Delve Into Lunacy

Wow…what a game. I always make the mistake of paying attention to pre-season and despite knowing that it’s mainly people playing that probably won’t even be on the final team it always skews my opinion of how well the team will do. So needless to say when the Chiefs were 0-4 in the pre-season I wasn’t feeling too hopeful. Now that I’ve seen the first string play for an extended period I’m much more excited. I don’t think they’ll make it to the Super Bowl or anything, but they do look vastly improved compared to last year.

On offense they look pretty similar to past years. I do think Priest is running a little slower than before though. With the exception of the 35 yard run in the first drive he didn’t really do a lot that lived up to his legend. Hopefully that will turn around. Watching Johnson was like watching Priest a few years back. Nearly every time he got his hands on the ball you just knew something interesting was going to happen.

On defense they looked better than in past years but I don’t think they are as good as the low score for the Jets would make it appear they are. Against the run they were looking pretty top notch which is a nice change. I’m also liking that Gunther’s influence finally seems to be showing in regards to how aggressive they are with blitzing the passer. The weak point though remains their pass coverage and once the Jets figured that out they stuck with the air and only ran a few more times the entire game. The defense was better but they had lots of help from the Jets.

My only remaining concern is regards to injuries. Despite the Chiefs being a fairly large team overall they continue to be somewhat frail. How many starters did they lose that game…four or five? The biggest concern is they don’t have much to fall back on after the starters (with the exception of running back) and it was very visible in this game once those guys were out of it. Thankfully, they all seemed to be minor injuries and I’m guessing all of them will be back next week. It does bring up the specter from past seasons though where starters were getting hurt frequently and then the whole season went to shit.

As far as next week in Oakland I’m going with the Chiefs to win by 10. I didn’t watch the game against New England but it sounded like the Raiders got pretty much trounced and never put up much of a fight. The biggest impacts on this game will be the fact that Oakland gets a long rest period since they played on Thursday night and whether all the Chiefs starters are back or not.

For the game in Denver in two weeks I have no clue what to guess yet. Denver was looking pretty shoddy down in Miami today but considering it’s the first week and they have a history of never winning there I won’t use it to just what they’ll do going forward. Despite how good or bad they are they always gives the Chiefs trouble be it in KC or Denver. I’m guessing it will be a close game all the way through. Next weeks games should give me a better feel for what might happen.