It’s a new day. The Kansas City Chiefs did indeed end their 11-game regular season winning streak with a 19--12 loss to the Houston Texans. I’m going to begin my rewatch shortly and go through all the nitty gritty but, big picture thing, the sky is not falling in Kansas City.
The Chiefs lost because they made dumb penalties (nine of them!) at bad times and they turned the ball over three times. Those are both things they are usually pretty good at avoiding.
“You can’t do that in this league,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said after the game. “The margin between winning and losing is so small in this league that if you do stupid things it’s going to be tough to come out on the right side of the score. It’s something we have to learn from this and get ourselves back and ready to go. The ability is there. I’m not denying the ability is there. We have a chance to be a good football team but we gotta learn from this right here.”
Alex Smith isn’t going to start turning the ball over all the time. Spencer Ware can’t remember the last fumble he lost so I doubt he’s going to become Tiki Barber (the bad, fumble-prone Tiki Barber). They won’t hold on the next Tyreek Hill touchdown return. Cairo Santos won’t kick it out of bounds often. The Chiefs aren’t going to be playing many playoff caliber teams on the road this season either.
This is the type of game that, as Andy Reid said, the Chiefs need to learn from and be ready for when they meet a team like this again in January. For now though, the sky is not falling. The Chiefs are not a dumb team, they just made dumb mistakes.