It's over. The Kansas City Chiefs came back in the second half to make it respectable but the Green Bay Packers were clearly the better team in this 38-28 victory for Green Bay.
This is how I feel about this game:
Tonight's game: pile of garbage with a fancy tablecloth put over it. #Chiefs
— #DJ1K (@barleyhop) September 29, 2015
Final stats are here.
Three things we learned...
Alex Smith was not good
The offensive line was not good. The receivers weren't always open. The Packers defense got a lot of pressure. The play calling was highly questionable.
All that said ... Alex Smith was bad in this game.
His full numbers won't reflect it because the Chiefs started moving the ball late in the game and picking up chunk yards while they were down by multiple touchdowns. For most of the game, Smith was part of the problem, not the solution.
He got happy feet anytime pressure got to him and was unable to step out of it and make a play. He refused to throw the ball down the field in the first half. He was just 2-of-7 for 39 yards in the first half. Almost every time there was a third and long - and there were a lot of them - Smith threw a dump off pass at the line of scrimmage.
He DID start moving the ball more in the second half. I will give him credit for that. But it was too late by that point. The Chiefs were down by three scores at halftime.
The Chiefs are too invested in Smith and this is just one game so, no, I'm not calling for Chase Daniel to replace him. However, I would have put Daniel in this game after halftime. That's how bad Smith's first half was.
Two Chiefs CBs out = a big day for Aaron Rodgers
I can't put this game all on the defense even though they gave up a bunch of points. The Chiefs were missing Sean Smith and Phillip Gaines, who was injured early in the game. So Rodgers was working on the Chiefs fourth and fifth cornerbacks. And it went about as you would expect.
Marcus Cooper started for Jamell Fleming and Rodgers repeatedly targeted Cooper. His biggest mistake was an illegal contact penalty on a play where the Chiefs forced and recovered a fumble on Rodgers. Because of the penalty, that was called back. That was a game changer (back when the game was still close, a seven point game).
After Gaines was injured, Tyvon Branch stepped in to play the slot. He was repeatedly targeted by Rodgers, who had a field day with both Cooper and Branch.
I'm not even really mad about this. A lot of teams are not good when two of their top cornerbacks are out.
The Chiefs season is not over
I know you're going to hate that I even say that right now because judging on what people said to me on Twitter there is a lot of anger out there. But this is Week 3. The Chiefs were 1-2 last year, too, and they had games coming up against the Patriots and 49ers. That's bleaker than the Chiefs games coming up against the Bengals and Bears.
The Chiefs can recover from this. It's one game against a great quarterback who took advantage of your corners out of the game. As for the offense, that's another story. That was not good and they haven't been good since the first half of the Houston game. The Chiefs need to do some real soul searching there.