Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs throw deep, Royals may (not) spend, Mizzou stunk, and Team Peters

My favorite memory of the last two postseasons is sitting in Kauffman Stadium, the windows of the press box open, feeling the old girl shake as Christian Colon scored the winning run on a pitch roughly 12 feet off the plate that Sal Perez somehow pulled down the left-field line.

There are so many other moments, of course. Moose’s home run in Anaheim. Cain’s catches in Baltimore. Gordon destroying the left-field fence in the ALCS. Ventura in Game 6 of the 2014 World Series.

The eighth inning of Game 4 in Houston. Cain scoring from first on a single after Wade Davis’ superman routine after the rain delay against Toronto. Gordon’s homer off Familia. Hosmer’s dash home in New York. The champagne celebration at Citi Field. Watching the party from the visitors’ dugout in Queens with Dayton Moore, listening to him talk about everything that went into that moment, and how he was happiest for the players and coaches and scouts who believed.

The parade.

Some of you would probably pick one of those moments. Most of you would probably pick Game 5 of the 2015 World Series, or the parade on a gorgeous November afternoon. I can’t argue against any of that.

But there’s nothing like the first moment. Remember how many people wanted Moore and Ned Yost fired in 2014? Remember how unbeatable Jon Lester was for the Royals before Sept. 30 of that year? Remember how they were down four, in the seventh inning? Remember how they were down again, in the 12th?

It was all so fresh, so new, so unbelievable, except for the fact that it was happening, right there in front of all of us. Twenty-nine years of nothing, suddenly turned into Kansas City’s greatest sports moment of a generation. Two decades of irrelevance, suddenly turned into a night nobody who was there will ever forget.

One of my favorite things about that run was watching the cars pull over on I-70, beyond the left field fence. They parked on the side of the interstate, and got out, I imagine either taking pictures, or just watching, or just listening. Maybe they couldn’t afford tickets. Maybe they tried, and couldn’t find anyone willing to sell. That year’s World Series tickets might be the only time in human history that something has been more expensive in Kansas City than San Francisco.

I wouldn’t have traded the experience, but I would’ve liked to have seen what it looked like from the shoulder of the highway. Police would come along and shoo the loiterers away after a few minutes, but sure enough, another car would take the place soon. I just don’t know that I’ll ever be in the middle of something like that again.

I think about all of this as the Indians and Cubs begin the World Series tonight. One of them will end a championship drought much longer than the Royals’. I really don’t care who wins. I’ll be happy for the fans of either team. They deserve it, the ones who’ve believed through all the reasons to turn away. Good for them. We know what that’s like here in Kansas City.

This week’s reading recommendation is the absurdly talented Eli Saslow on the white flight of Derek Black, the eating recommendation is the Il Parma at Bella Napoli.

Please follow me on Facebook and Twitter, and as always, thanks or the help and thanks for reading.

Well, what you do is, you don’t write a column based on an Andy Reid news conference.

You might think the following description is mean, but if Andy Reid sees it — David Glass is a proud Mellinger Minutes reader! — he will blush at the flattery:

He is one of the most intentionally and effectively boring people I’ve ever covered.

The frustrating part is he’s a really interesting guy, away from the lectern. Dad was an artist, mom a doctor. He’s hilarious, often dry, and quite often self-deprecating. But he’s also smart, and experienced, and self-aware enough to know the only good jokes in a news conference are the ones that can give him a loophole out of a question he doesn’t want to answer.

So what you’ll get — what we all get — is that the Colts are a good football team, with good football players, and that he’s looking forward to the challenge of facing a good football team with good football players.

There is no profit in being interesting, or at least that’s how Reid sees it, and that’s both his right and well within his sport’s culture.

So, what you do is, find other ways to make your point. Find players. Find people who will talk to you on the condition their name never appear in the column. There are ways to do the job without a head coach willing to be interesting in public.

Give Reid credit, though. He’s got the boring thing down. Keeps his voice soft, and even. Speaks quickly, directly, and shortly. Never provides a detail. Doesn’t move his hands or body much. Never heard a question he can’t answer with, “He’s a good player.” It’s not contentious, like Bill Belichick is so often accused, but he doesn’t give anything away. It’s a master class on being boring, honestly. So applause for that.

Hopefully.

Now, this will not be the Jay Shroeder Raiders of the 1980s, throwing deep early and often, but it is a tool the Chiefs should be using more. Andy Reid’s offense is designed around timing, efficiency, running the ball and throwing quick passes — screens, slants, swings, stuff like that.

You can’t only throw change-ups, though. Even Trevor Hoffman threw some fastballs. So as the safeties crowd the line of scrimmage you need to be able to back them off. I wrote about this in the Tyreek Hill column, but he is their best deep threat in years. He still has some technical stuff to clean up — he’s basically only running go routes and screens right now — but at the very least when he’s on the field the defense has two choices, both of which benefit the Chiefs:

▪ If Hill is left alone with a cornerback, it means the fastest man in the building can run a go route for a touchdown. Hill was isolated against Ken Crawley on the big play on Sunday. Crawley appeared to know what was coming. He played way off the line of scrimmage, and was still in good position 25 yards downfield. Didn’t matter.

▪ Or, the defense can roll a safety to that side of the field, which will likely turn Hill into a decoy but should help open other parts of the field. Particularly if Hill still runs a go route, and takes a corner and a safety with him, Travis Kelce and Jeremy Maclin should be able to eat in the middle of the field.

I know all of this is easier to say in a weekly mailbag than it is to execute on the field,* but it’s a fairly straightforward way to make the rest of the playbook more effective.

* Though I’d like to think that the Chiefs and I have something in common here: a reliance on gimmicks.

There were a million things that went wrong in the Steelers game, and thousands of things that went wrong in the Texans game. But in both losses, the Chiefs struggled to open the field. Particularly in the Steelers game, there was waaaaaaay too much side-to-side passing, and no Plan B when that didn’t work.

Hill is the best antidote on the roster, and if the stories about his diligence in practice and receptiveness to coaching are accurate, he should be a bigger part of the offense going forward.

Choose Your Own Adventure was the best, right? In a lot of ways, those books were what got me into reading as a kid, and at least in an indirect way, what got me into writing.

So now you know who to blame.

Anyway, this question is a reference to the column the other day on the Royals’ offseason options.

My best guess — and that’s all it is, because I don’t think anyone knows, including David Glass or Dayton Moore — is that they end up somewhere between option 2 and 3.

I just can’t imagine that one year of going .500 — with the second-best attendance in franchise history, and record numbers watching on TV — means the payroll has to be slashed.

I understand Glass’ desire to avoid operating losses, but he has to understand it’s an awful look to cut payroll two years removed from a World Series when the core remains largely intact. Whatever operating losses the Royals end up with in 2016 are offset by the profits of the three previous years, and offset a hundred times over by the increased franchise value.

The payroll will naturally go down after next season, too*, and the awful TV contract the Glasses signed will expire in 2019. More money is on the way.

* Though not as much as it otherwise would, since the Royals have been backloading every contract they can.

If you’re asking what I’d do, it’s option 1. One more year. I think Glass owes that to himself and everyone who’s been involved in the last 10 years of building, including fans. But, again, it’s not my money.

Totally agree, and this is something we talked about on the Border Patrol.

I’m among those who believe Sutton should be better, and that he often doesn’t put his guys in the best positions — especially the linemen — but at this moment you’d have to say he’s doing a pretty good job.

I think he should be able to generate more of a pass rush, for instance, but he’s obviously missing a huge part of that with Justin Houston and at the moment the Chiefs are 11th in points against.

The Steelers game was a disaster for everyone, but other than that, the Chiefs have given up 19, 3, 10 and 21 points. The Saints had scored at least 32 points in all but one game. They scored just 21, and the Chiefs’ defense got a touchdown, so it’s a net 14 points. The Raiders are averaging 26.4 points, but got a season-low 10 against the Chiefs.

Individually, I believe D.J. White is improving. Daniel Sorensen just had the game of his life. I believe Marcus Peters is his own man, and his own playmaker, but the scheme and coaching have at least helped.

This may be too forgiving, or too soft, but I want to hold back judgment on the defense until we see what it looks like with Houston. I’ll keep saying this — he will be the best midseason acquisition of any team in the NFL. The Chiefs have other things to clean up — Tamba Hali can’t line up in the neutral zone like that, and Dee Ford still needs to be more consistent, among other things — but Houston will cover up a lot of mistakes. He’ll make average teammates better, and good teammates very good.

But in the meantime, yeah. Can’t complain too much about the defense.

The Chiefs were favored to win by seven. They won by six. I have a hard time getting worked up about this.

We talked about this in the postgame — and if you haven’t seen it, you should at least check out Terez’s rant about Mizzou around the 30-minute mark — but there were times the game felt like one that should end with the Chiefs up 10 and in the victory formation. So, I get it.

But they also beat a Hall of Fame quarterback. The offense executed really well, the line is playing the best it’s played all year. The deep passing was a nice sign of progress. The Saints essentially never threw Marcus Peters’ direction, the first time teams have given up on throwing his way.

Look, they made mistakes. They were gifted a huge play when Nick Fairley was penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, which turned what would’ve been a 3rd and 8 with the clocked stopped into 1st and 10. Without the penalty, Drew Brees likely has 2 minutes, down three points. With the penalty, the Chiefs eventually kicked a field goal and shook hands.

But, more than anything else, I think we should all understand that we can pick apart any NFL team. No wins are perfect, but all wins are wins. The Chiefs played well enough to beat a team that had won its last two, and lost its previous three by a total of seven points.

Some of this is how we choose to be fans. I can’t tell any of you how to watch sports, or how to cheer for your team. But the Chiefs won a game. They played pretty well, all things considered. They’re now 4-2, with a schedule opening up for what could be a long run.

It’s more good than it is bad, is what I’m saying.

That was a terrible, rotten, embarrassing loss to Middle Tennessee State. I get that the Blue Raiders — did you know they were the Blue Raiders? — are probably better than casual fans might believe, but an SEC team should not be giving up 51 to a Conference USA school on homecoming.

That’s doubly true for an SEC team built on defense, which is playing for a head coach promoted from defensive coordinator. For what it’s worth, I give Terez’s rant referenced above a total co-sign, mostly because the new scheme and changes have helped to essentially neuter Charles Harris, the best player.

Middle Tennessee had not scored 51 points against Western Kentucky, North Texas, Louisiana Tech or Bowling Green State. It scored just 24 against Vanderbilt, the other other power-five opponent on the roster.

This was an awful loss, littered with silly mistakes, poor tackling, a lack of enthusiasm and a lack of any leadership to stop what was happening.

Any time the head coach is ordering an offensive player to find a defensive player to lock arms into or out of the locker room to save some semblance of unity, you have a problem on the team. This won’t help.

The transition from Pinkel will be more difficult than a lot of us thought. I figured Mizzou had enough talent to get to a bowl game this year, but it’s hard to see how that’s possible now.

The Tigers can lose just one more game, with Kentucky, South Carolina, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Arkansas on the schedule. That they opened as a betting favorite against Kentucky makes me wonder if Las Vegas had access to the Middle Tennessee broadcast.

I don’t think Mizzou is in for the dark ages. That feels reactionary. They are still the only FBS program in a state with six million people and two major metropolitan areas. Facilities upgrades will help. But they’re in a much harder league than they’ve ever been in before, and thus behind more of their peer programs than ever before.

I want people like Barry Odom to succeed — he’s humble, grateful, serious about his opportunity, and feels a genuine connection to the place he works and the people around it.

So maybe this is all just growing pains, or the inevitable bumps of transition. It’s just that part of promoting Odom was the idea that the transition would be smoother, and that if nothing else, the defense would continue to be strong.

He’ll have every opportunity to make the program his own, but this is a terrible beginning.

A 6? Maybe a 7?

Gaines is the second-best cornerback on the roster. He’s had some really nice moments, but also enough bad plays to remind you the Chiefs aren’t losing an All-Pro. The problem, and I think you’re alluding to this in the question, is that the Chiefs are thin at the position.

The Chiefs, like all NFL teams, are hyper-protective of injury information. Gaines was listed as “limited” in practice last week, so he either had a setback or did not progress the way they hoped. Either way, this looks like something he and the Chiefs will simply have to deal with week to week.

The good news is that D.J. White appears to have improved two weeks in a row after that nightmare in Pittsburgh. Your boy Terez has liked White from the jump, complimenting his feel for the position and knack for being in the right place. He missed a tackle against the Saints that added about 20 yards to a play down the left sideline, but overall I thought was fine.

Also, let’s not discount that having someone like Peters is a good place to start if you’re trying to absorb inexperience in the rest of the position group. If the Saints are a sign that more teams are going to ignore Peters’ man, that means more attention from the Chiefs’ very good group of safeties can be devoted to other receivers.

We talk about Houston’s return in every question, it seems, but that will be another help because it’ll mean less time for the quarterback to go through progressions.

The point here is that it will likely be a problem, but shouldn’t be an unmanageable one.

This is a reference to Ken Crawley’s quote about the spectacular throw-and-catch from Alex Smith to Chris Conley, converting a 3rd and 17.

“I kind of seen his foot was on the white line. I mean, they’re at their house, so most likely they’re going to get all the calls.”

This wasn’t an isolated thought. Crawley goes back to the point later in the story:

“...I just feel like it wasn’t a catch. It was a controversial call. They have home-field advantage, so they’re going to get all the calls.”

Now, a few things. First, I don’t read this as Crawley whining. I know that’s how some will take it. I read it as an honest assessment. It’s a fact that home teams generally get more favorable calls, enough of a factor that it accounts for most of home-field advantage across all sports. Over the years, the Saints have certainly benefited from this.

Also, I think this is something coaches and athletes talk a lot about, and view as simply part of the competition. I would be surprised if any NFL team prepares for a road game without someone mentioning they will need to play through some bad calls.

If you haven’t read the book linked above, “Scorecasting,” I recommend it. They have a chapter that breaks all of this down. Basically, referees are human, and consciously or otherwise, when they are in the middle of the chaos tend to give 50-50 calls to the home team, ostensibly because it feels like the more popular thing to do.

The authors of the book do a great job showing this statistically in a number of ways. The most convincing, to me, may have been the idea that in soccer the home team gets more stoppage time when they’re losing than when they’re winning.

Of course, in football, there are other ways the home team has an advantage and I think we saw some of that on Sunday, too, with four illegal procedure penalties against the Saints.

The Arrowhead press box sits on top of the upper deck, and is closed off by windows, so it’s hard for us to tell how loud the crowd is. But it was mentioned by coaches and players on both teams on Sunday, so you would assume it was real.

This is true now, and this will be true in eight years: the Big 12 is a viable power conference as long as Texas and Oklahoma view it as their best option to make money and win championships. The self-interest of those two schools has kept the league together through the turmoil of the last five or six years, and will continue to keep the league together as long as OU and UT want.

The Big 12 has fundamental problems that exist with or without the power imbalance. The league is landlocked, and particularly outside of Dallas (and the hold on Houston was weakened with Texas A&M’s departure) doesn’t have the population bases of the other four power leagues.

But that’s probably an answer to a different question. So, yeah. Let’s assume the Big 12 dissolves. The most likely scenario, at least to me, eight years before the moment we’re talking about, is the Big 12 feeding into four “super” conferences. Maybe it’s the Texas schools to the Pac-12, Oklahoma schools to the SEC, Kansas schools to the Big Ten, West Virginia to the ACC, and Iowa State to Conference USA.

I’ve been told by school administrators in and out of the Big 12, as well as some TV folks, that Kansas would likely be “safe” based on basketball and in a smaller sense proximity to Kansas City. K-State might be in a little more danger, but I would still think that with their success and fan passion they’d be on the right side of the fault line.

But, really. I have no idea. It’s just as likely that in 10 years the conference structure itself is blown up, and the biggest schools get together to form something closer resembling professional leagues — 30 to 40 top schools in one league, leaving everyone else out of the biggest money.

Who knows? One thing a high-ranking Big 12 official told me a year or so ago that has stuck in my head: schools like Oklahoma and Texas and Alabama and Ohio State need schools like Iowa State and Washington State and Northwestern more than many fans realize, because if you’re a shark competing only against other sharks, some of those sharks are going to become minnows.

It’s good business to keep some minnows close.

Well, first I’d point out the Chiefs were fairly convincing in two of their four wins, including one on the road to a team that’s now 5-2.

But I understand your point, so my response would be: they’re not a great team?

They’re a good team, and may become a very good team. But they’re not a team we should expect to win a lot of blowouts. They have a specific path to victory — win on turnovers, establish the run, mix in timing passes with the occasional keep-em-honest shot downfield, be solid on special teams, and bend-but-don’t-break on defense, at least until Houston comes back.

Nearly every team in the NFL is like this. Their specifics may be different, but the bigger truth that their margin for victory isn’t huge remains.

ESPN’s power rankings was the first to come up on my Google search. Of the top 10 headed into the past weekend, 16 of their 43 wins were by a touchdown or less. That’s 37 percent. Two of the Chiefs’ four wins are by a touchdown or less. We’re not comparing kittens to lions here.

The highest ranked teams are also suffering the occasional blowout — seven losses by more than 10 points, including three by the Steelers. Even the Patriots lost 16-0 to the Bills.

The Chiefs are 4-2, and should be near the edge of the top 10 in most of the power rankings, whatever that’s worth. This is a pretty good place for a team that’s been without its best player, and basically without its most dynamic offensive player.

The West Bottoms was a freaking mess. It was impossible to get in and out, you had to park in a field, which meant everyone — particularly women in heels, or anyone after a few pops — was trying not to twist their ankle on the walk in or out. If it rained, everything you’re wearing and the inside of the car of whatever poor sap you convinced to drive was filthy.

You could be smart, and take a car or Uber, but the traffic was so terrible you’d be spending most of your fare waiting, and the surge charges could be rowdy.

All of that is true, and so is this: that event should be in the Bottoms. It belongs in the Bottoms.

That’s where the history is, and where the grit is, and that’s an event literally centered around grit. It was a cluster, a mess, and impossible to navigate, but dammit that’s part of what made it fun.

Now, I should qualify all of this by saying I didn’t go when it was at the Sports Complex, and won’t go at the Speedway. Maybe the charm is transferable. Maybe it doesn’t matter, so long as you have the smell and taste of barbecue, and people in good moods with beer.

That could absolutely be true. I could also be a bit jaded about the Speedway from my experience at Kansrocksas there a few years ago. The whole thing just felt a bit disjointed, a little forced, and maybe that won’t be true of the Royal. But I’m skeptical.

I understand the event’s desire to continue to grow participation and attendance. It’s exactly what I’d be doing if I was in charge. Grow the scope, grow revenue. But I’m speaking from my own perspective, and I don’t want anything that made the event so great to be lost in translation.

So, obviously I can’t verify this is legitimate, but this is a man claiming his son traded a bright and large sombrero for Marcus Peters’ gloves after the Saints game.

Either way, Peters rocked the dog out of that sombrero after the game:

I’m including all of this for, basically, two reasons. The first is that video makes me laugh, including the part where Peters was wearing the sombrero and having a very serious fashion discussion with a teammate.

Peters: “This belt buckle? Versace.”

The second is that this is a cool thing of Peters to do. I actually asked him why the heck he was wearing that hat, and he said he got it from some people outside he didn’t know, so the story checks out. If that’s how it went down, it’s a memory that kid will have forever, and a sign of what I see as something really endearing about Peters.

Basically, he doesn’t seem all that impressed by the NFL. I mean that in the best way. He doesn’t seem to take the show part of it too seriously, or the ability he now has to big league people and change and wrap himself in a blanket of self-interest.

I could be totally wrong about all of this, of course. I’m always careful to remember we don’t really know these guys, and that goes for the ones we like and the ones we don’t. But Peters has always seemed absolutely genuine to me, unaffected by the money or growing fame. He sincerely doesn’t care about it. Just wants to play football, study football, think about football, talk about his hometown, and maybe dance a little bit.

Team Peters, is what I’m saying.

Biggest concern: offense’s inability to move the ball consistently. There’s also the cornerbacks other than Peters, the weak pass rush, and Reid’s inability to showcase Maclin and Kelce more.

But I’m going with the more general concern about the offense because that’s the side of the ball that needed to be better. I think we all figured the defense might step back a bit, particularly without Houston, but that should be accounted for by improvement from the offense. At various times, that’s been on Alex Smith, the line, and the play calling. Maybe they’re starting to get out of that, but they’re going to need some points this weekend in Indianapolis.

Most encouraged by: overall improvement. They’ve played their best two games of the season the last two weeks, and there is every reason to believe they can go on an extended run here. More specifically, the offensive line has been much better lately. Same with the coaching. Chris Conley is MUCH better than a year ago. The safeties each made great plays against the Saints. D.J. White has shown some good signs.

Think about how most Chiefs fans felt after the Houston game, or especially the Pittsburgh game. Things are much better now.

Most surprised by: lack of production from Maclin and Kelce. There’s also Charles’ low involvement, Daniel Sorensen turning into Ronnie Lott, and Tyreek Hill’s growing profile.

But Maclin and Kelce are the answers here because I figured they were among the most bankable commodities on the team. I thought each were in line for their biggest statistical seasons in Kansas City, and I know we’re still somewhat early, but they’re each actually on pace for their lowest total yards with the Chiefs.

I do think that will change, and be fixed, but you asked what I’m surprised by and I didn’t think it would be something that needed fixed.

Whatever book the kids are into, which at the moment is Little Blue Truck’s Halloween and the Llama Llama books for the toddler, and Dancing Feet for the baby.

They lose their minds laughing at these books, which is amazing to watch. Really, on most days, putting either one of them down for their nap or at night is the best part of my day and the books are a central part of that.

I know all the studies that point out how important it is to read to your kids, and I’m thrilled that there’s an additional payoff. But there’s just nothing like the intimacy of being alone with a little kid, just you two and a book, no noise, no distractions, just a story you both know by heart but are reading anyway.

You guys are all nice to indulge me these corny dad breaks here. If any of you have suggestions for other books, I’m definitely interested. Some others we’ve had success with:

Click Clack Moo, The Day The Crayons Quit, Goodnight Goodnight Construction Site, Cars and Trucks and Things That Go, and Race Car Count.

You can probably tell the toddler is into anything with wheels.

This story was originally published October 25, 2016 at 9:13 AM with the headline "Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs throw deep, Royals may (not) spend, Mizzou stunk, and Team Peters."