PRESEASON GAME 3

PRESEASON - GAME 3 - Seahags at the New Head.

Score: Chiefs 10, Seahogs 14.

Weather: Beeeeeaautiful!

Overall impression of the game: They lost - again. Daffy duck looked awful and people got hurt. The bright spot is, the rest of the AFC West doesn't look much better.

The Offense:

WOW that was bad. The line is dreadful beyond words. They should line up the blocking dummies, they won't be out of position as often. But it doesn't stop there. I don't think anyone on this offense can block. The play that got Cassel hurt had at least three blown blocks, including Brian Waters and Branden Albert. But the worst "look out" block came from FB Mike Cox. After Albert missed the guy, #92, who played Gumby with Cassel's left leg, Cox had a clean shot at him, and didn't even get close enough to smell his cologne. We will never know how badly hurt Cassel was, because Haley & Pioli do things "The Patriots Way" -- that is to act like their injury reports are subject to the HIPAA law. But, at a minimum, it was pretty badly extended. Jamaal Charles managed to hang on to the punkin all night. For my money, if Charles can shake that fumbling habit, he's the best back on this team. Battle has looked good, as well, at times. LJ probably should have ditched that Maybach before the "Cash for Clunkers" program ran dry. He may not be able to feed it with next year's income. As for the wide outs, the two that looked the best on Saturday were Bowe and Lelie. This was a game for Thiggy to man up and make his case, and he blew it badly. Gutierrez looked better, and he had two turn overs. Thiggy simply lacks the arm strength and accuracy to play in a straight-up pro offense. Bottom line - this offense will not win any games this year, unless things improve dramatically. If the Chiefs win anything, it will be with....

The Defense:

I am actually starting to like this unit. The 1's looked very good, for the second week. However, as noted last week, once you get past the starters, there is not much depth anywhere but linebacker. Flowers was remarkable, and scored the only TD for the Chiefs with a nice pick-6 off Hasselbeck & the Seattle #1 unit. Let's hope he's not hurt badly, but just like Cassel, we'll never know. Another guy who had a good game was Ron Edwards on the d-line. In a head-to-head test, he out-performed the name brand linemen. The defense still lacks that consistent pass rush, and the pass coverage in the middle of the field has yet to completely come together. They're a long way from great, but that are showing flashes of "pretty good", which is a marked improvement over the past few years.

The Special Teams:

Other than Dustin Colquitt and Jamaal Charles, the special bus looked as bad or worse than the offense. Suck-up missed a chip-shot field goal, and his kick offs were short. Of course, the good news is, he had very few opportunities to kick off! The experiment with returners has netted one guy who seems to understand the concept of "catch the ball - run up-field behind your blockers" -- Jamaal Charles.

The Awards:

"Throw Him A Bone" was penciled in for Brandon Flowers, but with the injury, I decided to go with Jamaal Charles. He did everything right. He ran well, he returned well, he covered punts well as a flyer.  He is making his case to be the #2 back, and #1 kick returner.

"The Doggity Dog" was really hard to narrow down to just one guy. You could make the case that everyone on the O-line deserved it. Damion McIntosh and Mike Goff were particularly bad, but Goff "wins" because he couldn't hold the double-team that cause the pocket to collapse on Cassel, resulting in his injury. Getting your $60 million QB eaten in a preseason game will not win you a lot of friends.

h/t to George Blowfish for this nugget -- a picture of the play where Cassel got hurt:

Next week - short week, at the Identity Crisis Dome in St. Louis on Thursday to play the Lambs.

Your faithful scribe

Mr. Doggity