Chiefs v Bengals, The Good, the Bad, and the Really Ugly

Shawn Sorter

The best part of watching this game was I got to watch it with my wife and daughters as well as my in-laws Marshall and Lois Bowers who are really super cool. I also had two students, Alex and Grayson, over to watch as well. Gray is a huge Bengals fan. We got to watch the first game this season together. Grayson said,

“As a Bengals fan I want to make sure the refs call a fair game this time as I know the last one was way skewed to their side and I don’t want any reason other than that the Bengals outplayed the Chiefs.” 

The Good

I sure love the comfort of kicking the ball off to start games. Knowing you have the ball to start the 2nd half is a great feeling.

My wife Missy called the first Chiefs possession a perfectly calculated drive. 

Mecole Hardman had a couple of really nice catches, and perhaps we are seeing small glimpses of improvement in his downfield route running and catching.

I like how Jerick McKinnon seems to have the coaches’ trust. He’s our best back right now, but he was here on a one year deal:

Next Gen Stats points out that a pass to Hill in the first half was Mahomes‘ longest time to throw on a TD pass of his career, including the playoffs.

In the 1st half and other select times in the game Patrick had nice pocket awareness, scrambling when needed, buying time often.

Patrick now holds the record for the most touchdowns in a single postseason with 12. At the time I figured he would really be able to add to that.

On back to back plays Ingram had a nice sack and then a knockdown to really push the Bengals back.

The Bad

Our blitzing never seemed to get home, and often when we blitzed everything including the front 4 would come from one side and lose containment allowing Burrow to easily run outside and make plays. 

Hardman had an early drop that popped up in the air that could have been devastating. I’d like to see the stats on this but it sure seems like the Chiefs had more drops this year than any recent time I can recall.

It was a total brain dead play call at the end of the half. Why in the world would you have any player out in a route behind the line of scrimmage?

Everyone should have been in the end zone.  If no one was open Patrick needed to throw it away. We wasted at least 3 points there.The timeout being called prior to the challenge perhaps was needed to confirm that they wanted to challenge, but watching live there was little question we were going to win the review.

Tyreek and Kelce had drops on consecutive plays to start the half forcing us to punt.

We needed our stars to be stars and they were not.

The pass rush rarely getting to Burrow was an issue all day. The Titans sacked him 9 times, but we could only manage one (1) sack? Plus, multiple times Chris Jones and other very strong men had their hands on him, or his jersey, and let him escape.

This one thing if we had done better likely changes the outcome.

Our 2nd level players were also horrible at recognition when Burrow took off to run.

It seemed like someone should have been there multiple times to prevent the 1st down conversions.

Patrick Mahomes was simply horrible in the 2nd half. Yes there were some drops, but our franchise just didn’t have it for 4 quarters in this game. Not even three. It’s possible he never got over his horrible play at the end of the half, sometimes that gets in a players head, or maybe the stars were simply not aligned, who knows.

Our line didn’t protect Patrick very well down the stretch and our receivers were not getting open. I would have liked to see Running Patrick since it is the playoffs, but the Bengals did a good job several times in taking away his angles.

Nick Bolton had a chance to win the game for us with his sliding catch attempt. Hold onto that and you could add that to your career highlight reel son.

It likely would have been the best play to date in his young, impressive career.

Yet another drop by Hill on that 3rd down throw in regulation. The ball was picked off, but top shelf receivers must come down with that. I really, and I mean really, want the Chiefs to get a receiver that can go up and get the ball, that has never been Tyreek’s strength.

The Really Ugly

The officials were worse than either team. That said they did not decide the outcome. They decided not to call much at all, but let a number of blatant things go.

Calls or non calls that favored the Bengals included forcing the Chiefs to use a challenge and possibly a timeout by horrible ball placement on our first drive. Other bad calls include:

• The holding call on Hill that went uncalled on our first drive of the 2nd half,
• Hardman being hit after a fair catch, you literally never see a hit like that go uncalled,
• A late hit out of bounds on Hardman that was very obvious,
• Pringle being held in a route that ended in a Chiefs punt,
• La’Marr Chase once again pushing off this time on L’Jarius Sneed, amazing how the NFL always allows that, if there is sudden separation between two players and no one falls down and the offensive players arms are extended that’s a push off. 

Calls or non calls that favored the Chiefs included not calling the holding in the end zone on us on the Bengals 2nd drive, Sneed holding Chase on Sneed’s interception, and a facemask on Joe Burrow that was missed.

Lastly –> the Halftime Show was a disaster. Can we please listen to the guys talking about football?

I didn’t tune in to listen to a concert. Total fail job by CBS.

Lastly-lastly, I really, and I mean really, like Joe Burrow. He’s the best Joe Cool since the ultimate Joe Cool. I like this Bengals team, and I’ll be pulling for them the rest of the way. They do it the right way. Total class team. We are so fortunate to have this Chiefs team and this quarterback. Just knowing we should be competing at this level each and every year is so satisfying, but I refuse to take it for granted cause you never know when it could end.

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Shawn Sorter — ArrowheadOne

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