Analyze the Enemy – Week 5 – Kansas City Chiefs

THURSDAYS: We catch you up on this week’s opponent with an overall portrait of their team. This is not breaking down this week’s match-up, because that happens on Friday. This is just to set the table in preparation for laying out the gameplan.

5747 days.

There are very few teams who can claim a longer drought since a playoff win then your Dallas Cowboys. On Sunday, the Cowboys will be at 4669 days, and the Chiefs will be able to actually claim that they have gone over 1,000 more days since their last playoff win.

Jan 16th 1994, the Chiefs beat the Houston Oilers in Houston, 28-20. The next week, they went to Buffalo and lost 30-13 to the Bills. The week after that, The Cowboys beat Buffalo in Atlanta for their 2nd Super Bowl of the 1990′s.

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On Valley Ranch Rules, Crabtree, Tippett, Etc.

Media access to the Cowboys and all NFL teams has changed greatly from the days when Pete Rozelle ran the league and Tex Schramm ruled Valley Ranch. We now have situations like this week, when it took three days for reporters to learn Jason Garrett’s thinking near the Denver goal line, and when there was a 24-hour period from late Monday to late Tuesday when the local populace wondered if Tony Romo had lost track of downs.

In the case of Garrett, he’s made available once a week. That’s actually a 100 percent improvement over the Parcells rules, which treated all assistants as if hidden in a monastery. Romo’s designated day to address the media is Wednesday. When local media assumed for the better part of a day that Romo went into the final snap thinking it was third down, the Cowboys were compelled to issue a statement to the contrary.

NFL media policies are meant to minimize negative spin. Sometimes, they simply allow it to fester.

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