Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs beat the mighty Pats, now eye playoffs, plus Mizzou, Royals
The biggest news of the day is that Missouri (finally!) has its new head football coach. He’s a 36-year-old man named Eliah Drinkwitz, and it’s been a hell of an interesting search capped by a hell of an interesting hire.
My hope is to make it Columbia for his introduction Tuesday morning, so I’ll save most of my thoughts until then, except this: This hire makes a whole lot of sense, and even after a circuitous and at times embarrassing (for Mizzou AD Jim Sterk) search, the Tigers found a guy who fits the profile some of us thought they should be going for all along.
He’s young, innovative, rising and risky.
Again, more on that later Tuesday.
For now, I wanted to go through what we might see across these last three regular-season games for the Chiefs. Not so much on the field — literally thousands of words on that await you, below — but across the league.
As it stands at the moment, the Chiefs are 9-4 and would be seeded third in the playoffs.
The Ravens are 11-2 and seeded first, with the Patriots 10-3 and seeded second. The Texans (8-5, No. 4), Bills (9-4, No. 5), Steelers (8-5, No. 6) and Titans (8-5) are close behind.
The Chiefs will be favored in each of their last three games. If they win out, they can be seeded no lower than third.
A loss would put them in danger of dropping to fourth, because the Texans would have the tiebreaker on account of their win at Arrowhead in October.
That might not seem like much — third or fourth, either way you’re playing a non-division winner at home — but it’s the difference between potentially playing the Patriots or Ravens in the second round.
That’s like the difference between Olive Garden and Garozzo’s.
The Chiefs do have a path upward, too. The Patriots’ schedule is (please don’t stop reading if you’ve heard this before) soft the rest of the way, but they do play the Bills a week from Sunday.
If the Patriots lose that game (or any other, but c’mon, the others are against the Bengals and Dolphins) the Chiefs would move up to No. 2 with the tiebreaker they just won at Gillette Stadium.
We’ll talk more about that later, but that would be a significant development because it would give the Chiefs at least a week to rest a roster that’s been bruised and battered, particularly at the top.
For now, it’s worth noting that the New York Times’ playoff simulator gives the Chiefs a 62 percent chance of earning a bye week by winning out.
That feels a little high to me, and the numbers vary depending on when you put them in, but either way. Possible. Maybe even probable. And the answer will go a long way in determining the Chiefs’ chances going forward.
This week’s reading recommendation is Greg Bishop on how Ryan Shazier’s injury tested his father’s faith, and the eating recommendation is the fried chicken at Char Bar.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and as always thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
I do. Absolutely.
Are they the favorite? No. I wouldn’t go that far. The Ravens have earned that title.
The game was forever ago, but the Chiefs did beat the Ravens, and they do have Patrick Mahomes with top-shelf receiving talent paired with a defense that is undeniably improved. That’ll play in the postseason.
I don’t know if this is exactly what you mean here, but my biggest takeaway from the Chiefs beating the Patriots is that we are now living in this strange reality where winning in Foxborough is suddenly not enough.
What’s more, I believe the Chiefs know and feel that, too.
I believe that’s why Frank Clark said this, when asked if Tom Brady talked trash back to him on the field: “He knows better.”
I believe that’s why Chris Jones said this, when asked if his talk trash had an impact on Brady: “I mean, you see the score.”
I believe that’s why Laurent Duvernay-Tardif said this, when asked if the Patriots are still the team to beat: “I don’t want to sound like I’m (disrespecting) them, but everybody knew the second half of their schedule was going to be against tougher teams. That’s starting to show up.”
If the Chiefs played at Baltimore this week, my guess is they’d be around a 5-point underdog.
But they don’t play this week. They won’t play there for at least another month, if at all, which is more than enough time to change the factors that weigh most heavily on the Chiefs at the moment.
The optimistic: this is three consecutive games won by the defense, against offenses generally rated in the league’s top half, and if before the season you knew such a thing could be said about the Chiefs in December you might’ve thought this team was going 16-0.
The pessimistic: the offense has to be better, because as imperative as it was for the defense to improve, this is still a scoring league. The Ravens’ defense has also improved — they’re giving up 15.1 points per game across a nine-game winning streak that includes the Seahawks, Patriots, Texans, Rams, 49ers and Bills — and Lamar Jackson is essentially this year’s version of 2018 Mahomes.
That’s a hell of a challenge.
The Chiefs can get there. But they need to fill some holes, most notably some sloppiness on special teams and offense, and full health for Mahomes.
He was a monster, one of the key reasons the Chiefs won the line of scrimmage. His game has always been a mix of speed and violence, and he showed both in bursts.
The speed on the sack:
And the violence on this run stop, shedding his blocker and then slamming James White into the turf:
This is, essentially, what the Chiefs paid for when they sent a first- and second-round pick to Seattle for the right to give Clark $63 million in guarantees. This is who he’s been since taking time to address the pinched nerve, too, which is probably the most encouraging part of it.
That trade will be debated as long as Clark is here. The Chiefs almost certainly gave up too much, but the old analogy about airport prices holds true here. The Chiefs needed something like Clark, and drafting toward the end of rounds, the only way to do it is by overpaying.
If Clark is a key part of a rejuvenation that puts the Chiefs into the Super Bowl, the trade is a clear win.
If he’s not, it’s a loss.
That’s a vast oversimplification, but it’s how the thing will be remembered.
The biggest takeaway from the Patriots win might be that the context — at Foxborough, and Clark doing this after losing 10 pounds vomiting in a hospital — has seemed to turn the general fan sentiment in Clark’s direction.
That’s not the most important thing. But it’s also not insignificant.
Pretty dang big.
Patrick Mahomes and Andy Reid both allowed that the hand injury effected the quarterback, particularly on deep passes, and I mentioned this on the postgame podcast but it reminded me of a line from The Irishman.
I’m not sure about the copyright rules here, so I’m just going to use the quote from Robert DeNiro’s character here:
“Whenever anybody says they’re a little concerned, they’re very concerned.”
The defense is significantly improved, which is why the Chiefs are getting by right now, but in the vacuum of the offense they are putting even more on Mahomes than they did last year.
They’re not running the ball as well*, particularly up the middle, which is allowing defenses to concentrate more on the edges and pass-catching threats.
* Some of this is on the offensive line, but they really do miss Kareem Hunt, too.
That means generally tighter windows, or at least fewer options, and he’s also playing at less than 100 percent.
I believe — lets underline here, I’m speculating — that part of the “problem” is that Mahomes is accounting for injuries, subconsciously or otherwise. The ankle and knee are healthy enough to play, and run, but he’s not stepping into throws the way he needs to and he’s bailing clean pockets on some plays and bailing earlier then he needs to on others.
The hand is, potentially, his most concerning injury yet. He played through it, and x-rays came back negative, but there’s a difference between a hand that can pass an x-ray and a fully healthy hand. Andy Reid on Monday said Mahomes hand is “OK.”
Google tells us there are 27 bones in the hand, and all it takes is for the wrong one to be bruised or sore to throw off the delicate machinations of a Ferrari-of-a-quarterback unleashing his next-level #ArmTalent.
Because we can all see with clear eyes that the Chiefs’ defense is improved, but even if we can assume the improvement is sustainable through the playoffs, I don’t any Chiefs fan wants to rely on the defense dragging the offense to the Super Bowl.
It’s supposed to be the other way around.
OK, fine, Earl. You twist my arm like that and I will link to the column about the defense’s improvement, the one that so many have crushed me for.
The Chiefs have given up 42 points the last three games, and that includes points surrendered when the offense or special teams put them in bad spots.
It does not include 35 points scored directly or set up by the defense with turnovers.
In other words, the Chiefs’ offense has needed to come up with seven points on its own across the last three games to be even with what the defense has set them up to do.
It really is a remarkable turnaround, and while I don’t think any reasonable person would expect this type of success through the Super Bowl — particularly against better opponents like the Texans and Ravens in the postseason — I do think the fear of the defense ruining another season can be stomped out.
They still have holes, and particularly if I’m the Ravens, I’d run heavy sets and run or do RPOs like 80 percent of my snaps against the Chiefs ... but this is such a better situation than a year ago.
The offense’s struggles are real even if they’re relative, and I do believe most of them can be fixed if Mahomes is fully healthy.
But with each passing week, it seems, we’re getting further and further from seeing the offense click and deeper and deeper into a world in which we’re just hoping or expecting it to.
I guess we can all look at the same thing and see it differently, but to me that’s at least two things.
The first we talked about, and that’s the new reality that the Patriots are no longer the only boss in the AFC. Realistically, they’re probably the fourth-best team in the conference right now, and closer to fifth (Bills) than first (Ravens).
But, also, it’s not spoiled as much as it’s earned skepticism.
The Patriots have won three of the last five Super Bowls. They’ve earned some benefit of the doubt.
The Chiefs have played in zero of the last 49 Super Bowls. They must earn that benefit of the doubt.
Because we’ve seen the Patriots finish. Heck, they just played a more talented team, got outgained by 68 yards (and got more than a quarter of their yards on two trick plays), had a touchdown erroneously negated by a missed call, and still had a chance to win at the end.
The Chiefs have a lot of talent, and a clear path to the Super Bowl, but they also have made it to the AFC Championship Game exactly once in a generation and have a head coach who is both undeniably successful and the owner of a history that says he’s exactly good enough to almost win.
One other thing that might be at play here is that the standards are different now. If this was 2013, and Reid was just saving the Chiefs from a decade of general failure, the response would be fundamentally different.
But the standard is the Super Bowl now. The Chiefs literally printed that on t-shirts that said “THE WEST IS NOT ENOUGH.”
It’s weird as heck to say it, but it’s true: the performance that just won in Foxborough will not be enough to win the AFC.
OK, so we went through the scenarios that would give the Chiefs a first-round bye at the jump, but this is worth a few minutes, too.
I believe the following truths can coexist:
1. The Chiefs (or any other AFC team) don’t need a first-round bye to reach the Super Bowl.
2. The Chiefs (or any other AFC team) would sure as heck benefit from a first-round bye
A logical case could be made that a bye would benefit the Chiefs more than the average team, particularly if Mahomes’ hand injury is even a small concern at the end of the month.
Everybody is beat up this time of year, and winning three consecutive games against top competition with no break is a daunting task. It’s been seven years — the 2012 Flacco Ravens — since a team made it out of the wild card round and into the Super Bowl.
The Chiefs likely have more top level talent than any other team in the AFC, between Mahomes, Mitchell Schwartz, Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Frank Clark, Chris Jones and Tyrann Mathieu.
Mahomes has injured his ankle, knee and hand. Schwartz’s iron man streak snapped. Hill has missed time with an injured shoulder and hamstring. Clark has dealt with a pinched nerve, injured shoulder, and awful stomach virus. Chris Jones missed three games with a groin injury. Travis Kelce needed stitches in his nose after the Patriots game.
That’s a lot.
I don’t care as much about having to win three games instead of two. In some ways, you’re either good enough or you’re not.
But I do think the Chiefs’ chances are boosted if they can have a week off to rest, and get healthy.
One disclaimer on this: a scenario exists where the Chiefs could be locked into their seeding before the season finale, in which case they’d be able to rest and heal their best players.
The AFC is bunched up enough that that’s unlikely, but still. It’s possible.
Well, look. People can’t wait to proclaim a dynasty dead. That’s true with the Patriots, and it’s true in other sports, and it’s been true as long as sports have been played.
I remember that game in 2014, and I remember wondering if the Boston media was being sarcastic with the storyline of whether Brady should be benched for Jimmy Garoppolo.
As it turned out they weren’t, but they should have been. Brady has reached four of the five Super Bowls since, and won three of them.
Now, I do not believe that means he will stay on top forever. Father Time is undefeated, even against guys who believe drinking lots of water is protection against head injuries.
Tom Brady’s career is older than Gillette Stadium. He won his first Super Bowl when Patrick Mahomes was in kindergarten.
It has to end sometime, and even as someone who was fooled into believing the Patriots wouldn’t win last year, this one feels a little different. The Patriots have traditionally had some bizarre losses, but generally shown up in the bigger games.
I might miss something by going back, so I won’t, but I’m betting it’s been a very long time since the Patriots have lost to each of the other three best teams in the AFC.
If nothing else was true, that’s a hell of a hurdle to clear.
You can see it on the field, too, in ways both big and small.
Big: against the three most serious threats to win the AFC, the Patriots are 0-3 and have been outscored by an average of 10 points, a significant number on its own but one that doesn’t do justice to the fact that in all three games the Patriots were clearly the inferior team.
Duvernay-Tardif made the point in the game column and above, one that people in and around the NFL have been making. The Patriots are monsters against bad teams — and their schedule has been ate up with them, from the Dolphins to the Jets (twice) to the entire NFC East — and running uphill against good teams.
The defense is good, but they’ve given up an average of 29.3 points against the Ravens, Texans and Chiefs.
And the offense isn’t quite as bad as many have said, but it’s not shown itself good enough to win in the playoffs.
Brady was never agile, but he’s now a sitting target, and the New England offensive line has had problems protecting him, particularly up the middle. Julian Edelman is an excellent receiver, and he’s having a terrific year, but the next-most prolific wide receiver or tight end has been Phillip Dorsett with 28 catches for 347 yards.
Maybe as much as anything else we’re seeing confirmation of just how good Rob Gronkowski was. I know the Patriots’ numbers didn’t usually dip much when he was injured, but they just don’t have enough weapons to make up for what’s lacking with the line and Brady’s aging.
Edelman made eight catches for 95 yards against the Chiefs, but much of that was on hot routes against the blitz, and the blitz was effective as often as not. When it mattered most, the Chiefs were able to devote extra resources Edelman’s way and the Patriots had no counter.
James White had five catches for 27 yards, but other than Edelman no receiver or tight end had more than two catches.
Notably, when the Chiefs blitzed and Brady was able to beat it on a hot route, the Chiefs still had enough in the back to make the tackle and prevent longer gains.
Look, you make a good point, that it’s silly to pronounce the Patriots dead until a week after the body has gone cold. Bill Belichick is the best coach in modern football, and Brady is the most accomplished quarterback, if not the best. It should surprise nobody if the Patriots find one more game plan the league isn’t prepared for and wins another dang Super Bowl.
But I’m also not sure how anyone could watch the Patriots against better competition and be surprised if they lose early in the playoffs.
Six, apparently?
To 31 fan bases, the tears of Patriots fans are like the best bourbon — a delicacy to be sipped slowly and enjoyed fully.
That some of the complaining has come on calls by the officials just makes it sweeter because, yes, absolutely, the officiating by Jerome Boger’s crew was atrocious but it was also atrocious both ways and it’s probably true that no team in professional sports has benefited more from officiating over the last two decades than the Patriots*.
* As a matter of fact, I was just fined and whistled for roughing the passer based on that paragraph alone.
But here’s a thing that some of you will be mad at me for saying:
Patriots fans aren’t fundamentally different than fans of any other team. It’s just that their team has won more, and if you are a Chiefs fan who thinks they’re obnoxious then what do you think 31 other fan bases would think about you if Mahomes and Reid win six Super Bowls together?
My guess is your first reaction is this: Who gives even the tiniest damn because in that scenario Mahomes and Reid have won six Super Bowls together.
But your second reaction, at some point, should be something like this: Yes, absolutely, I would be insufferable and I know it.
The same way Chiefs fans have come by their skepticism honestly, Patriots fans have earned their arrogance, is part of what I’m saying.
Every fan base is a few Super Bowls away from being awful, is the other part.
Nothing major. Signing Trevor Rosenthal is a pretty good example of the type of move I think they should be making: low risk, potentially significant reward, and an attempt to turn weakness into strength.
Royals fans don’t want to hear it, and they shouldn’t after 207 losses the last two seasons, but this roster isn’t yet good enough or stable enough to make major moves.
They need to continue to give Adalberto Mondesi every chance to be a star.
They need to give Hunter Dozier the same opportunities.
They need to have Sal Perez in the lineup, though they also need to keep first base and DH available for the knees and body that have taken so much abuse.
They should give Bubba Starling a chance in center field, while also protecting spots for Nicky Lopez, Kelvin Gutierrez, Khalil Lee, MJ Melendez, Kyle Isbel and the pitching class of 2018.
If the Royals make a significant free agent signing, it will and should be with 2021 in mind more than 2020.
If they make a major move, it will likely be trading Whit Merrifield or trading or signing Jorge Soler.
The Royals have been open to trading Merrifield before and after they signed him to a contract extension, but I’ve heard less than nothing that says the offers have come close to the Royals’ demands.
That may change now with more cost certainty on Merrifield’s contract — he’s owed around $15 million over the next three seasons, with a $10.5 million club option in 2023 — and another year of him proving he’s a 4-WAR player, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
As for Soler, it’s always made sense to me that he is less valuable to the Royals than he would be to a team with a smaller ballpark and different offensive emphasis, but it’s also true that modern baseball is generally moving away from his profile.
Again, the most likely scenario is Soler signing an extension this winter.
The major moves will come around May or June or so, when Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar lead the transition of one of the minor leagues’ deepest collections of pitching talent to the big leagues.
This is probably a weird way to think about it, but a disproportionate amount of the return on John Sherman’s investment will be based upon decisions made before David Glass called him about buying the team.
If the Royals are right about enough of those pitchers and at least some of the hitters, then this thing is going to happen fairly quickly, and they can start to extend payroll to fill gaps next winter.
If the Royals are wrong about the talent, or even if they hit too many elbow surgeries, then this thing is going to be stuck in the mud and we’ll have a whole different conversation.
This is counterintuitive, and maybe I’m wrong, but I believe Major League Baseball teams remain in good position going forward.
For all the talk about bubbles bursting, live sports remains one of the very few (and most efficient) ways of acquiring appointment television. We all DVR our favorite shows, and Netflix one-offs like The Irishman can only go so far.
From late March to early October, even in markets without successful teams, live baseball is among the most watched TV programs nearly every night of the week.
But as cable subscriptions have dropped, I believe it’s also true that other subscriptions have risen — Netflix, Amazon Prime, Hulu, ESPN+, Disney+, HBO GO, on and on. I realize that I have a weird job that all but demands a cable subscription, but if Fox Sports offered a season pass to watch all Royals games for, say, $200, well, my wife and I would have a serious conversation about cutting the cord.
This might be naive, but I think they’ll find a way around the number of cable subscriptions declining. Because the problem there isn’t the content. It’s the delivery mechanism.
People still want to watch baseball. They just increasingly don’t want to pay cable subscriptions.
I understand I’m speaking from a profession with similar issues — people still like the content, but the delivery mechanism is changing — but that’s a better problem to have than the opposite.
Look, I understand the world is changing, and it may very well be true that my kids’ generation will grow up and generally be less interested in watching live sports than my generation.
Professional and major college sports may need to take a market correction here and start signing TV deals still in the billions, but growing at rates that slow or go flat or even decrease. Either way, it’s still a heck of a racket to be in.
Speaking of changing media times ...
No. Absolutely not. We can’t. We’re trying to make that as clear as possible: digital advertising is a craptastic model.
Not just for us but for all newspapers and, unless I’m missing someone, all original content producers who don’t have major live sports contracts to subsidize.
The Washington Post has a paywall. The New York Times. The Wall Street Journal. The LA Times. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The Indianapolis Star. The Athletic. The Atlantic. The Authentic. I made that last one up.
I could point you to any number of pieces on the topic of digital advertising, but just know that even with increased readership the revenue generated after Facebook and Google and others take their cut is barely enough to keep the coffee machine running.
Newspapers and other original content producers don’t control their own advertising online, essentially, which is absolutely bonkers to me but also the world we live in.
What’s more, advertisers are smart, and they know that some of the content that attracts the most clicks — click-bait, aggregation, cat videos and slideshows — is the least valuable real estate on the Internet because the audience doesn’t stick.
That’s why we need the people who use and appreciate the product the most to help pay for it.
None of this is a judgment on you or any other potential reader. If we’re not worth $30 for a year of access (or $1 for a day) then we need to get better.
But I’m absolutely done apologizing for a business charging for its product, and, to be honest, I’m done worrying about chasing people who don’t think we’re worth a few pennies a day.
Because stuff like this isn’t cheap ...
This is about the Charvarius Ward story that ran last week. If you haven’t, I do hope you’ll read it. Charvarius was so honest, so real, and I hope I did his story justice.
The question comes from something I mentioned on social media, that the story was something like a year in the making. Shortly after Ward made his first start at Seattle, we ended up chatting near his locker.
I’d known a little about him, about how teachers thought he had a learning disability as a kid. He repeated kindergarten, but they later realized he just needed glasses. He graduated high school with honors. Then, in that first conversation he mentioned something about his mom that really struck me, and I asked if we could talk more.
That led to conversations with him and others he loves in which I learned he spent a chunk of his childhood in a wheelchair.
Shortly after that story ran, Charvarius reached out and said there was more to it. I told him I’d love to hear it. That was how we got to last week’s story.
You’re asking about the process, and they’re all different, but I’ll tell you about this one.
Charvarius and I talked or messaged (text/DM) every not and then last spring. He didn’t want to say too much without his mom present, because he wasn’t sure about some of the details of his childhood and didn’t want to say anything that wasn’t true. I figured the best way to do it would be to go to his hometown in Mississippi.
I’m all for patience, but I don’t feel like I can book a hotel room without telling my boss what the story might be, so I asked Charvarius if he could give me a general idea of what he had in mind. He did, and it was more than enough for me to know this was a story I would give as much time as it needed.
As it happened, we couldn’t connect when he was back home. I can’t remember exactly why, but I may have had a family vacation during that time. Either way, he spent most of the summer in Los Angeles and I had reason to be there for another story, so we hooked up sometime in July.
He told me his perspective of the AFC Championship Game over wings, and then showed me the stretch of beach he often used for workouts. He was doing two or three workouts every day and was excited about how much better he felt.
We planned to meet again sometime in August, because his mom would be in Kansas City to help move him into his rental house. That never happened, and now I can see why he didn’t want to talk during that time.
We kept in touch, but honestly, I’ve been blown off enough to wonder if that’s how this would end up. I had enough from our other talks that I could’ve written something, but there’s no way I would’ve done that without his consent. Not in a situation like this.
Sometime in October, I think, he told me he was ready to talk. Said he’d been dealing with some stuff during camp, and that’s why we never connected. His mom (and other family) came in for the Vikings game, so we met at his house that night. We talked for well over an hour. That’s where most of the stuff that went into last week’s story came from.
I figured I’d write it soon after, but Charvarius asked me to wait. Said he didn’t feel like he’d played well enough yet. I said something about the interception on DeAndre Hopkins in the end zone vs. the Texans being pretty badass, but he wasn’t ready. Again, I’ve been blown off enough to wonder, but Charvarius had always been so honest with me. He trusted me, so I needed to trust him.
Around Thanksgiving — maybe the day after — he said he was ready.
My bosses were nice enough to give me most of last week to concentrate on writing the story. I had an idea of what should be in there, of course, but was a little overwhelmed in how to structure the story.
So I read through all my notes from all our talks, and then listened to the conversation at his house one more time. While the tape played, what the story should look like clarified and I dragged notes and quotes into an outline. Once I had that, the writing was actually fairly straightforward, enough that I didn’t feel like bothering too many friends in the business to read through it.
That doesn’t happen often, because people aren’t often that open and honest and generous with their time.
You asked how many stories I’m working on at any particular time, and of course the number varies and depends on what you consider “working on.” I have about 30 ideas in the notes app on my phone, but most will probably never materialize for one reason or another.
Right now, there are probably two longer-term pieces I’d say are likely to happen and that I’ve done at least some work on. Then one more than I’m hoping to get started next week.
My batting average on those types of things is far from 1.000, but if I can mix bad sports metaphors here, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take. That’s one of many great lessons I’ve taken from working with people like Liz Merrill and Joe Posnanski and Wright Thompson and Andy McCullough and Jeff Passan and now Vahe Gregorian. They’re all so good about balancing long-term with short.
Vahe, in particular, is terrific about having the heart and patience and brain to see the right times to shoot long-term. That’s how he’s able to write stories about Gale Sayers battling dementia, and how Johnny Robinson stood for something more than even the Hall of Fame.
You never know when stories like that will find you, but you need to always be looking, or at least available, and do everything you can to follow through.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for relationships I’ve made with people in Kansas City sports who’ve helped me see things from different angles and think about things in different ways and plainly tell me stuff I’d have no idea about otherwise. It’s a gift, and I hope I keep my end of the deal by treating them fairly and honoring their trust.
This story was originally published December 10, 2019 at 5:00 AM.