Josh Kingsley

The regular season is history, the CHIEFS are the #1* seed and the playoffs start this weekend. My favorite part of all of this: the CHIEFS don’t play this coming weekend. The CHIEFS and Eagles get to watch just over a third of the league beat themselves up, just over half the league burn down their front office and coaching staffs, and focus on prep and health. An NFL playoff #1 seed is the most important schedule chip in all of pro sports. In baseball and to some degree basketball I view extended time off as rust accumulation.  Not in the NFL, it’s natural anti-inflammatory medication. Baseball is a game of rhythm. Football is a game of attrition. Andy Reid is pretty good with the extra week too.

I’ll recap the CHIEFS game a bit later, but there’s not much to talk about. The CHIEFS don’t play, so there is nothing to project. See you next week this time!!

Just kidding. I am using this bye week to showcase some things I like and dislike from the season as we head to the post season. Plus, I’ll give my current state playoff bracket prediction. That I’ll update weekly.

Things I Like

These will be things mostly football related and mostly CHIEFS affected. The first item on the docket is Damar Hamlin’s release from the hospital. This is the huge update we all needed going into the post season. The Bills, and all teams for that matter, can focus on football with a clean conscious, and Hamlin can get on track to making his NFL return. Finish your full Christen Ericksen, Damar!!

The next thing I like is a farewell. DirecTV signed off NFL Sunday ticket for the final season. DirecTV created the product in 1994 and provided the non-network coverage for 28 years. I talked about this in my pending new CHIEFScast episode when recording Tuesday. This is truly an end of an era. I referenced a CNN Business article that plainly stated:

“The popular NFL Sunday Ticket package is leaving DirectTV and heading to YouTube TV.”

Dane Cook was a popular comedian in the early 2000s. For a while he was everywhere. He was the guy me and my college friends quoted constantly. His fame rose to meteoric levels, and then the hate poured. People accused Dane of stealing jokes and being an all around bad guy. I always liked him and pretty much still do. Can’t say I listen to his stuff much now, but I have fond memories. One of my favorite bits is this mildly NSFW bit about Monopoly:

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Why do I bring this up? That’s DirecTV for me. We all had it and all watched it. None of us liked it. Good riddance to DirecTV. I look forward to streaming YouTube in full support of our Google overlords.

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Good Old Fashioned Churn

I have seen many instances and definitions of churn in the business world. My favorite application came from a co-worker and Vikings fan, Scott.

Scott’s definition of churn is result from someone tactically pushing their agenda at the expense of strategy. A typical example was a higher up setting side meetings with various teams to accomplish their short term goals. The issue was improper focus or even conflict with agreed team goals. Scott compared this to a boat wake in shallow water: you aren’t going fast, you tear up the lake bed, it doesn’t make the day any more fun, no one really wanted it, but we all had to experience and address it. Wasted resources were the only results. I was never a fan of organizational churn. Why is this in the like section?

I don’t like my organization to churn, but it’s cool when it happens to a competitor. The CHIEFS created a monumental amount of organizational churn in the other 3 AFC West clubs, and it all started in the 2018 season. Their dominance over the division is so firm and palpable it is causing higher ups in all 3 clubs to manufacture churn. Here are the highlights:

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•  Raiders picked Derek Carr as their scapegoat jettisoning a top 15 QB

•  Denver fired a first year head coach in season, but Hackett probably did much of that to himself

•  LA put Staley on notice

• The division spent $600M and a mountain of draft capital at a ZERO% 2022 ROI

•  Bronco lineman, Quinn Meinerz, used his post game presser to whine about snow globe

•  A Raiders fan brought “Bench McDaniels” and “We Deserve Better” signs to Allegiant

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None of those activities got any AFC West club a half step closer to Kansas City. Most made it much worse. Pure churn.

Things I Dislike

The CHIEFS are solidly avoiding churn, but that does not mean it isn’t looming. Obviously, I don’t like that. More on that momentarily.

The first thing I dislike is the above mentioned Raiders fan getting the boot from home security at Allegiant. Maybe he was being loud and profane, but I didn’t see anything like that. The whole thing seemed like sour grapes during a time Mark Davis was complaining about all the road fans in the stands. Hey Mark, remember the time your fans moved a bad team to the ultimate destination city with cheap travel to it? Interesting, neither do I. Enjoy the sleeping in the bed you made. At least the sheets are 600 thread count (Allegiant is so so nice).

My next dislike is the 7 seed. Do we really need the Dolphins and Seahawks and their combined 4 wins from the last 6 weeks of the season? The answer is NO… and their games waste everyone’s time.

The Looming Scenario

Both the Bills and CHIEFS have substantial work to reach the AFC Championship. However, all the talk of everything is the potential neutral field if they meet there. This is unfortunate because it looks past two weeks of playoffs, works people into a frenzy, and all because of result of the league “solving” a non-solve-able thing. More pure churn. The only upside is the churn is” it occurs almost exclusively with the fan space. CHIEFS seem pretty locked in. I assume this infiltrates their mind on some level, but it’s clearly not driving any behavior. Fans are beside themselves. This 610 with Bob Fescoe dropped this on the neutral field subject (note: go to 00:60 seconds to start listening, otherwise you’ll get a commercial, plus you’ll need to stop it for the final minute or… you’ll get another commercial):

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The things that jump out at me most are the fascinating details, the notes about the Bills and CHIEFS commentary on location, and how ready for this exercise the league seems. It’s almost like a protocol in place.

Why This Matters

My biggest problem is the implication. The NFL clearly didn’t have a protocol in place for an injury situation like Damar Hamlin. Neither did the broadcast partners. The entire scene was unsettling and the unknown was a major contributor. An equal level of unpreparedness emerged when it came time to make sure the final seeds were “fair”. Many argue the NFL rule book had a protocol, but the league officials disagreed. However, now that the potential of a neutral field AFC title game is a real possibility the NFL has to look at plans. The plans (leaks, to be factual at this point) came together almost overnight. I understand this is straight forward planning, but it just seems smooth. This feels like a test market more than a one off situation.

The idea of the league moving conference title games to new, domed stadiums in big cities with tons of amenities all in an effort to max revenue seems very on brand for the NFL. Fans, AKA the consumers, are not receiving this theoretical product well. Season ticket holders are taking it worst. I had an exchange with one on social media this morning. My message was empathy. I considered season tickets for the sole purpose of cost controlled playoff games. Ultimately, living in Wisconsin and working most Saturdays caused me to pass. In a world where I did buy them this would irk me. The idea of going through a lottery sucks. Winners of the lottery get the chance to buy an inflated, premium priced ticket AND cover travel to an expensive city to watch the game at… NOT Arrowhead! That’s downright harsh, and same for Bills ticket holders.

Final Warning

The concept seems eerily possible. Most common comments from fellow fans who view this a one off situation is that owners won’t let the revenue walk and it potentially kills competition. The revenue comment makes sense from a gate and concession standpoint. Cities additionally lose hotel, restaurant, etc. revenue. Simple accounting and reallocation of funds fix the team issue but the league doesn’t care about the cities’ revenue. The competition part makes more sense. As mentioned earlier the #1 is important and worth playing regular season to completion to achieve. Taking true home field has the potential to water down effort, but the BYE week keeps the #1 seed truly relevant. Unless, of course, the league adds an 8th playoff team. That seems almost inevitable at some point.

I cannot write this off as a mere reaction to an impossible situation.

I hate the idea of an 8th playoff seed for 2X the same reasons as the disdain for 7th seed. Last dislike. Why can’t I take my kids to this?

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It looks like good, clean Wisconsin family fun.

Sunday Night Story

I love living in Milwaukee. One of my favorite things is the corner bar. Converted house dive bars are all over the city and old suburb communities. I walk to end of my alley and find two of them. My favorite place is Walker Inn. It feels like an episode of Cheers (I need to identify what character I am). I often find myself in there for Packer games and last Sunday was once such instance. The regular crowd shuffled in and we all exchanged pleasantries. Shortly after kickoff a lady I didn’t recognize walks in with a giant Tupperware of homemade cookies and starts walking around offering them. My corner of the bar politely declined, and she was having none of it. She immediately went all grandma and shoved the container in our faces insisting we eat something.

One of the other patrons made a comment about having a nut allergy and noted the smell of nuts. She quickly responded that they are fine because it’s just peanut butter and the cookies are fresh. We all had cookies. Please note I am not making light in any way of nut allergies as I do know the gravity of them and take it seriously. However, I did have to laugh as she saw right through his fib and demanded we take her hospitality. They were peanut butter chocolate chip and hands down the best bar cookies I’ve ever had.

Well Pack, I Guess Go

I pulled out my phone at the beginning of the game and wrote out my bracket for the playoffs. The Packers were peaking at the right time, and I made a bold prediction: this is the season we FINALLY get the Packers-CHIEFS Super Bowl. So much for that… and so much for my prop bet on my local media appearances, which was going to set at 2.5.

Current Playoff Predictions

Bills over Dolphins
Bengals over Ravens
Jags over Chargers

Bengals over Bills
CHIEFS over Jags

CHIEFS over Bengals in Arrowhead and all the neutral talk is, well, neutralized

49ers over Seahawks
Vikings over Giants
Bucs over Cowboys

49ers over Bucs
Eagles over Vikings

Eagles over 49ers

CHIEFS over Eagles

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CHIEFS Game Recap

Kansas City was ready for this game. They could have easily ended the neutral talk with a loss. Division rivalry losses are always explainable. Jarrett Stidham lit up the great 49ers D the previous week and Josh Jacobs was the NFL rushing leader and KC supposedly couldn’t stop the run and… it was on the road. All great and somewhat excusable reasons to take the loss.

The CHIEFS controlled the game wall to wall. Defense was stingy and on point. The offense looked tuned to exact precision. All aspects looked locked in and motivated. The Kansas City CHIEFS are ready for the playoffs. They are ready to take care of business divisional weekend. Where will the AFC Championship be? Maybe Atlanta. It doesn’t matter, the CHIEFS will be ready. Another Bengals tilt? Remember the Titans. Bring it on.

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Josh Kingsley — ArrowheadOne and Arrowhead Kingdom

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