The Chiefs won the AFC West by playing to the strengths, avoiding mistakes, and hiding their weaknesses well. It all came crumbling down like a house of cards in the second half of their playoff loss the Ravens.
Turnovers: Kansas City only turned the ball over 14 times in the regular season, which ranked in the top-5 in NFL history. They turned it over four times in the second half against Baltimore, and five times overall. The Chiefs needed to play clean football to win, and they seemed to panic -- especially the quarterback.
Matt Cassel: The awful final two weeks for Cassel take some of the shine off his impressive season. The ugly truth: Cassel completed only 19-of-51 passes for only 185 yards and five interceptions the final two weeks. That’s gruesome. It wasn’t really pressure getting to Cassel as much as coverages confusing him.
Lack of wideouts: It says a lot that Kevin Curtis, signed earlier in the week, played over Chris Chambers on Sunday. It says even more that Curtis had more catches than Dwayne Bowe. (Bowe had an o-fer, then skipped his post-game interview.) G.M. Scott Pioli has fixed a lot in Kansas City, but their wide receiver position remains ridiculously sub-standard.
Bowe is a great fantasy receiver, but came up small against big defenses too often.
We can’t really fault the defense for Kansas City’s loss. They recorded a few big sacks, forced a turnover early, and played very well in the red zone for most of the contest. The Chiefs defense kept them in the game, but Baltimore just wore them down with an amazing 78 offensive plays.
“I thought we got great experience for a lot of young guys that hadn’t been part of this,” coach Todd Haley said after the game.
Haley is right to point out that he has a young team that could learn a lot from this experience. It’s also a game that points out Kansas City’s shortcomings to the team’s front office and coaching staff.
The Chiefs won a lot more games this year than anyone expected. They are ahead of schedule, but their final two games showed how much further they still have to go.
