andy Reid, a guy with 19 postseason wins under his enormous belt. Then convince him to move to Buffalo and take a job where the last guy got fired with a 49-32 record and back to back division titles. It’s a tough sell, so you’ll probably have to tell them that Andy Reid fired his DC after the team finished with the #31 defense so it’s all good.

It would be likely to fail, but so was kicking off. Field position meant virtually nothing at that point in the game. Mahomes was in the middle of what ended up being a streak of 9/9 passing for 137 yards and 2 TDs. You could have made them drive 200 yards, and it still would have come down to whether or not you could get a red zone stop. For context, the Chiefs ran 73 offensive plays (excluding punts and FG attempts). 41 of those plays were on first down. The chances of stopping them from getting a first down when they’re likely running a 4 down offense was virtually nil.

If McDermott goes 2-10 in the postseason from here until the end of his career, he’s Marty Schottenheimer. Feel like taking that bet?

That last word is critical. People love to hand waive Brady’s accomplishments because you can point to some crazy luck he’s had, but that’s true of pretty much every championship run ever.

He gave himself up. Play was dead right then.

I’m a big Mizzou, guy and Kroenke is a big donor. He’s still an absolute scum human being.

Agree 100%. When my team is in it, I want to be able to focus on the game and then go party if we win or sulk if we lose. When my team isn’t in it, it’s just an excuse to rage.

He has a true #1 WR and the number one defense. He and the team were good enough to win it all this year. Winning it all takes some luck (or your QB to marry a supermodel who practices witchcraft).

The Bills should clean house, and the reason I say this is I’m a Chiefs fan and Buffalo has put together a top 5 front office and coaching staff combination in the league. Nothing would make me happier than to see a rival hoisted by its own petard. Some here can’t see past the end of their noses. It took a solid coaching job to have this be a close game at the end. Kansas City led nearly the entire game. After every single one of their possessions the Chiefs were either tied or had the lead. Kansas City had 130 more yards of offense than the Bills did, and neither team turned the ball over or had penalty issues. That the game was a coin flip with only a few minutes remaining is a testament to the fact that McDermott and company pulled a LOT of correct levers. They were aggressive on fourth down, took the short stuff early before taking the top off the defense later, and cleaned up with Davis when the Chiefs took away Diggs. There are a million ways to second guess the strategy at the end, and mistakes were made, but you’ve got to view the situation in totality. Y’all weren’t playing Detroit. You were on the road playing a team that has hosted the last 3 AFCCGs coached by a future HOFer. In the same game last season, you saw Hill take a short pass for 70 yards and Hardman bust a run for 50 yards. A few weeks ago, these coaches saw Kelce end the game by taking a short pass 60 yards for a house call. In just this game, Hill had already taken a short pass for a 65 yard TD and nearly scored on a long punt return. You think they remembered that when deciding not to play press coverage at the end? I sure do. It didn’t work, and that’s football. A HOF coach called plays for a HOF QB to pass to a HOF WR and HOF TE, and a K who had missed 2 kicks in the game made a 48 yarder outdoors in January. Sucks to be on the wrong end of it, but only one team can win. You want to see true screw ups? Watch the Cowboys run a draw play to run out the clock down 7. Watch the Packers only send out 10 players to block a game winning FG coming out of a timeout. Those are inexcusable screw ups. The end of game strategy last night is one you’d like a do-over on. In the end, you had 11 exhausted defensive players come up agonizingly short against another great team. You don’t tear down the foundation of the (second?) best team in the NFL because they lost by an eyelash in what might be literally the greatest football game ever played. But if you do, I’ll celebrate.

Sports is a zero sum proposition. That’s what makes it so great and so awful.

Because the alternative is giving credit to the other team, and obviously that’s not an option. Kelce and Hill only combined for 41 catches and 536 receiving yards in the last 2 playoff games against the Bills so it can’t be that they’re just HOF caliber players who made HOF caliber plays. It must be that the DC of the number 1 defense in the NFL is a bad coach. Yes