The Road to Miami: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About the Preseason and Love the Chiefs

As you loyal readers know, I am on record as saying I do not draw concrete conclusions from the preseason. After last night's game, I am still holding my ground. The preseason is about as real as this Chiefs Santa Claus from the Kansas City Store.

While I would have liked to at least seen a field goal last night, these are still exhibition games. I understand that sports writers need an angle and their current Chiefs angle seems to be:

Giants Improve by Leaps and Bounds

Eli Manning Shreds Chiefs' Secondary

Huddle up, its time for a reality check

It isn't tough to see that this team is soft (Wow. Whitlock is being cynical?)

Trouble Brewing in KC

Yes. The game was embarassing. But you know what? Going back to 2003, the Chiefs are 4-11 in preseason games. What really annoys me is that sports writers are MUCH more willing to write off a team that performs poorly in the preseason than to endorse a Super Bowl contender based on the preseason.

Why doesn't this go both ways? Because its easy to point out a loser-- if they succeed, no big deal. If you adamantly predict a winner, who loses, then your Nostradamus football skills are called into question.

Lets put it this way. Hypothetically speaking, in any regular season game this year, the Chiefs are missing Trent Green and LJ, or other players of significance. The Chiefs play a horrible game without their stars and the media chalks it up to not having our best talent in the game. We've all heard this story before right? No worries...they'll bounce back. The team wasn't playing at full capacity.

Exactly. The preseason is the same way. Casey "Calvin Klein" Printers was in for most of the Texans game. No wonder we lost. Will he even be on the team come September? Who knows. The point is this:

The preseason has veterans and stars who play only a few series; newbies and younger players are in the game simply so their coaches can get a good look at them; there is a lack of overall effort because of the fear of injury; and many experimental schemes being tried out.

I'm not saying the Chiefs looked good last night. They looked horrible. This isn't a pro-Chiefs post. Its an anti-the-preaseason-means-everything post.

If you are going to tell me those criteria above represent, in any capacity, a regular season game, you must be a Giants fan.