Laddie Morse
It’s hard to live a life without “expectations.” Setting expectations is what I spent most of my educational career doing, as a teacher. That doesn’t mean the Kansas City Chiefs don’t have expectations. They do. In fact, their expectations for themselves may be higher than ours are for them. However, the Chiefs are one of 32 NFL teams and expecting them to win the Super Bowl every year, much less getting there, may be beyond any kind of reasonable expectation.
Paul Pulley (RIP), who used to write for us here at ArrowheadOne, once wrote a piece called, “Chiefs: Unrealistic Expectations” in which he outlined the expectations we have for our team:
- “We want… our offense to score a touchdown on every possession. We want our defense to never allow a 1st down and preferably to force a turnover on every possession of our opponent.
- We want… our punter to do nothing but be a holder for PATs, but on the off chance he has to punt, we want the ball to go at least 50 yards every time and have it downed inside the 5 yard line.
- We want… our place kicker to kick the ball out of the end zone on every kickoff, and to never miss a field goal, no matter the distance or the conditions of the weather or the field.
- We want… our team to win every single game, and to do so in a convincing fashion. 70-0 blowouts on a weekly basis shouldn’t be too much to ask for, should it?”
The Chiefs vaunted quarterback said this in the past week:
“It’s definitely disappointing… we expect to be in the [Super Bowl] and win it. Anything less is a failure.”
It’s one thing for the players to have those high expectations… than for the fans to have them. Sure, it gets harder once our team is able to get to the big game and then overcome a deficit on the way to bringing home a Lombardi Trophy. It may be even harder after returning to the Super Bowl and losing it the very next year. Now that the Chiefs have been denied a third year in a row of returning to the Super Bowl, it doesn’t seem at all reasonable that Chiefs Kingdom would have lowered expectations, does it?
However, that may not be appropriate.
The irony is that Paul Pulley wrote his piece about unrealistic expectations back in December of 2019, shortly before the Chiefs made their run to the Super Bowl, and won it all. Remember, “Do we have time to run WASP?” I’m being facetious… of course you do. That’s part of the problem.
If we are projecting our own personal expectations onto the team, that may be causing the most difficult of expectations to deal with. Many of of us who have, out of this world intentions for our team, may be revealing that it comes from out of this world intentions we have misplaced that stem from our own issues.
Some of it is caused by the media too of course. How many times have we heard of media types predicting or projecting the outcome of a specific game. Now, you can even bet on when someone will die. So, do we have expectations these days. I’d say it’s out of control.
Let’s not forget that just 9 years ago, the Chiefs were coming off of a 2-and-14 season, and fans were forking over thousands of dollars, to pay for things like:
- A website called: “Save Our Chiefs” and
- A banner pulled behind a plane with things listed like: Return Hope, Fire Pioli (the GM), and Blackout Arrowhead.
“I watched this team rip my soul out for literally my ENTIRE LIFE…”
Wow. Just wow. I’ve been following the Chiefs since their first Super Bowl victory, but I guess my life doesn’t revolve around the Chiefs like it does for some. I never gave my “soul” to the Kansas City Chiefs, so if you are one of those fans, I guess I should apologize? Not really, I just think we need to get some kind of perspective.
Thankfulness
Blake Cripps (the Tweet above) goes on to make some good points about not thinking that 4 straight AFC Championship games is a failure and that we should be thankful for Andy Reid, Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill, Tyrann Mathieu, Melvin Ingram, Eric Bieniemy, Clark Hunt, Steve Spagnuolo and so much more. I used to tell my students, “It’s hard to be angry if you are in a state of thankfulness.”
That’s what I’m suggesting we Chiefs fans need right now… some thankfulness to temper our crazy making expectations.
What Do I Expect?
I might suggest… change the word “expect” to “hope.”
- I hope the Chiefs have a great offseason
- I hope that Brett Veach can re-sign both Orlando Brown and Tyrann Mathieu
- I hope the Chiefs win the draft finding a great DE, LB and DT in the process
- I hope the Chiefs win the AFC West
- I hope the Chiefs host another AFC Championship
- I hope that Travis Kelce has more than 1,000 yards receiving again
- I hope that Tyreek Hill has another 1,000 yard receiving season
- I hope that the Chiefs can find a great #2 WR
Expectations? Not as much as these are “Hopes.”
Sunday, I turned the TV channel over to the Pro Bowl and saw the way the defenses were — weren’t — tackling and immediately thought: “I didn’t know the Chiefs were playing today?” While that made me laugh for a moment, it made me realize that I have some unrealistic expectations of the team and my cynicism momentarily got the better of me. Then… I realized that so many of us were in the same boat and thus… this piece.
If we change our expectations to hopes, I think we’ll all be in a much better place. At least, I know I will be. What do you think?
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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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