Mellinger Minutes: hoping for some respect, Chiefs week + college football is back!
The Chiefs begin another Super Bowl push this weekend, full stadium, no capacity limits, and it will have been 585 days ago at the parade since the last time so many Kansas Citians gathered in one place.
It will not be perfect. It will be messy. Here’s hoping it can at least be respectful.
Kansas City had 1,300 new cases of COVID-19 last week, which s more than twice as many as this time last year when crowds were limited to about 17,000.
Think about that for a second. Kansas City reported 524 new cases the week of the 2020 opener, when crowd size was capped, and reported 1,300 last week, as we all looked forward to real football games in front of full stadiums.
If that’s not proof that we’re all guessing our way through this, I’m not sure what is.
Some of you might think this is all a big mistake, that the delta variant is changing the rules — including with outdoor transmission — and if teams aren’t keeping the virus out of buildings even with high vaccination rates and strict protocols then maybe it’s not the best idea to create what might be weekly super-spreaders in our nation’s biggest cities.
Some of you might think is what you’ve been looking forward to more than anything else in the world, and that you’re a grown adult who can make grown decisions. We’ve had 18 months of this perverted reality now, and regardless of the mistakes made in handling all of this at some point we need to move forward. The vaccine is easily available for free now.
Sometimes I think back to August of last year, when Sporting played the first major game in front of fans since the world shut down. The sound and feeling of the spontaneous joy of a few thousand strangers in a shared experience put goosebumps on my arms. It was a reminder of what sports can be, and why so many of us love them.
I’m expecting the same thing on Sunday. I haven’t been in a full stadium in more than a year and a half. Most of you are the same way. Right or wrong, sane or not, these experiences are some of the best of our lives.
These events move people. These events are often how friendships start, thrive, and refresh. People fall in love in those parking lots, plan weddings around the schedule, start families and bring their own kids to games. There is something almost indescribable — primal, fierce, joyful and nerve-wracking all at once — about being in those stands and hoping with everything you have for the same thing as thousands of strangers around you.
The best of sports is when they give us those moments and those feelings. The best of sports is when they help us get through rough times.
I know I think about these things more than I should, but when have we needed sports to do that with us more than these last 18 months?
These last 18 months have brought out the worst in a lot of us. We’ve been lonely and cranky and judgmental and scared. We’ve been aggressive and self-righteous and angry. We’ve assumed the worst in others. I’ve done this. I’m betting you have, too, at least occasionally.
I’m hoping that can stop, and soon.
The other day, I went to the Royals game with my family. Beautiful afternoon. We played catch in the parking lot and watched Salvador Perez hit one into the fountains and Adalberto Mondesi steal two bags.
There was a loud White Sox fan in our section, and bless his heart, he was screaming for most of the three hours. But — and maybe I just missed it — I never heard anything overly obnoxious. No attacks, nobody telling him to shut up, even as the Royals controlled all nine innings.
The only thing that happened was people screaming ROYALS at the end of his LET’S GO WHITE SOX chant. It was great. We were all watching baseball, together. What’s there to be mad about?
That’s what I’m hoping Sunday will be like. I’m hoping that full capacity stadiums can mean more of us feel those joys again. I’m hoping we can leave the crankiness and judgements and self-righteousness and worst assumptions at home.
Goodness knows they’ll be there when we get back.
The reading recommendation is David Roth with This Is What It’s Supposed To Be Like, and the eating recommendation is the KC burrito from Tiki Taco.
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Well, that’s a terrific point.
Patrick Mahomes is America’s pettiest athlete, and that’s said with respect. My favorite theory on this comes from someone who knew him as a kid, who swears Mahomes remembered any and everyone who made fun of his voice, and used that to propel his athletic excellence.
He does not forget slights, and when there are no slights to remember he’ll make some up.
This has become a reliable and almost endearing part of many athletes’ backstories, none more famous than Michael Jordan fabricating getting “cut” from his high school team and later completely making up this weird slight where a fellow named LaBradford Smith scored 37 on the Bulls and afterward told Jordan, “Nice game, Mike.”
The next night, Smith’s Washington Bullets played the Bulls again and Jordan swore he’d score 37 on Smith in the first half. He scored 36, and the Bulls won that game, eventually a third consecutive championship and it wasn’t until many years later that Jordan admitted Smith never said that.
I don’t know that we’re quite at Make Up Lies And Believe Them territory with Mahomes, he did once see that he was ranked as the fourth-best player in America’s most popular sports league and immediately broadcast the insult on social media and later mocked the list by counting to four in the middle of a blowout win over the top-ranked player.
The bonkers part of this with Mahomes is that he is actually so good at football that a list ranking him fourth can genuinely be taken as an insult.
I digress.
Anyway, here’s the hit:
And the slow motion replay:
Whatever it’s worth, Mack Wilson tweeted prayers and support for Mahomes after the game, which Mahomes accepted. The NFL did not fine Wilson.
But it’s also worth noting that after the game Travis Kelce seemed to need all the restraint he could muster
In the post-game news conference, Travis Kelce seemed to need all the restraint he could muster to not call Wilson dirty:
“This is a violent game. We wear helmets for a reason and that’s because guys are flying around trying to take your head off. You never want to say someone purposely tries to take you out of the game, but after the initial hit they were fired up, saying, ‘That’s what we do. That’s what we do.’ I do feel like those guys are good and I respect a lot of them … especially Myles.”
It’s worth noting that Myles Garrett publicly stood up for Wilson, and that Garrett and Mahomes have known each other since high school.
Here’s what I think:
I think the hit was not dirty. There was no helmet-to-helmet, and I’m willing to assume that many NFL defenders scream THAT’S WHAT WE DO after a key tackle on 3rd and 1. I also believe that Mahomes does not believe the tackle was particularly dirty.
I believe Mahomes has enough to motivate him already, between a marquee season opener, chasing another Super Bowl, and what I’ve come to think of as a delusional obsession with getting better.
I don’t think he’ll connect the dots directly and feel like he has a score to settle, but I also believe he’ll get to a mental space where he will be as locked in as ever. I also think he has enough of a flair that he might mockingly bang the side of his helmet or something after a touchdown, and then afterward make up some story that nobody will believe about it actually being a sign of respect to the drummer in his high school’s marching band or something.
The Chiefs want him back. Of course they do. How could they not? Flip a coin between him and Steve Spagnuolo as the single biggest force in remaking the Chiefs defense from that embarrassment of 2018 to Super Bowl champions in 2019.
Tyrann Mathieu wants to be back. Of course he does. How could he not? This is where his talents shined brightest, the place that gave him the support and the platform to go from star to transcendent. He’s making a Hall of Fame case here, and that’s important to him.
But business is business.
The Chiefs are up against the cap, and after this season Tyreek Hill and Orlando Brown will be among those looking for new deals. Mahomes’ cap number is scheduled to from $7.4 million in 2021 to $35.8 million in 2022. Chris Jones will go from $8.5 million to $29.4 million.
The cap will go up and they can save $13.4 million by cutting Frank Clark, but that money and more is already accounted for.
What I’m saying here is that I don’t believe it’s a lock that Mathieu and the Chiefs will agree on terms.
The initial long-term plan was for a deal to have been done this past offseason. Nobody knew Covid was coming and that the salary cap would crash, so I’m not saying any of this as a red light warning. Just pointing out that they’re behind schedule here.
Nobody has told me this, but for me this comes down to whether Mathieu is intent on being the highest paid safety and whether the Chiefs can get close enough to his market value that he can be sold on familiarity and legacy.
Jamal Adams blew away the safety market with a four-year deal with $38 million in guarantees and a $17.5 million salary.
Adams is 25 years old. Mathieu will be 30 when his next contract begins. He’s not yet old, but the Chiefs have one of the more age-conscious front offices in the league.
This is all very delicate, and it won’t get easier with time.
Brett Veach’s front office has pulled off some magic tricks before, and Mahomes’ contract includes significant flexibility*, but they’re between $5 million and $6 million in cap space now, and have seven players scheduled for a combined cap hit of $151.6 million next season.
That does not include Orlando Brown or Mathieu.
Some of those cap hits can be managed — Frank Clark and Anthony Hitchens can be cut for a combined savings of around $21 million and an extension with Hill could lower his $20.7 million hit — but eventually the price of success is going to outgrow what the NFL’s financial structure allows.
Super Bowl teams lose good players.
The Chiefs will work hard to keep Mathieu from becoming one of them, but there are a lot of moving parts, and much of it is outside the team’s control.
The answer is Mahomes touchdowns, and I think that might be true even if you cut Salvy off today.
Mahomes has averaged about 2.5 touchdown passes per start, and if you run that over 16 games it comes out to 40.5. I’m only doing 16 games here because, honestly, I’m expecting the starters to rest the last game.
I might be overthinking this but 69 of Mahomes’ 114 career touchdown passes have come in the red zone, and 49 have been inside the 10.
Andy Reid likes to joke (he’s not really joking) that every down is a passing down, but at least some of those short touchdown passes have come with the understanding that the Chiefs simply did not have the kind of offensive line that could get a reliable push in the run game.
I believe that calculus is going to change this season — more on that in a column this week, by the way — which would mean fewer opportunities for Mahomes to throw.
I just don’t think we’re going to see a lot of Smoked Sausage or touchdown passes to the left tackle anymore. Some, because those plays work, and the Chiefs have the athletes to pull it off. But not as many, because they’ll be able to convert more traditionally.
I’m expecting him to be more efficient than ever. It would not be a surprise if he had the highest completion percentage and QBR of his career, or the lowest interception rate*.
* Even though he had the lowest in the league last year at just 1.0 percent.
But his career touchdown rate is still being propped up by that ridiculous 2018 season, when the Chiefs’ defense was so atrocious it put the offense in shootouts — Mahomes threw 29 touchdowns in seven games in which the defense gave up 28 points or more.
I’m not telling you the Chiefs won’t be in any shootouts this season. Last year, they gave up 28 or more in four games*.
* I’m not including Week 17, and you’re smart so I don’t need to tell you why.
I just think there will be fewer games that Mahomes is forced to go all Texas Tech, and fewer red zone plays where Andy Reid won’t trust the run game.
Speaking of the defense …
Then we’d know that Juan Thornhill will be 100 percent healthy, and that the Chiefs will be something like 15-1 when they rest the starters in the last week of the regular season.
I say that even with a pretty loaded schedule that includes five games against the other top eight teams in ESPN’s power rankings.
If the Chiefs have a top 10 defense, then I’m just not sure how you beat them.
I do not expect them to have a top 10 defense.
They should be OK there. Chris Jones and Tyrann Mathieu are superstars. L’Jarius Sneed isn’t far behind and Jarran Reed is a better addition than a lot of people realize. The linebackers are improved, and faster, but there’s not a lot of proven playmaking there. The secondary depth is thin, and the wrong injury could really change what they’re capable of doing.
The best version of this Chiefs defense would be Reed, Frank Clark and Tershawn Wharton being too effective to double Chris Jones on every snap.
It would be Willie Gay returning soon off IR and being the guy we saw during the preseason, and it would be a healthy secondary that takes advantage of the opposition’s passing game being rushed. It would be Steve Spagnuolo helping the defensive line with the right mix of stunts and (especially) blitzes.
It would also be taking advantage of some level of predictability from offenses that would be playing from behind.
The pieces are there, but I don’t think it’s enough that we can expect it.
The Chiefs can win playoff games with a defense that wins third down, gives up field goals instead of touchdowns, and forces the occasional turnover.
Get out of there with the opposing offense scoring in the low 20s and then make sure Allen Wright has your ring size.
Teams work very hard to make sure fans forget they are rooting for private businesses, and generally they’re pretty successful.
Money is money, I think we all understand that. We tend to demand a lot from teams in terms of community involvement and holding employees to higher standards and even (increasingly) taking stances on social issues.
I think that, usually, the moments the business stuff emerges we accept it as part of the game.
But there is something about this GEHA thing that hits a little different. I don’t know if it’s because it’s a company a lot of people never heard of before the initial partnership with the Chiefs, or because it’s an awkward acronym that a lot of people (still) don’t know how to pronounce, or if it’s just that natural human nature to want to protect traditions.
Sports become personal for a lot of us, and seeing the “Arrowhead” lettering on certain parts of the stadium became a little like the pictures on the walls of our house. It was comfortable. Seeing the GEHA in noticeably bigger letters than Arrowhead in some parts will just hit fans in a sore spot.
I don’t fault the Hunts for cashing in. If GEHA offered to help with the mortgage by putting their logo on my house I would start invite you all over to the GEHA residence at Mellinger property.
But some of this has been handled very awkwardly, and there’s no better example than inviting the media to see you unveil corporate signage like it’s a dang Super Bowl banner:
Look. Again: some of this is inevitable. Fans have different priorities than teams. That’s a fundamental but unavoidable fact in major sports.
Patrick Mahomes covers up a lot of warts. But every once in a while, the warts show up.
If I’m honest, I probably don’t trust anyone who a) says they like to grill and b) says they don’t make the best steak and burger around.
But that’s too easy.
Westport Flea Market is going to be the most popular answer, and it’s delicious, but I’m more of thin patty guy. And besides, Alec. You don’t strike me as the kind of guy looking for the most popular answer.
Town Topic is a national treasure and needs to be protected at all costs. I love that they have two locations, and they’re like a block and a half away from each other. Tay’s is also great, and more people should know about it.
But at least today I’m going with LC’s. It’s everything I want in my burger spot: no frills, super casual, simple menu, and they cook it when you order it. The fries aren’t great — just being honest — but they make up for it with tater tots and onion rings.
It cannot be improved upon.
Is this really a thing?
Here’s something I’ve been genuinely curious about my entire adult life: Do fans in other places care as deeply about how the national media covers their teams and people here seem to?
Is this a small-market thing?
Is this a Midwest thing?
Is this just a sports thing?
There are, of course, lots of examples of the national media recognizing Salvy, but it’s also true that losing teams in small markets don’t demand a lot of national attention so I’m sure there have been misses. The disaster during the home run derby didn’t help.
I should say right here that I recognize my bias. I’m a local sports writer, so, really, if I had it my way then all media outside Kansas City would keep Kansas City out they mouth. Also, when I read or watch national media professionally or as a regular consumer it’s not to hear about Kansas City.
People here will pay particular attention to the MVP voting. It’s a weird year for that, if we’re honest. Shohei Ohtani is doing something that no human has done, ever, and I’ll be surprised if he doesn’t win MVP unanimously. Vlad Guerrero, Carlos Correa, Aaron Judge and others are having great years.
Perez is ninth among position players in Baseball Reference’s WAR* and — I’m just the messenger here — 31st on FanGraphs.
* And 10th if you give Ohtani (who is ninth) credit for his pitching.
I believe there’s a coherent case for Perez to be second in voting behind Ohtani, but we still have a month of the season left and the distance between whoever finishes 2nd and whoever finishes sixth or seventh won’t be much.
I would also like to preemptively remind you that BBWAA awards are voted equally by writers in all cities, so if Perez doesn’t finish as high as you think he should it won’t be because New York doesn’t know his name.
Here’s what I know: when the Royals were winning, they were covered plenty by all the national outlets.
I can sit here and tell you I believe the Royals — and other teams that aren’t the Yankees, Dodgers and Red Sox — should be on more national games, and I’d be telling you the truth.
But I also know the way to get more national pop is by winning more games. Perez is being recognized nationally, and what he’s doing is outrageously impressive, but it’s also objectively less interesting and historic than Ohtani.
So that’s where a lot of the individual attention is going, overshadowing not just Perez but other terrific individual seasons — Cedric Mullins, Matt Olson, Marcus Semien and others. That’s just the way the world works.
We know what he’s doing here, and if you’re like me and believe the Royals are going to win soon, then you believe that Perez is going to get all the national love he can handle soon as well.
It does not make sense to me that a guy would be done physically at 25 years old, and that an organization with so much incentive and means and staff can’t figure out a way to keep him on the field at least somewhat regularly.
Maybe that’s how this will go. He certainly wouldn’t be the first athlete to be done in by injury.
The plan they’re trying now makes as much sense to me as anything — err on caution, pull back the pressure by moving him off shortstop, and hope he can play four times a week at third base, DH, and maybe second or the outfield.
Mondesi is not a ghost. He played 102 games in 2019, and last year played all but one available game in a COVID-shortened season. I’m pointing all this out as, perhaps, the person locally who brought up the injuries more than anyone else before this season.
The Royals and Mondesi can’t continue to do what they’ve done and just hope for different results. Hope is not a strategy. So they are changing the approach. The Royals have not given much detail on this, but I am certain the changes include workout and maintenance routines.
If you’re betting that Mondesi can be a guy who plays somewhere between 100 and 130 games regularly, you believe the following things:
- that Mondesi is frustrated about these injuries, and with real time (and money) being missed he’ll do everything possible to be as healthy as possible as often as possible.
- that Nick Kenney is good at his job, and the Royals’ investments in performance science and other departments can help.
I believe both of those things are true. Maybe it turns out that Mondesi is the wrong kind of freak athlete, that his body just can’t hold up to what his talents make possible.
But I think sports history has fewer examples of that than it does athletes who learned how to stay healthy.
This is a big question, and something I’m sure we’ll continue to explore in the offseason and especially next spring training.
The quick answer: meaningful games into August and September.
The somewhat longer answer:
Prospects continue to graduate into the big leagues, joining a culture with high standards and the ability to stop long losing streaks before they happen. It would be the Mondesi plan proving effective and Nicky Lopez continuing his success and other individual success stories that push the whole thing forward.
It would be a team that wins with consistent starting pitching, depth of power arms in the bullpen, very good defense, and an offense that doesn’t lead the league in on-base or slugging but does enough different things well — Perez’s power, Lopez’s on-base, Merrifield’s stolen bases, for instance — to win most nights.
The Royals have to prove it, but if you look around you’ll see enough to believe in long-term. I’ll be surprised if they’re not winning soon.
Mercy, they looked dominant.
I don’t know enough about Stanford and their schemes to have an idea about whether K-State is simply a bad matchup or whether the Wildcats were able to exploit some specific weakness that won’t be there during the Big 12 season.
But I do know enough to say that K-State just looked physically superior to Stanford — stronger, faster, better athletes — and if that’s an indication of what it’ll look like during the conference season then K-State is going to win a lot of games.
College football programs below the top tier — places other than Oklahoma and Alabama and LSU, for instance — have to win on the margins.
They have to find explosive running backs like Deuce Vaughn (and Tyler Badie) and they have to develop quarterbacks and they have to find ways to win with scheme.
Clemson can get away with simple offense and defense, relying on 5-star recruits backed up by 5-star recruits to win athletically. But that doesn’t work at most places, and if this is Chris Klieman showing that he can win with scheme and shrink the gap athletically then they’re going to win a lot of games for a lot of years.
Let’s do the other two local programs quickly.
Missouri fell behind early, and a 10-point home win over a MAC school that went 3-3 last year isn’t going to knock anyone’s socks off. But I actually thought it was a nice win.
Opening weeks are always weird, and it should matter that Mizzou closed the game strong, made the plays on defense when they had to, and have a playmaker like Tyler Badie.
You’d like them to have controlled the line of scrimmage a little better on offense, and the defense got pushed around a little. But there’s still a lot of momentum in that program, and they should be able to get to a bowl game with that offense and a defense that can create big plays with turnovers or sacks.
KU … look, it’s easy to make jokes, and storming the field after a last-minute win over an FCS program that hasn’t had a winning record in a decade is definitely a choice*.
* I actually liked it, and think people judging a bunch of college kids for doing something fun on a Friday night should probably get over themselves, but the point remains. You know it’s a look.
But they won a game, for the first time in nearly two years. That has to matter. This will be one of the most incredible turnarounds in college football history if Lance Leipold pulls it off, and even in the best-case scenario it would take years. There will be a lot more failures than successes. More dark times than bright.
Which means moments like Friday are even more important. Celebrate what you can. Learn from the rest. KU is a 27-point underdog against Coastal Carolina this weekend.
If this is the way it goes, I think the Big 12 will have done as well as they could.
I haven’t found anyone who can explain this in a way I understand, and it might not matter anyway with the wink-wink alliance between the Big 10, Pac-12 and ACC, but I believe the Big 12 would retain its status in the so-called autonomy five.
But in financial terms (which is what the schools care about) and competitive terms (which is what fans care about) I think it’ll be more like the Power 4 conferences and a Group of Five and then the Big 12 somewhere in between.
The new Big 12 would be objectively superior to the Mountain West or AAC, but you’d have to be creative to make the case that it’s on the level of the country’s best leagues.
None of those programs coming in are at the financial or talent level of Texas or Oklahoma. There will be a financial gap with the other leagues. That will show up in facilities and recruiting.
If you’re a K-State or KU fan, this could — in a really weird way — be a good thing. The gap between K-State and the top of the new Big 12 will be more manageable than chasing Oklahoma and, yes, I’m aware K-State has beaten Oklahoma two years in a row.
If this is the way it goes, perhaps the new version of the Big 12 will be more cohesive and stable without the time bomb of Texas and Oklahoma.
But it still feels like an awkwardly arranged marriage between schools without better options than playing defense while the leagues that used to be their peers are playing offense.
College sports are changing at a ridiculous pace. This new Big 12 might be fine for the present, but I’m not sure it puts any of its schools in a strong position for the future.
A list?
A list!
First, let me apologize to the bocce ball people. I respect you and your passion. I simply do not share it.
Here’s my top 5:
5. Baseball catch. You said competitive spirit, which is why this isn’t higher. At some point, you and your buddies will start messing around with a knuckleball, or try to break off curves or whatever. Maybe a game of 500 will break out. But the competitive spirit part is lacking, which is why it’s low on the list, but it’s also like the greatest thing in America so it’s on the list.
4. Football catch. The competitive spirit part comes if you have three or more of you, because at some point you will 100 percent start running routes against each other.
I know I’m a little off the point here, but how good is this:
3. Bottle bash. Admittedly, I had to Google the name, but it’s the one where you sit a bottle on top of a stick and one side throws the frisbee at it and if it hits the bottle the other side tries to catch it before it hits the ground. I know this is a good game because I have spent my entire life being terrible at throwing a frisbee and completely uninterested in figuring it out and I still really like this game.
2. Beer pong. Man, this was the thing in college (and, if I’m honest, into my 20s). It’s just so good. You either win, or you have a beer with your friends. Those are the only two possibilities in this game.
Also: real beer pong is played with paddles, but you guys aren’t ready for that conversation yet.
This would be No. 1 on the list but once you get to a certain age you just sort of can’t do it anymore and still feel like you’re a positive part of society.
1. Bags. It’s a classic for a reason, you guys. It’s competitive, you can knock the other side’s bag off the board, the games move quick and when you hit that perfect throw you feel like you are better at this game than anybody will ever be. And it’s the best tailgating game because you don’t have a ball or frisbee or anything that gets loose and stuck underneath some stranger’s F-150.
Look, you can fairly criticize newspapers for a lot of things. We’re adults. We can handle it. Much of it we’ve earned.
But this idea that any business should give away its product for free — and, thankfully, I sense less of this than I used to, but still — is just ridiculous.
This week I’m particularly grateful for the return of our neighborhood barbecue. We banged it last year because of stupid Covid, but did it this year with everybody outside and it was just delightful. Little by little, we take back what was lost last year. And sooooooo much food.
This story was originally published September 7, 2021 at 5:00 AM.