Passing Around Blame In KC Chiefs Loss To San Diego Chargers

There's a lot of blame to go around after the Kansas City Chiefs were blown out against the San Diego Chargers, 31-0. It's Brodie Croyle's fault. It's Matt Cassel's fault. It's Todd Haley's fault. Romeo Crennel and Charlie Weis, too. The defense.

"San Diego played better than us, clearly better than us," Haley said after the game. "I don't think that it was close."

Here are the reasons the Chiefs were blown out against the Chargers:

The Chiefs lost because of Brodie Croyle. Somehow Croyle topped Matt Cassel's Week 1 performance as the worst of the season for a Chiefs quarterback. 7-of-17 for 40 yards and four sacks. A positive? He didn't throw an interception. But this was a pretty miserable performance from the start. When he dropped back, he was usually pressured heavily and unable to throw the ball away at times. When he did have time, he missed receivers.

The Chiefs lost because Matt Cassel was out. When Cassel went down, their already obvious game plan became even more obvious. They had to run the ball very well if they wanted to stay competitive in this game. Once Cassel was ruled out, everyone knew what the Chiefs were doing. [Note: No, I'm not really blaming the dude for getting an appendectomy.]

The Chiefs lost because the running game couldn't get anything going. Sure the Chargers got the lead early but don't let the running game slip from the blame here. Kansas City was committed to the run even late in the third quarter and they couldn't do anything. The Chiefs stopped using Thomas Jones after he gained one yard on three carries. Charles' four yards per carry are respectable for a normal running back but, as we've learned, Charles is better than a normal running back.

The Chiefs lost because they were out-coached. The Chiefs didn't know how to score once they got down by a couple of touchdowns. The offensive game plan was vanilla -- and we expected that -- but they had no clue how to come back in this one. Defensively, the Chiefs were MIA at times. Philip Rivers hit underneath route after underneath route allowing his receivers to pick up the YAC and consistently beat the Chiefs. Rivers was efficient all day and the Chiefs didn't have an answer.

The Chiefs lost because they didn't play complementary football. We remember complementary football, right? That would be the Chiefs capitalizing on the two turnovers they created. It would be the Chiefs running game stepping it up with the quarterback problems. It would be Brodie Croyle making the Chargers pay for stuffing the box. None of that happened yesterday.

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Truthfully, the loss can't be blamed on just one person. It's everyone's fault -- from the players to the coaches. Everyone deserves blame when you have a complete system failure like this. It's only the second blowout of the year for the Chiefs but this one is much worse than the Denver Broncos game a few weeks ago.