Yes, it will sound weird: But this was more like it. There was something deeply satisfying watching Sunday&#8217;s calamity at Arrowhead. Sure, you can look at the dark side of the Chiefs&#8217; stunning 30-27 overtime loss to Tampa Bay on Sunday. You can point out that the Chiefs managed to mismanage a 21-point lead and four gift turnovers and still somehow lose for the 16th time in 17 games.</p><p>But, you know, I don&#8217;t think this was a dark day at all. I think this, finally, was the Kansas City Chiefs team we had expected to see all season.</p><p>This was the raw, undisciplined, brilliant, stupid, talented, infuriating and, yes, even somewhat encouraging team that the Chiefs had been promising since the end of that awful 2007 season. These were the young and hungry and clueless Chiefs. They made spectacular plays and breathtaking blunders. They mixed winning moments with some of the most brain-dead football you ever saw. They blew out Tampa Bay then just blew it.</p><p>And this was what, I think, many Chiefs fans signed up for at the beginning. Let&#8217;s face it, just about everyone in town was tired of running on the Chiefs treadmill of mediocrity. The Chiefs would be semi-good, and then they would sign a few free agents to excite the masses. Then they would be semi-bad. They would bring in a new coordinator. Then they would be semi-good again. Big fun.</p><p>Over the last 11 years, as you know, the Chiefs have a losing record, and they have made the playoffs only twice, and they have not won a single playoff game, and they&#8217;ve had a few big stars and some terrible offenses and some atrocious defenses, and they&#8217;ve had more plans than Fred from the old &#8220;Scooby Doo&#8221; cartoons.</p><p>Finally, this season, they were going to break out of the rut. They were going young. They rid themselves of the old guys. They went into full rebuilding mode. &#8220;Everyone will see the plan,&#8221; Chiefs coach Herm Edwards guaranteed. We were all supposed to watch these young Chiefs run around, and be aggressive (even if that meant making mistakes), and play inspired football. We were all supposed to see the future.</p><p>Until Sunday, though, the future &#8212; as Dan Quisenberry famously said &#8212; looked an awful lot like the present, only longer. The only running around the Chiefs seemed to be doing was in a futile effort to catch running backs from behind. The only aggressive play came from Tony Gonzalez, who begged to be traded, and Larry Johnson, who got charged with simple assault. The only thing the Chiefs inspired was e-mails demanding that everyone be fired.</p><p>Herm Edwards kept insisting that his team was playing with intensity. You know one surefire way to tell that a team is not playing especially hard? When the coach has to keep telling you how hard they&#8217;re playing. The Chiefs, with only a few exceptions the first few weeks, seemed to be going through the motions. And that was the hardest part of watching. Heck, we knew they were going to lose. We just expected they would lose with some feeling.</p><p>That&#8217;s why Sunday seemed, to me at least, like a good day. I&#8217;m not saying this was a moral victory &#8212; those don&#8217;t exist in the NFL. This was a dreadful loss. A professional football team should never, and I mean never, flub a three-touchdown lead at home, especially when the other guys fumble <em>twice</em> as they are about to go into the end zone. This loss was a travesty.</p><p>But it was honestly earned. Edwards did not have to tell us afterward how hard the Chiefs played &#8212; you could see it. Edwards did not have to tell us afterward how aggressively the Chiefs played &#8212; you could see it in the game plan.