Chiefs Hit New Low In 13-10 Loss To Raiders

The tone of this article would have been ugly even had the Chiefs pulled out a victory Sunday over the Oakland Raiders. But that’s not the case as Haley’s Bunch lost to an inferior football team and now face the real possibility they could start the 2009 season with an 0-7 record. Now they face a murderer’s row schedule with four NFC teams before San Diego.

This game falls on the inexperience of head coach Todd Haley. Just seconds after the Chiefs had taken a 10-6 lead, he did what every NFL coach does in a late game situation - he played soft coverage outside and only rushed four defensive linemen during the Raiders’ game winning drive.

It’s the kind of coaching that will start the Bill Cowher talk again in Kansas City at season’s end. The Chiefs missed a golden opportunity to beat arguably the worst starting quarterback in the NFL. They should be 1-1 today and instead their season is on the brink of extinction. Again, you could see that this team just does not know how to win football games.

The Raiders have now won three straight games at Arrowhead. They outplayed the Raiders in every category, except penalties. It’s clear that the team general manager Scott Pioli put together is short on talent. The Chiefs are a Tony Gonzalez away from being 2-0.

Gonzalez is in Atlanta with two touchdowns on the season while the Chiefs’ offense has no presence in the middle of the field.

That’s not the only problem, of course, but it’s a part of the puzzle when you design a football team. You can’t underestimate a position that has been such a strength for the Chiefs for over a decade.

The game should have been over in the first half, but instead the score stood 3-3. The Chiefs were flagged for numerous penalties that cost them first downs and field position. In fact, you could say that the Chiefs looked more like the Raiders with their mental errors.

Right now this football team is on critical life support. All the progress they made a week ago in Baltimore had me burping up the Kool-Aid I was drinking, thinking Kansas City would win Sunday.

Instead, the Chiefs let JaMarcus Russell complete four passes on the final drive. He had completed three prior to that.

Defensively speaking, the Chiefs played well until the final two minutes, when their head coach and defensive coordinator pulled the plug on their aggressiveness. We saw it in the preseason and now that disease is infiltrating the regular season.

I could go on and on, but you get the drift. It’s just too easy to pile on right now. There weren’t enough positives Sunday to think that with four NFC games coming up, the Chiefs have a shot at winning one.

Will Haley’s Bunch recover? This loss will sting so much that it appears the Chiefs, eventually, will be hard pressed to think they are any different under Haley and Pioli than they were a year ago under Herm Edwards and Carl Peterson.