Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut
Be honest - did you?
I was in the stadium and that place had puckered up in a BIG way. "Because Chiefs" was looking more and more inevitable.
Seriously - how many teams get off the mat there? How many fans? At 21-0 it's absolutely a reasonable expectation that this whole thing is about to go up in smoke in Arrowhead. Things were DOUR for the Mudville 9 at the moment. Yes, there was a faint whisp of 'hey, we have Mahomes' in the air, but to say that the idea of a wall-to-wall ass whupin wasn't at the forefront of your thinking at that moment in time would be dishonest, IMO.
But man, EVERYTHING changed on that scoring drive. And it wasn't even the return that convinced me of it. It was Kelce's catch/run. He gets up when we're down 24-0 and still only at the 20ish yard line and he's fist pumping and fired up. The crowd is suddenly as alive as it was on the opening kick.
Brotha - that shit doesn't happen. Look at the Ravens game when they were down 13 in the 2nd half. They looked finished. The stadium sounded finished.
Conventional wisdom says that at 24-0 that team is done because in the annals of the NFL that team is ALWAYS done. Then a relatively innocuous catch and run by a TE who had been bumbling around the field to that point has him acting like he just scored a TD in overtime and the crowd is responding in kind.
And suddenly BoB is looking around and realized that this is not a normal day.
You cannot judge O'Brien for not recognizing that this thing that ALWAYS happens wasn't going to happen on this day. He's not omniscient. And again, even if you DO hold that against him (again, I think he should have gone for it), it has absolutely nothing to do with his decision on the fake punt.
He had to do something and he knew it. He suddenly realized that this wasn't going to go the way 99% of games that start like this goes.
The fake punt was a good call.
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Totally agree with everything you’ve said. Spot on.
Even Reid made it a point to mention that he knew BOB would get ripped for the fake punt, but he thought it was a good call. It seemed genuine.