The week is more than half over and I hope you're surviving it as well as I am. The weather has been awesome in DC and the wife and I just got back from a lovely outdoor meal. What are you doing this evening?
As always, this is your late night open thread. Use it to talk about whatever you'd like.
I have been met with a lot of justified hate with my constant prediction that Denver does in fact have the best team in the division, and will win the division this year. So to that end I figured I would go ahead and rank unit by unit each team in the AFC West as they stand today. After doing this it might be the Chargers that should be the team to watch out for.
The offseason is a wonderful time of sunshine, lollipops, and good ol' All-American homerism. We all see the improvements the Chiefs made, and things look good on paper.
But here's the thing about paper... it's not real life. It's just paper, silly. And as we all know, any two-year-old can draw up something nice on a piece of paper. Trust me, it's true. I have a fridge that's completely covered with the stuff (slightly off topic, when did everything our kids draw become fridge-worthy? I mean crap, our oldest is just phoning it in at this point because he knows no matter what he draws my wife will put it up there. I personally think that if a drawing is bad we ought to burn it in front of him. You know, just to really drive the point home).
Anyways... what if the worst happens? What if our team is terrible? What if that old jackass Murphy decides to use his law on us and everything that can possibly go wrong does? What if we suffer through the worst year in sports history? What if, by the end of this year, we're pining for the good old days of 2008?
Now, obviously, not EVERYTHING can go wrong. The odds of lightening striking every player on the team simultaneously are slim at best (if anything it's way more likely that the earth opens up and swallows everyone at Arrowhead during the first half of Game 1 of the preseason). But lots of things CAN go wrong, and I think it's important to be prepared for the worst case scenario. So steel yourself, gird your loins and cover your nipples because you're about to take a trip down "Worst Case Scenario" Avenue...
We have plenty of military men and women who read Arrowhead Pride, many from overseas. Matt Ufford of SB Nation is rounding up great deployment sports stories for a Memorial Day piece. Let him know if you have one at the link above.
Carrington Harrison had a good question for me during out KC Chiefs talk on 610 Sports today: Which team that finished in last place in their division in 2011 has the best chance of finishing in first place in 2012? The old worst-to-first question...
Your options are: Bills, Browns, Colts, Chiefs, Redskins, Vikings, Buccaneers and Rams.
Despite my effort to avoid being a Chiefs homer, I picked KC. They were the only seven-game winner on the list and, even though they finished in last place in 2011, they were also a game out of first place, which no other team on this list can say.
My rank of most likely to go from worst-to-first would look like this: Chiefs, Buccaneers, Redskins, Colts, Bills, Rams, Browns and Vikings.
The Chiefs have a very winnable division, as we all know. The Bucs division is very difficult but the Saints season is up in the air with some of the things that have happened this offseason. The Redskins and Colts both have rookie quarterbacks so they're sort of an unknown as well, but also in winnable divisions. The Browns and Vikings are in very difficult divisions and have little shot of winning the division title. The Rams are an interesting case because they should be better but they've also been the worst team in the NFL in the last few years. Plus, with the 49ers rising up, I have a hard time believing St. Louis can topple San Francisco.
Of those eight teams, which one has the best shot of going from worst-to-first?
You won't believe who Joel picked...
The Kansas City Chiefs have had a couple of months of free agency, hit the NFL draft, signed undrafted players and circled back around to free agency again. They've signed several dozen players since the end of the season, and others didn't return to Kansas City.
In short, the roster has changed a lot in the last couple of months. Keeping the additions in mind, I wanted to look at the Chiefs remaining needs. Four positions stand out to me as needs, which I've listed below.
I also noticed while perusing the roster...the Chiefs have a pretty good roster. It's hard to find a ton of holes on this team. There are question marks, sure, but not many obvious holes among the starters. We've said that before but it's just something that came to me while going through the needs. It's almost silly to say that considering the team won just seven games last year but the Chiefs appear to have a solid roster.
Devon Wylie (@WylieMan7) has moved from jersey No. 83 to No. 19. Martin Rucker (@RuckerSouthSide) will wear No. 83 #Chiefs
