Chiefs miss tackles, opportunities for first win

 
Well Kansas City Chiefs fans – those of you who are still watching the 0-5 team – is your glass half full or half empty after watching Sunday’s 26-20 overtime loss to the Dallas Cowboys?
If your left encouraged by Matt Cassel’s late drive to tie the game with a 16-yard touchdown pass to Dwayne Bowe with :16 left in regulation, your glass is half full.
If you can’t believe that Miles Austin broke free from a member of the Chiefs secondary – for the second time in the game - to score the game-winning overtime score, well your glass is probably half empty and right now you’re wondering how you can get a refund on those season tickets you bought instead of putting some cash away from your kid’s college fund.
After watching the game, I’m a bit torn between the two choices.
The Cowboys have so much more talent than the Chiefs, I’d almost be a bit embarrassed that my team needed overtime to beat Kansas City.
Cassel ran for his life most of the afternoon and Larry Johnson again proved his better days are behind him (21 carries for 35 yards and a 1.8 per-carry average), but the Chiefs found a way to take them ‘boys to overtime.
I bet flamboyant Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was having a coronary in the owner’s suite as you can bet this is one of those games he counted as a victory before it even happened.
If the Chiefs could have stopped Austin’s first touchdown (a 59-yard strike from Tony Romo that included a break-away tackle at midfield to give Dallas a 20-13 lead late in the fourth quarter), there would have been no overtime period and we would have been dissecting the team’s first win.
It’s only fitting that once again, it was Austin who drove the final nail in the Chiefs overtime coffin, again breaking free of a Chiefs defender to score the game winner in overtime.
“Miles is a guy who was in Dallas when I was and he was acquired, and I’ve got to take my hat off to him,” said Todd Haley, the Chiefs first-year head coach who was an assistant coach with the Cowboys.
“He’s been working, trying to find his way. He made a couple of huge plays, probably the biggest of his career. We’ve got to cover better and we’ve got to tackle better. Period.”
Make that period – with an exclamation point!
When a team is bad, it’s the little things like two missed tackles that turn a positive into a negative – or a half-full glass into a half-empty glass.
“It was a tough, hard-fought game, a game we would have liked to have come out on top,” Haley added. “It was the first overtime together as a group. I thought the guys fought hard in all phases. I thought that, offensively in spurts, we showed some progress, although 15-minus plays again - that’s the area to me, offensively, that has to change.
“We have to improve that. Defensively, we missed some tackles out there but I thought overall the guys competed to win the game. It wasn’t the result we wanted and I know the guys are all hurting.”
He’s right there. The locker room was quiet and many players had dressed and left before the coach was finished with news conference.
“We have to find a way to win,” defensive back Jarrad Page said. “We have to learn to finish a game. We had the lead for a lot of that game and once we let it slip away, you could just feel the momentum switch over to the Cowboys.”
Added Cassel, “The last drive (in regulation) was a great drive for us. We talked in the locker room after the game about how today is the first time we have really come together as a team.
“But it’s very disappointing when you play to win the game, and you come so close, and then you lose it at the end. We haven’t won a game this season – we need to win. We’re getting close, and we’re heading in the right direction.”
Let’s lift our half-full glasses to the classy quarterback and thank him for that optimistic outlook.