Sports fan?

Since I started writing for Sports Grumblings, I decided that I wanted to shift the focus of this blog a little away from the realm of sports. As the baseball season approaches, I'll tentatively be shifting my focus at Sports Grumblings to baseball, and I also plan on starting an entirely new Royals-centric blog as an outlet for my fandom at some point in the nearer future, probably as Hot Stove heats up.

All that being said, I can't help but comment on the Chiefs game today.

Shockingly, the Chiefs should have won this game.

I know, it's hard to fathom.

For their two games prior to their face-off with the Jets, the Chiefs looked like a Division 1AA school playing in the NFL. This time they'd be trotting out Tyler Thigpen who was so bad that the even keeled Joe Posnanski likened his play earlier in the season to an instance in which the Chiefs pulled a player out of the stands to play quarterback. Any Chiefs fan who happened to miss the game would be shocked to hear that seven completions into the game Tyler Thigpen--former 7th round draft pick of the Minnesota Vikings who graduated from Coastal Carolina (apparently, they're a Division 1 school...)--would have a perfect passer rating. Even more astonishing was the fact that he actually continued his solid play until the end of the game, having only one truly reprehensible pass that was fortuitously not picked off.

Moreover, thanks to what should have been the Chiefs second pick-six of the game (Derrick Johnson blowing the first one with 85 yards of open field and the Favre pass hitting him in the numbers) at the 7:48 mark in the fourth quarter, the Kansas City Chiefs led the game with just 3:20 to go, facing a 3rd and 3. Any person who has ever seen a Herm Edwards team play with the lead late in the game knows what happened next. For that matter, any person who saw the first two downs of the series knew what was going to happen. Handoff. To the left. Stopped short of the first down.

If this hadn't been the second straight three-and-out for the Chiefs offense that was the result of conservative play-calling, maybe this wouldn't be an issue.

Unfortunately, late in close games, this is exactly who Herm Edwards is as a coach. He's more conservative than Sarah Palin. Rather than "play[ing] to win the game", Herm's teams have historically played not to lose, and that has cost the Jets and now it is costing the Chiefs.

And tomorrow, I'll probably be finding myself checking the Kansas City Star's website to see if Lamar Hunt has finally done the right thing and shit-canned both Peterson and Edwards.

Chiefs fans need a fresh start.

We certainly deserve it 19 years into the 5-year plan.