Kansas City Chiefs players and coaches talk about that embarrassing stat

Seven games without a lead. If there is a stat that describes the 2012 Kansas City Chiefs better than that one then I'd like to see it. The Chiefs are the first team since 1940 (!!!) to start their season with seven games without a lead. 1940!

More context: The country was in the Great Depression the last time a team played like this to start a season.

Ugh.

My Grandma is 99 years old. She was a spry 27 years old the last time a team went this long without holding a lead.

This is the type of stat that non-football fans will talk about in their offices. It's the type of stat that will follow a team for a long time. This is something they'll talk about with the 2013 Chiefs. It's similar to, and perhaps even worse, than the 10-wins-in-three-years stat.

Chiefs players and coaches have been and will continue to be asked about the lead-less stat. Here's what they said about it on Tuesday, via some quotes sent out by the Chiefs:

Matt Cassel: "Score more points. That's really what it comes down to. We've got to execute. We talk about starting fast and doing those things. It sounds ridiculous that I'm sitting here saying we've got to execute, but we do. We've got to execute and we've got to put together drives in the early part of the game and come out with an intensity. I'm not saying that we lack that all the time, but that's really what it comes down to because in the NFL, one play or a negative play or a penalty gets you in a third-and-long situation, and it's hard to overcome that."

Jamaal Charles: "The lead, it's very important, especially because we've never had a lead this year. It would be very important to start off a game and especially good since we're playing on Thursday night on nationalTV."

Eric Winston: "Yeah, it's something that's kind of hard to believe but it is, we've got to face reality and we've got to go out there and figure out ways to be better in the game early."

Brian Daboll: "You have to play good football and you have to coach good football. When you're turning the football over, particularly early on in games, that puts you behind the eight ball a little bit. So we just have to all do our job better and make sure we go out there and execute and play good football. It's as simple as that."