NCAA Playoff/NFL Open Thread II
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It’s unfortunate that the belated introduction to the NCAA playoffs has started with a couple unwatchable games, but hopefully at least one of Texas/Clemson or Tennessee/OSU lives up to its end of the bargain.
I write this at halftime of the Chiefs/Texans game. As of now the Chiefs have somehow gone 12-1 with a +56 point differential, with as Steven Ruiz summarizes one ridiculous ending after another:
Week 1: Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely catches the game-tying touchdown as time expires, but replay shows that his toe was just out of bounds, giving the Chiefs a 27-20 win.
Week 2: The Bengals, leading by two points, are called for defensive pass interference on fourth-and-16 with 48 seconds left. The penalty yardage puts the Chiefs in range for a game-winning field goal as time expires.
Week 3: The Falcons, trailing by five with under a minute remaining, are stuffed on third-and-1 and fourth-and-1 from the Kansas City 13-yard-line, giving the Chiefs a 22-17 win.
Week 10: With the Chiefs clinging to a two-point lead over Denver, Leo Chenal blocks a chip-shot field goal to preserve the win in the game’s final seconds.
Week 13: Trailing by two points, the Raiders march into field goal range but never get a chance to kick after the Chiefs recover a fumble on a botched shotgun snap.
Week 14: Trailing the Chargers by a point, the Chiefs doink in the game-winning field goal as time expires.
I think the role of officiating in this has been overstated — the DPI in the Bengals game was absolutely blatant, for example — although I will note that the Chiefs did benefit from a phantom OPI and a very marginal defensive hold to wipe out a sack at the end of the first half this afternoon, which won’t dim the talk. Anyway, that’s an incredible run of luck in close games.
Mike Sando also has a good deep dive into the worst 12-1 team in modern NFL history. In most cases where a team is overperforming their Pythagorean expectation by this much — cf. the 2022 Vikings — we can confidently write them off as total frauds. With the Mahomes/Reid Chiefs, they’re clearly not as good as their record this year but it’s a little bit more complicated. To find a case of them winning a Super Bowl after kind of sleepwalking through a regular season you have to go back to…last year. Belichick and Brady used to win more of their share of close games too, and for a great QB and coach it’s not just pure luck. As Sando observes Mahomes saves his extremely effective running in the regular season to high-leverage spots, and they avoid the kind of blunders and late-game brownouts lesser franchises like the Raiders and Falcons make their speciality. The Chiefs aren’t as good as their record, but (having made a lot of money from the market underrating them last year) I still wouldn’t feel very comfortable betting against them in the playoffs either. We’ll see if the Texans can break the spell.
One Chiefs-related thing I am confident about is that the persons responsible for the “bundlerooski” ad should be on a one-way ticket to the Hague right now.