CHARLOTTE, N.C. | Well, it was fitting that this was the fifth week of the season because the Chiefs have now gone through all five stages of grief. There seemed to be no denial left in the locker room after the Chiefs&#8217; nauseating 34-0 loss Sunday to Carolina. There wasn&#8217;t much anger. The Chiefs&#8217; players were not in the mood for bargaining, and few players even seem very depressed.</p><p>All that is left for this team is acceptance.</p><p>&#8220;Games like this are going to happen,&#8221; Chiefs running back Larry Johnson said in his brief and thoroughly indifferent press briefing. He answered as many questions (two) as he had yards. Still, his seven-word answer more or less captured the spirit of the locker room. Yeah, it was a tough loss. Hey, we&#8217;re a young team. Look, we&#8217;re still rebuilding. Games like this are going to happen.</p><p>Thing is, games like <em>this</em> should never happen, not if you&#8217;re rebuilding, not if you&#8217;re rehabilitating, not if you&#8217;re regressing, not if you&#8217;re redecorating, not if you&#8217;re Regis and Kelly. Teams lose. Teams will get blown out. Teams will sometimes even get embarrassed. But what happened to the Chiefs on Sunday was something else, like something out of a kid&#8217;s movie. You kept waiting for someone to bring in Gus the Kicking Mule.</p><p>For posterity:</p><p>&#8226;The Chiefs were shut out on a dry field for the first time in 15 years. The Chiefs were shut out against Oakland in 2002 and at home against the Rams in 1994, but both of those were in the mud. Sunday&#8217;s game was on a fast track, at least for one team.</p><p>&#8226;The Chiefs managed 127 yards of offense, their lowest total since &#8212; get this &#8212; October 12, 1986, at Cleveland. Yeah. That was one day after president Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev met in Iceland. Yeah. The Chiefs&#8217; leading rusher Jamaal Charles (18 yards) was not even <em>born </em>then. Yeah. Those Browns were coached by Marty Schottenheimer. Yeah. Long time ago.</p><p>&#8226;Only it gets worse. The Chiefs got 50 of those yards in a meaningless fourth quarter, long after the Panthers&#8217; defense had checked out. At one point midway in the third quarter, Carolina&#8217;s fourth-string receiver, Mark Jones, had 19 yards receiving. The Chiefs had 18 total yards.</p><p>&#8226;The Chiefs&#8217; defense gave up 441 yards to Carolina, which is the most the Panthers have piled up on anyone in almost two years. And perhaps the most telling play came in the third quarter when Carolina&#8217;s Muhsin Muhammad caught a pass over the middle and outran the entire Chiefs defense to the end zone. Why was this telling? Because it seemed pretty apparent that 35-year-old Muhsin Muhammad is a lot faster than <em>every single player </em>on the Chiefs&#8217; supposedly talented and fast young defense.</p><p>&#8226;This was the biggest blowout victory in Carolina Panthers history.</p><p>So no, this wasn&#8217;t just a game that happens, wasn&#8217;t just a bump in the road or a slip of the tongue or a flat tire on the highway or a temporary power outage on a stormy night or any of that. This was a disaster, a kick in the teeth, a humiliation galore. This was the lowest point of Chiefs Home Makeover, which is saying something because the last two years the Chiefs have had more low points than Death Valley.</p><p>And yet the Chiefs&#8217; locker room had a surprising and disconcerting chipperness after the game. I&#8217;m not saying anyone was happy, because it wasn&#8217;t that. And I&#8217;m not saying that after games like this football players and coaches should lock themselves in stockades and allow quarterbacks with accuracy to throw tomatoes at them. But, from coach Herm Edwards on down, the Chiefs seemed three connecting flights away from reality.