Ravens Beating Chiefs Is 'Tough Loss To Swallow'

"My hat goes off to them," Shaun Smith said. "They wanted it more than us."

And that is how the Kansas City Chiefs loss to the Baltimore is described. The Ravens out-muscled and out-toughed the Chiefs in their own house. The Chiefs leave Arrowhead Stadium losers of an NFL record seventh consecutive playoff game.

The feeling wasn't a good one inside the locker rooms following the Chiefs loss to the Ravens. Clearly this team expected a lot from themselves because it was a surprise that they were going home early. 

"Tough loss to swallow," Derrick Johnson said staring and standing at his locker after the game. "Today they were a tougher team and we pride ourselves on being tough but we didn't show an example of that today."

The Ravens were able to find holes in the Chiefs zone defense early, capitalized when they switched to man-to-man and, as Jon McGraw told us after the game, did a great job of scheming to get Todd Heap open.

"Give credit to the Ravens," Brandon Flowers said. "They created turnovers and executed on key third downs."

We'll get to how Heap fell through the cracks a little later but for now....this is such a disappointment. Yeah, the Chiefs were underdogs and, yeah, not many people were expecting them to win. But I thought they were Kansas City's own little secret this year and they'd make some noise but it's not the way it was meant to be.

We'll have a lot more on the game soon but I need to let this one settle for a few minutes first. It's painful following something for six months to see it end in one half of play.

"I appreciate the support," Dorsey said to the fans after the game. "They came out today. You can't ask for a better environment than that. They did their part. We thank them."