Yes you are Otto, yes you are.

/Pours out 40 oz. of graphs for Otto.

Before we discuss the 2016 Kansas City Chiefs we need to recall the 2015 Kansas City Chiefs. Led by Andy Reid,
Jamaal Charles, and Alex Smith, the Chiefs went 11-5 and finished second in the AFC West.

They had a bye in the first round of the playoffs, an off week they filled by defeating some pick-up team from Houston 30-0. Well rested and refreshed from their time off the Chiefs nearly upset the hated-by-everyone-not-an-asshole-and-also-The-Maestro Patriots, only to lose 27-20. All in all a pretty good year, especially for the Chiefs. The question is how do they top that in 2016.

Well for starters someone could buy Andy Reid or Alex Smith, or both, a goddamn watch. Anyone who wasn’t wearing Patriots gear was watching the Chiefs at the goal line and screaming at them about their complete and utter lack of time management. Forget the failure to use the time-outs; that’s debatable and, if the Chiefs had been able to hang onto Tom Brady’s worst pass ever two plays after fucking themselves over but good those time-outs would have been extremely valuable in the hands of anyone but Andy Reid, who would undoubtedly have squandered two of them on back-to-back debates about whether to kick a FG and then try an onside kick, then lost the third one while calling out for pizza.

So yeah, the first order of business for the Chiefs would be to get someone who can fucking tell time at the end of a game.

When he’s healthy the Chiefs have probably the best overall RB in the game in Jamaal Charles. Too bad he’s not healthy. Charles blew out his knee in Week 5 last year and never came back. That’s his second torn ACL. While only 29 he’s been playing in the NFL since 2008 and that’s goddamn ancient for an NFL RB, especially one with that kind of knee history. I don’t expect a lot from him this year, but will I still draft him in the first round? Probably, because I am an idiot.

At QB the Chiefs have the ah, uh, um, “competent” seems about right, Alex Smith, with his tiny hands and 25 yard pop-gun arm. Still, as I learned last year in Sill’s League, Smith rarely throws INTs, (OK, probably because he rarely throws the ball more than 10 yards on the fly, but still), and he’s got a fantastic target in TE Travis Kelce. Kelce, while developing into a fine offensive weapon, will probably always be more famous for this:blob:

or

At WR the Chiefs picked up Jeremy Maclin last year, presumably so that Smith had someone to underthrow while still getting a couple of defenders away from the line so the RBs and/or Kelce had more room to maneuver. This year the Chiefs drafted WR Demarcus Robinson in the 3rd round, presumably to help Maclin by adding a frequently suspended guy with poor technique and bad hands.

Kansas City had a Top 10 defense last year, led by Justin Houston, Derrick Johnson and Tamba Hali, who just wreck shit up front and are a blast to watch. Houston, apparently in solidarity with Charles, is coming off a torn ACL of his own, Johnson is 33 and tore his Achilles in 2014, (which makes him even playing in 2015 kind of amazing) and Hali is 32 with some knee issues of his own.

The Chiefs have a bye in Week 5 this year. Before that it’s the San Diego For Now Chargers at home, the Houston Texans (?), in Houston, the Jets at home and Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh. I’ll call them 3-1 at the bye, if they have Charles and Houston back and healthy, 2-2 if they only have one and 1-3, (sorry Boltman), if they don’t have either. After the bye, pretending that everyone’s healthy and no one gets hurt, (because when does that ever happen in the NFL?), the Chiefs are probably better than Denver, (because Sanchez), but the Denver D will force a split, they’ll sweep San Diego, (because Chargers), and they’ll split with Oakland because Oakland seems to be getting better and better as Al Davis’s animated corpse continues to decay to the point where it really can’t interfere with football operations anymore. Wins against the Saints, Jags, Bucs, Falcons, Titans and losses to the Colts and Panthers. 11-5 and 4-2 in the AFC West is their best case according to me, a guy who has spent about an hour thinking about their season. Probably second place in the division, since I think Denver’s D keeps them in front and Oakland will find some way to fuck things up while San Diego just loses interest once Spanos “forgets” to pay the electric bill sometime in early November.

Which means we can look forward to ending another live-blog sometime in December with all of us screaming “WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” as the Chiefs dither at the opposing team’s goal line while Andy Reid agonizes about whether to order the left or right side of the menu.