Chiefs, World Cup and the Best News of the Decade

Josh Kingsley

We are past Halloween, which means one thing: many facets of our society, notably retail, are on to Christmas (or holidays in a PC sense). Displays flipped overnight at all major big box stores in a true effort to maximize consumerism. Radio stations have already started to mix in the festive music as well.

Quick note: I cannot stand the holiday music. I am not a scrooge and I can’t really pinpoint specifics, but I consider it an assault to my senses. The one speculation I will make is that my time in the church Christmas mass choirs probably has some effect on this position. My time as an event DJ also tempers this opinion to relative silence. I decided long ago that my official stance on music is to accept anything that makes a group happy and holiday/Christmas music certainly does. The last upacking this thought comment: can’t we wait until after Thanksgiving to do all this?

That all said here is my comment for the week. Please sing it in your head to the appropriate tune: Happy BYE week!! It’s the most horrible time of the year!!

I will be very direct and up front with my hatred of the BYE week. It’s great the team gets rest and prep time, but it sucks to miss a week of preferred viewing. Life is simply better with football in it (even if it is a horror show), and CHIEFS football is the best. There is not a game to recap, so I am going mostly random thoughts.

Figure Out Your Schedule

We are all busy people. It is incredibly difficult to manage the constantly mounting pile of personal and professional commitments and most of us are not superheroes. I spread myself quite thin, so I know how real the struggle can be. However, I believe in the guiding principle that I and we all can and will find the time for important things. There is one important thing, at least in my neck of the woods, that large circles has chosen to punt. The unfortunate reality is we are only hurting the children by avoiding a simple fact.

HALLOWEEN IS OCTOBER 31!!

It ‘s the 30th, 29th, or the last Saturday in October. October 31st. That day has the ability to fall on 7 possible days of the week, and every single one of them is acceptable to trick or treat. To all the parties who pushed for the universal last Saturday: figure out your schedule and quit screwing over the kids.

The Best News of the Decade

The offseason was wild and a key component of the oddity was the Tom Brady saga. My intention was to comment extensively on the situation, but I can cover it with 3 bullets:

I believe the divorce proceedings began, and TB returned to football as a result. Not the other way around.
My default is to stay removed from celebrities as much as possible, but I feel oddly invested here due to the sheer amount of time committed to following TB. I truly hope the situation is as amicable as publicly described, and that the co-parenting is smooth moving forward.
I hope Brady starts to look less distracted and more like Tom Brady… soon. Then I hope he gets the Bucs into the playoffs, lose horrifically, and TB retires at the end of the season. A broadcast booth is where he belongs now, and he will be excellent.

I sped through that to celebrate the breaking news of Wednesday. Dan Snyder is exploring selling the Commanders. He is the worst owner in US pro sports, and it isn’t particularly close. I have been in countless board rooms and selling situations in various sized companies in multiple industries over my career. Sometimes you end up in negotiations or projects with horrible people. The worst ones are smarmy, self-serving, litigious jerks, that believe it’s healthy to burn every bridge in route to getting their way. Every conversation with these individuals is a chore and a half, you yearn for the interaction to end, and dread the next time you cross paths. Dan Snyder is “that guy” in the NFL Then you add in all the workplace stuff, and you simply have the worst. He cannot leave quickly enough.

World Cup Preview

The World Cup kicks off two weeks from Sunday. It is no secret I love soccer, and will be glued to the TV for it. The other non-secret is this is an NFL site and I’m the minority. I am here to make a short sales pitch: give soccer a chance. It takes a bit to get into it, but once there, it is the deepest rabbit hole in sports. At some point I will provide more detail on other structures and competitions, but for today I’ll stick to the World Cup.

The World Cup in particular is a special competition for me as it got me into the sport. I profiled as a soccer-hater in college. Daniel Tosh has a joke about soccer that essentially says, he refuses to watch a bunch of guys run around for 2 hours to end in a draw.

I was right there with him until 2006. My job at the time was administrative work for a hotel organization and there was a TV in the office. Sports channels are my default, and the summer programming suddenly included substantial World Cup coverage. The entire exercise was dead on arrival with the notable exception of US presence. I will pay attention to about anything that give the US a chance to win. The USMNT failed to make it out of the group, but they had a chance going into match 3. I know next to nothing about the country of Ghana, but I am a sports hater of them since 2006. From that point I loosely followed until 2010. I note that as the moment I became a soccer fan.

How the Field Sets

The path to soccer fandom and intelligence was a hill to climb. Some of the rules are incredibly subjective and the format is different than anything we normally do in North America. My goal here is to simplify the gap so it is easy for you. It’s the holidays, so I pay it forward. The first thing I point out is this is not the World Cup, it’s the World Cup Final. A World Cup Final happens every 4 years, but the qualifying for the final occupies almost all of the time between them. There are over 200 countries in the world, and they almost all have a national team. The final is 32, so the process to get there is long. All nation teams fall into one of 6 federations, and each federation receives a set number of teams in the final.

A federation gains and loses spots based on how their nations rank. Picture the NCAA, the conferences when it comes to the at large bids. The Big 12 gets more teams than the Sunbelt because the conference is simply better. A formula implication exists in the NCAA, but it is explicit in the World Cup. Here are the federations and allocated spots:

FIFA World Cup Qualification

Why the or’s and +1’s? Four of the federations play for a spot. UEFA and CAF are Europe and Africa respectively and have set spot counts. CONCACAF and OFC are North America and the island nations SE of Asia. Those federations produce a nation to play for a single spot. AFC and CONMEBOL are Asia and South America playing for a spot.

What Was the US Path to the Final

The US is part of CONCACAF, which includes 34 nations. Qualifying starts with all the small Caribbean islands fighting for chances to play into the final 8. The top 5 (US, Mexico, etc.) move straight to the final 8. All teams play a home and away vs all other nations for a total 14 games. Wins = 3 pts, draws = 1, and top 3 point totals move to the World Cup Final. The 4th place team, this year Costa Rica, plays the match against Oceana, this year New Zealand. Costa Rica won, so CONCACAF gets 4 teams for this one. Last note: the host nation is always in the field. Qatar nabbed a spot that they had no chance of earning.

How the Competition Works

Real, fair question: why does a 32 team tournament take a month? In short, it’s not just a bracketed tournament. The first step is group play to set the bracket. Eight groups of 4 teams set via random draw. The one exception is the host, which is always in group A and the first match of the competition. Group play consists of a game against each nation for a total of 3 per nation. The points are the same as the CONCACAF where wins = 3 and draws = 1. The top 2 teams by points move to the knockout phase, which is a standard 16 team single elimination bracket. Final field formulaically sets with the first round being group A vs group B, C vs D, etc. A1 plays B2, B1 vs A2, etc.

Does the US Have a Shot?

This is the million dollar question. Let’s look at their path to get out of the group and potential first knockouts. Soccer tournaments always carry a “group of death,” which is exactly what it sounds like, and this year that designations goes to group B. The US shares this group with England, Wales and Iran. England is among the favorites to win the cup, and all 4 teams are in the top 20 of global rankings.

A final point total of 4-5 is the threshold to advance to the knockouts. Group of death rarely ends up with a 9 point runaway due to the competition. The US formula is simple: do not take a loss, and find a win. Bam, 5 points. England should win this group due to their overall quality of players. My final group projection is England and the US leaving with 7 and 5 respective points.

The first knockout round puts them against the winners of group A. I view group A as very straight forward. Qatar and Ecuador are lucky to be part of the competition. Netherlands are high class and should win the group potentially taking all 9 points. Senegal is a top 20 team that should handle the also-rans. In this scenario the US faces the Netherlands in the first round of the knockout. Anything can happen, but that is where I see their journey ending.

I will reiterate my pitch –> give soccer a shot. The World Cup is a global fanfare and the opportunity to root for the literal collective home team. You just may enjoy it enough to follow a new sport.

Trade Deadline Recap

My bonus column for the week was a full recap and take of the Toney trade. That was not the desired side of the ball, position or player for most fans, but I maintain it was good business. The only other trade for the CHIEFS was unloading CB Fenton to the Falcons for a conditional 7th round pick, which equates the trade to a salary dump. Per overthecap.com the CHIEFS sit with $5.2M ($5,264,851) in cap space. Most fans, self included, wanted an edge rusher via trade. My desire was for a smart trade for an edge, which roughly means no multiple first round type deals. That took the Carolina Panther’s Burns immediately out of the fold. The main name the CHIEFS appeared to monitor was Josh Allen of the Jacksonville Jaguars. It appears to me the price was simply too high, so I applaud the judgement to not mortgage the future.

The top edge that moved was Bradley Chubb. There is no point discussing that name further as the Broncos were not sending him to make them even more miserable. I wanted a trade that works, sooo… I do have a level of disappointment. My goal is to focus the disappointment in proper directions. We were never making the Chubb, Allen and Burns trades, so that is a useless disappointment. I see 3 trades the CHIEFS could have made. These are based on the teams trading and the price paid by the acquiring team. They include:

Washington Times

William Jackson III – CB

Washington sent him and a 2025 7th round pick to Pittsburgh for a 2024 6th rounder. This is essentially Monopoly money for CB depth. Is he better than Fenton, who we just shipped out? I think so.

Star Tribune

T.J. Hockenson – TE

This one is a bona fide head-scratcher. First, why was this guy available? Second, why in the world was he traded to a division rival? Moving past that T.J. and 2023 4th and 2024 conditional 4th for 2023 2nd and 2024 3rd seems very cost effective for a TE of his pass catching caliber. Picture him and Kelce on the field together…

NJ.com

Robert Quinn – DE

This is the edge we should have acquired. A 2023 4th got it done for the Eagles. Surely, the Bears would have preferred an AFC destination opposed to an NFC team too.