Brain Fertilizer

Man, that was an embarrassing loss. We shouldn't lose at home to the Broncos under any circumstances (last loss to the Broncos at Arrowhead was 2002), but to lose 27-11 is ridiculous. Especially with as banged up as Denver was coming into the game.

But it all starts up front, and our O-line let the Broncos get too much pressure on Huard, while Denver's O-line pretty much shut down KC's D-line (except for one coverage sack to Jared Allen early in the game), and gave Denver's undrafted rookie RB pretty good cutback lanes (20 carries for 109 yards).

So with Huard getting hammered by the Bronco's D-line, the Chiefs gave up two big turnovers deep in KC's side of the field, leading directly and indirectly to two Bronco TDs in the 3rd quarter. That blew the game wide open and gave the Broncos an (with our offense) insurmountable lead.

If there is an upside, it's that Croyle has now been given the starting job, and unless he looks like the second coming of Ryan Leaf, he'll finish out the season. He looked pretty good against the Broncos, doing pretty well despite the highly-ranked Broncos pass defense knowing he had to pass to try to catch up. He did throw 1 INT and couldn't lead the Chiefs to more than a single FG.

But he looked pretty good. At least twice, I saw Brodie elude a pass rush by throwing a quick pass that Huard would not have been able to get off. Huard would have thrown it away or taken the sack, but Croyle threaded the ball past a defender to put the ball where the receiver could get it and get positive yardage.

I like Huard, and thought he was one of the mentally toughest QBs I've seen in recent history. But I've been ready for Croyle to take over since the beginning of the season, and even more after we went 0-2, and even more after Huard followed up the victory over San Diego with another really slow start against the Bengals. So I'm absolutely excited about Croyle starting the rest of the season, and I think he'll do well. I think he won't lose any games for us, and could quite possibly win several on his arm strength and ability.

But we'll see.

Our back-to-back losses nearly eliminate us from post-season play. I figure we'll need to end up 10-6 to have a chance, and I think there is little chance of us only losing one more game the rest of the season.

We still have to play Detroit, which is no slouch. We still have to go to Denver and try to win back the game we lost this week. San Diego is coming back, and they will want to take the game at Arrowhead to avenge our beating them on their home turf. And, of course, we travel to Indianapolis to take on the Colts this week. We will lose more than one of those games, and so we are now likely to end up 8-8 or 9-7.

We could have beaten both the Packers and the Broncos. We needed to win at least one of them to be able to say we are a good enough team to make the playoffs. We are still alive, so we'd better not give up, but hope is fading.