Patriots: Hope for a Close Game Vs. Chiefs

Yes, you read that headline correctly – the New England Patriots should hope that this weekend’s AFC Divisional Round matchup with the Kansas City Chiefs comes down to the wire.

As in, fourth quarter, Patriots in the lead, with just a few minutes left and the Chiefs driving down the field for a game-tying or even game-winning score.

And no, before you ask, I didn’t borrow any of Chandler Jones’ secret stash.

Patriots Nation, collectively, has historically been boned in close games – nobody needs to remind anybody about the 2007 Super Bowl, or the 2011 Super Bowl, or this year’s Broncos – Patriots overtime game, or losing to Rex Ryan and the Jets in the 2010 playoffs.  So clearly, the idea that a close game is good news for the Pats makes about as much sense as an all-veggie pizza.

But good news, everyone!

The Kansas City Chiefs are coached by a guy you might know, Mr. Andy Reid, who is arguably the single worst game manager of all time.  Reid deserves his own wing in the Hall of Fame where people can come out with a Ph.D. in how to not clock-manage a football game.

There should be a trophy in Madden that you get if you call a timeout with 2:01 remaining in the fourth quarter, and it should have Andy Reid’s smiling face on it, and the caption “I SEE NO WAY THIS COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG”.

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Just this season, it was Reid’s clock management that led to Kansas City taking what could’ve at LEAST been an overtime game with the Denver Broncos. Instead, the Chiefs gave the game away like your buddy sliding a beer down the bar and going “No worries, I’ll grab another one.”

From Yahoo Sports:

“Reid failed to recognize that the Broncos were out of timeouts at the end of the first half and that, up 14-7 with 2:30 remaining, he probably should run some clock and try to go into the half with a lead. Two straight passes were called — the first was incomplete, and the second was picked. The Broncos scored easily three plays later and eliminated any momentum the Chiefs had gained up 14-0.”

“It was déjà vu at the end of the game, knotted at 24-all. Except Reid hedged badly with 35 seconds remaining. Either go for it or take a knee and play for overtime at home. Instead, Reid called two run plays starting at his own 20, the second of which was fumble-sixed by the Broncos. Game, set, match. Reid outsmarted himself again.”

And remember who was coaching the Philadelphia Eagles when the Pats beat them in Super Bowl XXXIX?  Yup, high five, it was Andy Reid.

Again from Yahoo Sports:

“Reid’s Eagles found themselves down 10 with just under six minutes remaining to the New England Patriots. And yet the offense chugged along with all the urgency of a three-toed sloth. Reid already had burned a golden timeout after a clock stoppage (!) late in the third quarter, so he had two left.

Passes from Donovan McNabb netting 4, 4, 5 and 2 yards took a full two minutes off the clock. It was at this point at Alltell Stadium that I turned to the man sitting next to me (former NFL quarterback and current ESPN college football analyst Jesse Palmer) and in stereo we both said: “What is Andy doing?”

The Eagles chugged down the field, saving their two timeouts for defense, and took the clock under two minutes before scoring a touchdown on the one deep pass of the drive, despite the Patriots being down their starting corner and safety with injuries. The ensuing onsides kick was recovered by the Patriots, who went on to win.

Asked about the drive in question years later, Bill Belichick famously told NFL Network that he and his assistants were looking at each other saying, “We’re up 10 right? We’re not missing something here?” Even he couldn’t hold back from calling out Reid’s mismanagement.”

You know you’re F’ed when Bill Belichick is asking his staff “They can’t possibly be this dumb, right?”

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Side note: if you ever get a chance to watch the NFL Network series “America’s Game”, in the episode with the ’04 Pats, you can see Belichick do this on camera.  It’s glorious.  Bill sounds like a kid playing Madden online like “Dafuq??”

Want more instances of Andy Reid blowing a game by himself?  Of course, you do!  How about the 2010 “I Goofed” game?

More Yahoo Sports (I’m letting this Eric Edholm guy at Yahoo do all the heavy lifting for me):

“In McNabb’s return-to-Philadelphia game after being traded to the Washington Redskins, the Eagles seemed to lack urgency and energy early on as the inferior Redskins took a 14-0 lead in the first 10 minutes. But the Eagles rallied and had a chance to cut the lead in half before going into the locker room.

With 1:45 remaining, the Eagles had a first-and-goal from the 4-yard line. Somehow, miraculously, they found themselves challenged for time and unable to score, undone by an unseemly delay-of-game call where Reid looked like he had just been told about the play clock and its tendency to click down after the ball is spotted.

The Eagles settled for a field goal but never recovered and lost 17-12. Had they scored a touchdown there, who knows? But McNabb was terrible, Reid knew it, his defense played well that day (despite dropping two would-be picks), and they still couldn’t win.

Reid, as if setting up a future career as a Propecia pitch man, offered up this postgame explanation: “I goofed.”

That game was the beginning of the end of Reid in Philadelphia if you trace it back. Three weeks earlier, the Eagles lost to the Packers, 27-20, as Reid nuked his three second-half timeouts down seven with 5:25, 5:17 and 5:11 left to play.”

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And that’s just the highlight reel!  Andy Reid’s rap sheet of mind-blowingly incompetent clock management is longer than the track listing on a 90’s rap double album.

Remember those albums with 16 actual songs and two dozen other skits, intros, and one-minute beats that go nowhere so that we would all gladly go to Best Buy and shell out the entire $27.98 we made mowing the lawn that week?

The humor gets better.  Andy Reid has been so bad at managing the clock and end-of-game situations, the Internet made up a running joke about it, called, appropriately “The Andy Reid School of Clock Management.”

Presumably, that building is right next to the Chipotle Quality Control Division.

Heck, National Football Post’s Mike Lombardi declared Andy Reid “the winner of the best coach in the NFL to be the worst game manager of all time.”

THAT WAS IN 2009.  Most of the examples we just laughed at already were when Reid had almost a decade of head-coaching experience.

So if it comes down to a one-score game in the fourth quarter, inside the two-minute warning, and the Chiefs have the ball…

Next: Patriot Fans: Chiefs Not An Easy Win

…You can go ahead and get the Fireball out of the freezer and line ‘em up.