Mellinger Minutes: A Cubs story, what’s a catch, why Chiefs are good, and a list with Dee Ford

Seems like everyone has a Cubs story and most of them have been told already so right here at the top let me apologize if you’ve read one too many by now. But this is mine. Or my grandmother’s, actually.

She was 5-feet tall, maybe, a retired schoolteacher who played the lottery every week — partly for the prizes, of course, but also because she could track the numbers, and the revenue went to schools.

In my memory, of course, she was always grandma. She was 80 by the time I was old enough to interact, and passed away when I was 12. She got around on a cane, because three hip replacements slowed her but could not stop her.

But she was, by all accounts, a dynamo as a younger woman. Not many women in her generation had college degrees. I believe she had a master’s. She and my grandfather lived in the Chicago suburbs. He was an engineer. Very analytical, very curious, very in love. They were married more than 50 years, and even as a boy, I could tell they loved each other deeply. They both lived deep into their 80s. Grandma died a short time after grandpa, and we’ve always believed it was a broken heart.

One of my grandma’s hobbies, aside from the lottery, was the opera. She loved the opera. I only know about this from stories, because she was done with the opera by the time I was around, but I remember finding things around their house and asking about them.

Oh, those are the binoculars I used when we went to the opera.

Oh, that’s a purse. I don’t use it as often now that we don’t go to the opera.

I think it was the hip replacements that kept them from the opera. But grandma was smart, with an active mind, and she needed something to occupy her. The lottery only did so much. The news only did so much. In came the Cubs. They were on WGN — Channel 9 in Chicago — every afternoon, and grandma got hooked, quick.

Instead of opera singers, she had favorite ballplayers. Instead of songs and lyrics and music, she had fastballs and batting averages and crowds. She never went to Wrigley Field — those hip replacements — but she knew more about the team than most who did.

The only thing she didn’t like about the Cubs was Harry Caray. As an adult, I came to understand that she probably didn’t like how goofy he got on the air, and that much of the goofiness probably came from Budweisers.

She could tolerate him OK during games, but when that Cub Fan Bud Man commercial came on — approximately 934 times per broadcast — she’d get up from her chair, waddle across the room, and hit mute. She must’ve been the only Cub fan in Chicago who didn’t like Harry Caray. It would’ve been easier with a remote control.

I actually don’t think she cared that the Cubs usually lost. She liked the games, and she liked following the players she liked, got into knowing why a guy made a play or didn’t. She was happy when they won, sure, but never let it ruin her day when they didn’t. We all have different ways of being a sports fan. I’ve always thought my grandma had it figured out better than the rest of us.

I think of her every time I see the Cubs play, or even a highlight. I wonder what she’d think of Anthony Rizzo’s power. Of Kyle Schwarber’s comeback. Of Jon Lester’s yips. Of Aroldis Chapman’s fastball, and past.

All things equal, I like this Indians team more than the Cubs. Maybe that’s from watching them so often in the AL Central. Francisco Lindor is a generational talent. Jason Kipnis is under appreciated. Carlos Santana is a monster. Terry Francona might be the best manager in baseball, and I hope the way he’s used Andrew Miller catches on.

But all things aren’t equal. Go Cubs. Game 7. Grandma is loving this, I’m sure. Especially without Harry Caray on the broadcasts.

This week’s eating recommendation is the chips and salsa at Los Tules, and the reading recommendation is Eli Saslow on the white flight of Derek Black.

Please give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter, and as always, thanks for reading and thanks for your help.

I want to be clear about a few things here. I am not defending the call. I would not defend the call. The read-option is part of the Chiefs’ offense, but Andy Reid himself has said in the past that he doesn’t want to call it too often, because of the danger it puts his quarterback in.

To call it in that situation, when you have to have other plays that can get you a few yards, and an hour or so after your quarterback was dazed and wobbly from a hit so hard it gashed his ear, is worthy of criticism.

But it’s also a misdirection that allows the NFL to get away with implementing a policy it knows is inadequate.

I know I’ve written a lot about this already. And I hope you read the columns, about how the NFL failed Alex Smith, and about how the league concussion protocol is mere medical theater.

But just think about a few things. These are potentially bruised and damaged brains we’re talking about, and the decisions on whether to allow the men with those brains to go back into professional football games. We know from science a second injury can be much worse than the first, and yet the NFL knows damn well it’s putting players in unnecessary danger by rushing them back onto the field.

The base mantra in medicine is to first do no harm, right?

Doctors hedge their diagnoses all the time. More time for rest. More checkups. Let’s be as sure as we possibly can.

Here, though, is an incredible breach of that general philosophy. The NFL and its teams are using a rushed series of tests it acknowledges up front are insufficient to detect concussions, in an attempt to detect concussions.

Do no harm is the mantra for family doctors, surgeons, pediatricians and everyone else, but in the NFL we have trainers and doctors who by their own admission cannot be sure if a player has a concussion rushing an on-the-fly diagnosis that they know may mean a man with a head injury is being put back into the chaos of a professional football game.

What in the actual hell are we doing here?

Will do!

▪  The Chiefs are 5-2. Only four teams in the NFL have better records. One of those teams is the Raiders. The Chiefs beat the Raiders by 16 points on the road.

▪  The Chiefs are sixth in Pro Football Focus’ power rankings, with the fourth-ranked defense. Again, one of the teams ahead of them is the Raiders.

▪ The Chiefs have won 15 of their last 17 regular-season games, and at some point soon, perhaps by next week, they will welcome their best player back from injury. More on the return of Justin Houston below.

Look, you can poke holes in every team in football, with the possible exception of the Patriots, though they did lose 16-0 to the Bills.

The Broncos’ offense stinks. The Cowboys’ defense is mediocre. The Raiders have a lot of lucky wins, and needed overtime to beat the Bucs. The Seahawks have holes on offense, only three teams are giving up more points than the Falcons, the Vikings play Sam Bradford at quarterback, and by now your eyes are probably glazing over.

Are the Chiefs the best team? Of course not.

Are they a good team? Yes, and if you’re losing that argument, the bar for “good team” is too high or you are not very good at arguing.

The Chiefs have holes, and Jamaal Charles likely missing the rest of the season is a very big deal, even if Spencer Ware returns from his concussion and remains healthy. I’ll write much more about Charles later today, but he is among the most beloved teammates in the locker room, universally respected, and at or near full strength gave the Chiefs’ offense a diversity and menu of options it doesn’t have without him.

There are other concerns. The corners behind Marcus Peters can be picked on, the interior of the defensive line hasn’t been as productive as it could be, and they need to get Jeremy Maclin going.

But there are stars all over the field, and good depth throughout the roster. There are no glaring holes. The offense isn’t explosive, but they’ve scored 83 points in the last three games and that doesn’t include a season-high 33, when they completed the biggest comeback in franchise history.

One thing that’s boring to talk about but critical in determining who wins football games: the Chiefs do not beat themselves. Only the 49ers have committed fewer penalties on offense, or been penalized for fewer yards. Only eight teams have committed fewer turnovers. On the other side, no team has caused more turnovers on defense, and only two have been called for fewer penalties.

Those things matter. Those things are important. And the Chiefs are very good at those things.

Part of me wanted to hold off on the Minutes until after the film breakdown from the Colts game. The list of plays and players I want to watch again is longer and feels more significant than any game this season.

Dee Ford. Mitch Schwartz and his ankle. Mitch Morse and his awesomeness. Spencer Ware. Marcus Peters. On and on, but more than anyone else, the quarterbacks.

Because on first look, yeah, Nick Foles was really good. The 49-yarder to Tyreek Hill was more about a small receiver making himself a big target on an underthrown ball, and the touchdown to Hill was a broken coverage that I believe without exaggeration Tyler Palko could’ve connected on.

But Foles made some nice plays, including the touchdown to Kelce (and the non-catch catch by Kelce). Foles is slower than Smith, and the miss to West out of the backfield near the goal line is a play Smith hits 101 times out of 100, but still, for coming in cold, even against a rotten defense, it was a heck of a performance.

The knee-jerk reaction will be to stick with Foles. There is a portion of the Chiefs’ fan base — I honestly can’t figure out how big, but it’s significant — that wants Smith gone yesterday. That’s fine. The backup quarterback is always popular.

The biggest gripe is the most reasonable one, his reluctance to throw deep, and Foles is more willing and probably better with that.

Andy Reid was visibly and admittedly frustrated the other day when the questioning turned to comparing Foles and Smith — “I’m not sure I even like the way you’re going with this,” he said — and he did commit that Smith is the starting quarterback whenever he’s healthy.

At least at the moment, I tend to agree with Vahe, that Foles is a terrific fit at quarterback for the Chiefs — as the backup.

I like Smith’s athleticism, his (usual) accuracy, his experience, his feel, his timing, and I’m old enough to remember the opening game of the season against the Chargers, which would’ve been a loss if Smith hadn’t put together the biggest comeback in franchise history.

I also understand that Foles is on his third team in three years, and over the past two seasons threw 20 interceptions and 20 touchdowns. You have to add Smith’s last four seasons together to get to 20 interceptions and, for all the talk of Foles’ willingness to throw deep, he’s averaged fewer adjusted yards per attempt over the last two years than Smith has in any year since 2006.

I’m intrigued by Foles. I thought signing Foles showed ambition, and I think it’s possible the Chiefs could’ve lost on Sunday if Tyler Bray was the backup.

But I wouldn’t be ready to throw away a quarterback the Chiefs have built around for years, and who’s actually played pretty well outside the notable and disastrous exception of the Pittsburgh game.

I don’t know how to answer this. I don’t think there is an answer to this. Not a one-size-fits-all answer, anyway. This is one of those things where I don’t think I, or anyone else, can tell you or anyone else how to feel. I can only tell you how I feel.

Let’s start with a truth that’s sometimes overlooked: we don’t know any of these athletes. We don’t know what they do in private, what they believe, or everything they’ve done in their past.

It is a certainty that some athletes widely considered jerks are actually terrific people. It is a certainly that some athletes widely considered terrific people are actually jerks. You can substitute just about any profession you want for “athletes” in those two sentences, and the truth remains.

I also think we sometimes — and I include myself here, because I’m sure I’ve done it, even as I constantly remind myself not to — mistake athletic achievement for good character.

Elvis Gbrac is not a bad person, just because he wasn’t a great quarterback. If Mike Moustakas never turned his career around after that demotion in 2014, it would not make him a bad person.

And just because Aroldis Chapman throws a baseball 103 mph does not qualify him to date your daughter.

So I guess that’s where I try to keep the line. I believe domestic violence is among the worst crimes in our society, because of what it does to families, what it does to children, what it does to the outlook and trust of victims the rest of their lives, and what it says about a man who punches or slaps or kicks or chokes a woman he says he loves. I also believe our justice system’s punishments are shamefully light for these crimes, and that we need to have better education and prevention in place.

Tyreek Hill appears to be doing everything possible to live a good life. He is said to be doing his court-mandated counseling, said to be treating everyone in the organization and the opportunity he’s been given with respect. In a sometimes cruel twist, the people with the most on the line here are his victim and their child. For their sake, if nothing else, I think we all hope the best for Hill.

My answer to your question, then, is a sometimes difficult bit of emotional gymnastics that we all prefer to avoid. Cheering for a team does not mean signing off on every personal decision each player makes.

If you’ve been a Chiefs fan since 2012 or before, you’ve rooted for a team whose starting linebacker did something far worse than what Hill pleaded guilty to.

It’s easiest and best for all sports fans when athletes are good people. Or, at least, appear to be good people. That’s part of why teams employ public relations folks, part of why commercials are made, and part of why we all tend to make it relatively easy on teams and advertisers to tell the story.

But we are watching and cheering athletic accomplishments, not moral decisions. There are plenty of terrific human beings who couldn’t make it in professional sports, and plenty of despicable ones who have.

As much as possible, I think its useful to remember we can’t be moral arbitrators, particularly in real time, and particularly with teams we have established connections with.

This is only part of the problem with the NFL’s concussion testing. Players have openly talked about tanking that baseline test. In the column off the game, Jeremy Maclin expressed skepticism about how accurate one test can be for so many different people, and Tamba Hali said he refuses to take the in-game test.

Alex Smith is incredibly bright, and not just by athlete standards. He reportedly had one of the highest Wonderlic scores ever, graduated from Utah early with an economics degree, and runs what has been called one of the country’s model charities. He also lost his last job after suffering a concussion, and believes that if he’d been given his job back after recovery the 49ers would’ve won the Super Bowl they ended up losing.

He has, in other words, a rare capacity and motive to tank the baseline test in order to avoid being ruled out by concussion again.

I want to be clear: this is not a charge, or even a statement that I believe he tanked anything.

It’s just pointing out that other players have done it, and it shouldn’t surprise anyone.

I would also suggest that if a man is hit that hard, twice, his head banging off what’s being described as the league’s hardest playing surface, is left visibly wobbly and disoriented with a gash on his ear, and then passes the concussion test, I might start wondering how effective the concussion test actually is.

Or, more accurately, I’d start wondering how effective the concussion test actually is if the league itself and the people involved aren’t already admitting the test is inadequate.

So, instead, I’m wondering why we aren’t all talking more about the one place in medicine where doctors discard caution and instead help rush players immediately back into a professional football game when they can’t be sure whether they have concussions.

Now, cars can be replaced if the insurance company is decent, and there’s a big difference between:

▪ getting fired from a job you don’t like because you kept showing up for it because you don’t want the job, and...

▪ fired from a job you thought was part of a career you’d worked your whole life for, and fired because a co-worker sabotaged your email.

Without knowing where on that spectrum your buddy is, I don’t want to say anything too definite, but, your buddy should be mad at you if you didn’t drop off a six-pack or bottle of his favorite beverage.

The worst I ever felt professionally was back when I was covering high schools, and we used to have this column that ran on page 2. Jeff Flanagan was the normal guy, but when Flanny went on vacation we all sort of pinch hit a day a week.

Well, Sunday was supposed to be my week, and I did the column and sent it in but didn’t double check with the desk to make sure they got it. That weekend happened to be one of my best friend’s bachelor party. Keep in mind, this was probably 12 or 14 years ago, and cell-phone coverage wasn’t great, and the bachelor party was in a part of the world Verizon did not reach.

So, fast forward to Sunday, and we’re driving back, I have a brutal hangover, and at some point a dozen voicemails show up on my phone, in the beginning kind and trusting — Hey Sam, it’s Tom, just want to see if you know how long your page 2 column will be so we can plan the page... — but later growing justifiably angry — Hey so since you can’t even answer your phone, Howard said he can save your ass and write something, so you better thank him whenever you get around to hearing this.

I felt awful. I was probably 23 or 24, very much wanting to not suck at my job, and it turned out that in my haste to get out of town I forgot one very crucial step in filing the story.

I called my boss that night, and thankfully he did not answer. I left what must be one of the sorriest, most pathetic, apologetic voicemails in the 136-year history of the Kansas City Star.

I was still hungover that night, so I didn’t drink. But I wanted to.

No.

Well, let me answer this two ways.

First: I don’t know what “elite” means, outside the context of making Joe Flacco jokes.

Second: No.

I don’t believe that elite defenses give up 22 points in the first quarter, or 43 points in a game, for one. I don’t believe elite defenses give up 4.6 yards per rush.

Now, all of that said, I do believe the following is true:

▪ if you’re feeling generous, and want to forgive the Chiefs the embarrassment in Pittsburgh, their points against goes from 19.6 (eighth in the league) to 15.7 (would be third, behind the Vikings and Seahawks).

▪ the Raiders rank sixth in the league in scoring. The Chiefs held them to 10 points, which is 17 below their average, and their lowest total of the season. The Saints rank second in scoring. The Chiefs held them to 21 points, which is eight below their average, and their second-lowest total of the season. The Colts rank ninth in scoring. The Chiefs held them to 14 points, which is 12 below their average and their lowest total of the season.

▪ the Chiefs’ biggest problem defensively is the pass rush, which has steadily improved over the season, particularly with the emergence of Dee Ford as an actual force.

▪ the return of Justin Houston — I’m guessing next week against the Panthers, but possibly the week after against the Bucs — will be the best midseason acquisition of any team in the NFL, and make everyone around him at least a little better.

▪ at that point, we can talk about whether the Chiefs defense is elite.

Speaking of Justin Houston ...

... well, not all their problems. He can’t make Jamaal Charles’ knee healthy, for instance. Can’t bring back Marcus Cooper. Can’t convince defensive coordinator Bob Sutton to use more of the creative blitz packages that seem to work well.

But I do expect his return — assuming he’s at or within reasonable range of full strength — to be an enormous boost. Maybe I’m being naive here, or expecting too much, but Houston is one of the very best players in the NFL. He is among the league’s two or three or four best pass rushers, and will be joining a team in big need of more pass rush. He also plays the run remarkably well, and will be joining a team giving up too much on the ground.

He immediately gives the Chiefs a dominant pass rusher, and immediately requires offenses to devote more attention and scheme to him, which immediately gives more space and opportunity for Dee Ford, Tamba Hali, Dontari Poe, Jaye Howard, Chris Jones and Derrick Johnson to make plays.

But wait, there’s more!

He also immediately forces quarterbacks to get rid of the ball sooner, which means more rushed throws for Marcus Peters to pick, and less prepared passes for the rest of the secondary to defend.

We’re all just guessing, obviously, but assuming reasonable health everywhere else it’s the kind of thing that takes the Chiefs from a probable playoff team that needs breaks to win a game to a stronger team that will be favored to advance.

Justin Houston is really, really good, you guys. The Chiefs’ best player.

I don’t know, but it’s amazing.

So, you probably know this, but my man Gene is referring to the Raiders going full Raider, and playing the Raider-est Raidery game possible — 23 penalties for 200 yards and still, somehow, winning.

According to this list, it is the most penalties for an NFL team ever, breaking the 72-year record set by the Brooklyn Tigers, who finished that 1944 season 0-10.

Let me say right up front here: I want the Raiders to always have this record. The record belongs in Oakland, and if the Raiders move to Vegas, then the record will belong in Vegas. If someone gets 24 penalties this week, then dammit, I hope the Raiders come back and get 25 the next week.

In the last 25 seasons, only eight teams have had 19 or more penalties against them in a game. Three of those teams are Raiders. Of the 40 teams to take 16 penalties against them, 10 of them are Raiders.

This is how it should be. This is how we know the world still makes sense.

I don’t have an answer for your question, other than I assume it’s cultural. The Raiders have always been outlaws, or at least wanted to be outlaws, and it’s in their DNA — not just the skull-and-crossbones logo, but Al Davis and everything he stood for.

I don’t know that there’s an organization in the NFL, and perhaps professional sports, that has an identity so engrained for so long. This is what the Raiders do. I’m actually kind of sad they didn’t break their own record the other day.

When I was a kid, I played with older kids a lot. Our next-door neighbor was three years older, and there were two boys a few doors down who were three and six years older. They were nice enough to let me hang out, including basketball games in the driveway, and they made this rule where if I got the ball on the drainage gate they couldn’t block my shot.

So, my first sports memory is the first time I actually made a shot from that drainage gate. In my mind, it was a 20-footer, but I’m sure it was more like 5.

Your question is probably more about watching sports, though, and the first memory I’m absolutely sure I experienced was the 1985 World Series. I would’ve been 7 , and it was the first time I remember my parents letting me stay up late.

I remember my mom thinking Jorge Orta was safe in real time, the replay showing otherwise, and wondering if that meant he would be called out. I remember Joaquin Andujar’s meltdown, and Darryl Motley down the left-field line, and George Brett hugging Bret Saberhagen.

The event I want to share, and I know this is corny, but it’s a baseball game. That’s it. Doesn’t need to be a playoff game, or opening day, and actually now that I’m typing those words I realize either of those would be impossible as long as I have this job.

But I just want to be able to take them to a game, get there early, play catch and eat hot dogs in the parking lot, see their faces when they see the grass, and feel that mix of guilt and pleasure when I let them split a ball of cotton candy bigger than both their heads put together.

I’d also like to figure out a way to take them to the Big 12 basketball tournament, and a college football tailgate, and at some point lots of Sporting KC games. I know none of that will be as fun as coaching them, or just watching them play from the bleachers, and I also know there’s every chance one or both of them just plain don’t like sports and in that case I’ll be ecstatic to watch them sing or dance or build or play or anything else.

But, yeah. Those baseball games. Because that’s what I most remember doing with my dad.

Marcus Peters.

Justin Houston is probably the better player. Certainly, he is the more accomplished player. And at his best, Houston is as good as anyone in the world at rushing the passer, and also pretty dang good at playing the run and even covering backs and tight ends. He is a unique talent, in what should be the prime of his career, playing perhaps the most important position on defense.

So this is not an argument against him.

The argument for Marcus Peters is that he is four years younger — almost exactly, their birthdays are three days apart in January — and also plays a premium defensive position, and is doing it as well as anyone in the game.

I want to watch the Colts game again to make sure, but this looked like the second straight week one of the game’s best quarterbacks essentially decided to ignore whoever Peters was covering. Not a bad idea, either, because in the five games quarterbacks have not ignored whoever Peters was covering, he has five interceptions.

The other part of this, and I guess this actually is an argument against Houston, is health. Peters is only a season and a half into his career, but he’s made every start. Including 2016, Houston has been healthy more than 11 games in only three of his six professional seasons.

If you can guarantee me that Houston will be healthy, and be the 22-sack force of 2014, I can be talked into him. But since that’s impossible, I’ll take a premier cornerback who presumably is not yet even in his prime.

No way! This column here is totally why Ford is averaging a sack a game! Pay no attention to Terez’s better-reported and deeper story on Ford during training camp!

Ford is tough to read.

He is a talented No. 1 draft pick whose first two NFL seasons were most noteworthy for one terrific game against a ninth-string tackle and men throughout the organization throwing not-so-subtle signs up that Ford needed to work harder and take his job more seriously. He was a one-trick magician who didn’t seem to realize it.

Now, there are only five players in the NFL with more sacks. And one of them is Von Miller (who’s played one more game, too).

The most encouraging part may be a growing consistency. Understand, Ford still has some room for improvement here. There are still too many times he is shut down by the tackle, and especially too many times where the opposition runs his side because they know that’s where the yards are.

But he’s played his best games the last few weeks. He is providing more consistent pressure on the quarterback, sometimes resulting in sacks, but many other times not, instead affecting the play in other ways. He shows a relentless pursuit of the quarterback, never giving up on a play, and is developing a knack for the big moments.

I don’t know where this season will take Dee Ford. But I do know we’re only seven games deep, and he has seven sacks already, and I want you to see the list of Chiefs who’ve had more than seven sacks in any season over the last 25 years:

Derrick Thomas, Justin Jouston, Jared Allen, Neil Smith, Tamba Hali, Eric Hicks, Dan Williams and Duane Clemons.

So, that’s not bad.

Sports!

So, apparently, this has beginnings in Halloween costumes and a curious fan who wanted to see if this was possible.

I have no take on this, no.

/giggles/

Well, I’m obviously not around that program all the time. I did write this in September, and it all stands up and then some now. I hope you read it, particularly the stuff from Dana Anderson.

I don’t think the OU blowout stings, actually. Kansas is not good enough to be able to say a blowout loss to Oklahoma stings. Kansas is one of the worst football programs in power five football, if not the worst, and if we’re being honest, one of the worst programs in all of FBS.

They’re supposed to be blown out by Oklahoma, and for at least the rest of this season, and perhaps into next season, these blowout losses are more to be blamed on the various failures by Lew Perkins, Turner Gill, Sheahon Zenger and Charlie Weis than David Beaty, who’s merely trying to keep his head above water.

Maybe that’s being too kind to Beaty, and he may stink, I don’t know. He’s done some things already that I believe to be mistakes, most notably neutering various assistant coaches by taking over the relative minutiae of their jobs while bigger fires requiring attention from the head coach continue to burn.

But, I do think his stubbornly positive energy is important. I do think the talent on the roster is getting better, particularly with speed. KU appears to be in on and signing recruits who haven’t been Jayhawks since Mark Mangino.

It may not matter. It may be that in three years, or even two, we can all be fairly certain that it’s not going to work with Beaty and that any signs of optimism at the moment turned out to be mirages or just the clearance of a shamefully low bar set by his two predecessors.

All I know is by this time in their tenures, I was 100 percent sure that Turner Gill and Charlie Weis were terrible. Beaty is at least keeping it somewhat interesting. That TCU loss was encouraging.

Anderson said he wants to see on-field progress by the end of next season. That’s fair, though KU is going to be justifiably criticized if it fires a fourth coach in eight years.

At some point, you need to give a guy a chance. Beaty is trying. He seems to have the respect of his players, which Gill lacked. And he seems to have respect for the job, which Weis lacked.

Yes.

...

...

...

Oh, sorry, you wanted more? Yes, of course football is dumb. We’ve seen players flagged for wagging a finger, pretending to take a picture of a teammate, and hugging a referee in joy, and those are only the ones I can think of immediately.

All of that is stupid, and I wish the NFL would get over itself, loosen up its blue power tie, stop worrying about whether its $300 haircut is perfect, and listen to the millions of fans who like their sports to be, ya’know, fun.

About the late hits, look, I’m actually going to stick up for the league here, just a little bit. There is no way to get all those calls correct. It’s just impossible. The game moves too fast, the players are too big, and a lot of times you’re left judging intent with a dozen other factors involved, including how early the quarterback slid.

They can be better, and they should strive to be better, but I also accept that some calls will inevitably be missed. I expect those hits to later be reviewed and fined, but still.

The catch thing is baffling, and this was asked by a lot of people this week. By the letter of the rule, for instance, I completely understand how Travis Kelce’s catch near the goal line in Indy was ruled an incompletion. It’s just that the letter of the rule, then, is stupid.

NFL VP of officiating Dean Blandino explained that Kelce was considered to be going to the ground to make the catch, therefore had to hold onto the ball all the way to the ground.

Setting aside the fact that I can’t recall Blandino ever acknowledging a missed call in real time, my beef with what he said is that it looked like Kelce caught the ball and then started going to the ground, after controlling the ball through three steps, only losing control after he extended toward the pylon.

But more than all that, we need some common sense here. If football fans watch a game and see a catch, then that should be a catch. We don’t need some needlessly complicated fun sponge of a rule/loophole to make it something else.

I love football. I hate the NFL sometimes.

This story was originally published November 2, 2016 at 10:45 AM with the headline "Mellinger Minutes: A Cubs story, what’s a catch, why Chiefs are good, and a list with Dee Ford."