Mellinger Minutes: Mexico City Diablos (?), Chiefs’ crossroads, and Reid’s playcalls
They could have a team here full-time. No doubt. None. Mexico City could (should?) be the NFL’s first international team.
Call them the Diablos.
They’d have a hell of a homefield advantage, I’ll tell you that.
A disclaimer: I actually don’t think the NFL needs a team based outside the United States. They have a pretty good thing going now, and with a new CBA they can expand their international exposure with every team playing one game in a foreign country.
The logistics of a full-time team outside the United States just don’t seem worth the squeeze. You have travel, citizenship, taxes, free agency, a long list of reasons to keep teams in America.
But if the NFL is intent on creating an international team to boost its presence in new markets — and the league sure as hell does, because money — then there are a lot of places that make more sense than the Chargers in Los Angeles, the Jaguars in Jacksonville or, if we’re honest, the Raiders in Las Vegas.
Mexico City should be at the top of the list.
Everyone talks about London, but that’s an eight-hour flight for the closest team. You’d need something like a base camp in the United States, and the team would have to play “American tours” of two- to four-game road trips. A London team could never play in American prime time without sacrificing the ability of one fanbase to watch their team.
That just doesn’t seem like a good way to do business.
Mexico City comes with none of those obstacles. It’s in the Central Time Zone, and would not be the longest flight on many teams’ schedule.
The fan base is here. The crowd at Estadio Azteca for the Chiefs and Chargers was almost exactly full capacity at Arrowhead. They’re passionate as hell, too. They take their sports seriously here.
You could spot jerseys of just about every NFL team at the game, and the stadium was buzzing all night. The league says 22 million people in Mexico identify as NFL fans. That’s more people than live in any American city. You need less than one half of one percent of them to fill a stadium.
Mexico City is not a perfect option. It would have some of the free agency challenges shared by any potential market. The altitude is a real thing, and Estadio Azteca would need to be heavily renovated or a new stadium built from scratch*.
*The inability for them to provide a good playing field is truly bizarre, but far from a deal breaker. They grow beautiful grass for soccer and, besides, worst case scenario you put in field turf.
One more time: I’m not advocating for a team in Mexico City. The every-team-plays-somewhere option makes a lot of sense, limiting logistical issues and allowing the league to expand its #brand.
And I don’t know how much of a new market it would open up, and there could be some issues with teams in nearby markets like Detroit and Buffalo, but Toronto makes some sense as well.
I’m just saying it’s pretty easy to see a team in Mexico City would be embraced.
I think it’d work here, you guys.
This week’s reading recommendation is Steve Politi on the coach who got sued for telling a kid to slide, and the eating recommendation is the sunset roll at Prime.
Please give me a follow on Twitter and Facebook and as always thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
The Chiefs are in such a strange place right now. They are 7-4 and in first place. They get their bye week at what feels like a good time, especially with games against the Raiders and Patriots coming up.
Reid’s record out of byes is ridiculous, and if the Chiefs come back with Tyreek Hill, Kendall Fuller, and the running backs healthy, well, they’re good enough to beat anyone in the AFC on the right day.
Beating the Chargers is basically whatever you make of it, but here’s the rub:
It would be a lot easier to go fully into Operation Optimism after a win playing less than their best if the Chiefs had already shown us that best.
The optimism is sort of based on spec, then, and as much as there are signs that the Chiefs could be the type of team that peaks when it matters most, their next game is in December and that’s a long time to wait.
I believe there’s a lot to like about this team. I believe that can often be lost with many fans because — and I want to make clear this is not a knock — it’s so easy to focus on weaknesses when you focus primarily on one team.
That’s truest in baseball, where there are 10 times more games and fans rarely watch games their favorite team isn’t involved in, but it still holds true in football.
If you’re on the outside looking at the Chiefs I think you just watched the defense drag the offense to a win in prime time, and I’m fairly sure you’re going to have confidence that the Chiefs will be able to score points.
I wrote the other day about the team failing Patrick Mahomes, and that’s happened far too often recently, but here is a spot where Mahomes was worse than ordinary (19 of 32 for a career-low 182 yards, one touchdown, and a bad interception) and the team won anyway.
The biggest thing remains the defense. They’re still not good against the run, and that might not ever come, but if they can pressure the quarterback and cover receivers like they have been recently, they can help the offense through a down game in the playoffs.
But, again, that’s talking about a lot of things that haven’t really happened consistently quite yet. So it all comes down to how much you believe in the group (when healthy) and the structure Reid has put in place.
Look, I think you guys know my view on this. Reid is one of the best in football history at designing plays to make his guys look good, but that creativity and willingness to push convention just does not exist when it comes to broad strokes play calling and fourth down decisions.
I believe — and, more importantly, the math backs this up — that he’s leaving points on the field. He’s making certain situations more difficult on himself than is necessary.
But I’m not going to criticize him for it this week.
The field was a goat track, and Tyreek Hill did not play after the first series. I believe the game plan going in centered on relying on the (finally) healthy offensive line and challenging the Chargers deep.
Time of possession is almost always a worthless stat, so you can scoff at the Chiefs being down more than 2:1 in the first half but you shouldn’t scoff at the Chargers running 47 plays to the Chiefs’ 24.
A sampling of the postgame locker room:
“(Shoot), that altitude was real. I felt everything I felt it.” — Chris Jones.
“I didn’t feel anything in Denver. I felt it here from the first play.” — Juan Thornhill.
So, to review.
The Chiefs are down their best receiver, and playing on a field that further diminishes their advantage with speed. They are also playing so high above sea level that guys are gasping for air on the first possession.
Assuming part of Reid’s thinking was big picture here, to protect his guys a bit with ball control, especially with the conditions of the field and oxygen, I think it’s a fair strategy.
And I say that as a person who’s helping drive the Andy Let It Fly bandwagon. I just think the conditions were unique on Monday.
Also: the offense is free to execute the plays called.
It can’t always be the coach’s fault when the plays don’t work and the players’ credit when they do.
At the moment, this feels like a buildup toward the playoffs that will end up feeling too late if not too little when they lose at Baltimore or New England in the divisional round.
I do think we’re about to see some improvement. It just makes sense, particularly if we’re going to see the healthy/Seattle version of Frank Clark. The defense is improving, particularly against the pass.
Charvarius Ward is growing every week — he’s making plays you’d expect from a No. 1 or No. 2 corner. The safeties continue to play well. Rashad Fenton has stepped up. Kendall Fuller should be back soon. Bashaud Breeland seems to have shaken a midseason slump.
It’s all there, is what I’m saying.
I do think the Chiefs will beat the Raiders, and probably by more than a score. It’s just hard to predict a loss when Reid is so successful in the division and after byes.
The Raiders left some production on the field in the first matchup with Josh Jacobs missing some time, and they’ve made significant improvement since Week 2. But I’m just not sure how you’d feel confident predicting the Raiders to win.
After that it’s Foxborough, where the Chiefs will have the cliche’d punchers’ chance, and then the Broncos at home, at Chicago, and Chargers at home.
That looks like an 11-5 finish if everything goes chalk — and it never goes chalk — which would be enough to produce some real optimism. The defense would probably be making more plays, the offense would likely be closer to last year, and the Chiefs could be a trendy pick to make the Super Bowl from the wild card round (assuming the Patriots and Ravens have byes).
But at the moment, same as I’m not sure how you’d feel confident predicting the Raiders to win at Arrowhead, I’m not sure how you’d feel confident picking the Chiefs to beat the Patriots or Ravens.
That will cause a whole new round of the Andy Reid As The Modern Marty Schottenheimer stuff which, well, is increasingly hard to refute.
He’s on or close to that track. He’s now 167 yards from a fourth consecutive 1,000-yard season, which has never been done by a tight end. He’s been a force since the beginning, with 862 yards in his first full season.
If you look at tight ends through their age-30 season, Kelce ranks 13th in receptions (473), 11th in yards (6,069) and 29th in touchdowns (36).
It’s a little skewed because he was 25 in his first season as a contributor. Father Time waits for no man, so I’m not sure how much to put into this, but if you isolate it to a tight end’s first six seasons he’s fourth, third, and 13th in those categories.
Assuming health and normal production, he could be first in receptions and yards and well inside the top 10 in touchdowns in first six seasons. Overall, through age 30, you’re looking at perhaps 10th in receptions, eighth in yards, and around 20th in touchdowns.
His case will likely revolve around impact, and however long he’s able to be considered the game’s best tight end.
He’s a freak athlete, even by NFL standards, and has become such a smart and precise route runner. Monday night provided two great examples.
The footwork on the touchdown here:
And the route on this play:
On first view that looks mostly like a great pass from Mahomes, and it is, but Kelce made it easier for his quarterback by taking his route upfield with five yards or so cushion to the sideline.
With the defender stuck on Kelce’s front side, Mahomes had a big ol’ hula hoop to drop the ball into on the back. There are subtle things like that every week with Kelce. He’s also turned into a pretty good blocker.
But if we’re talking about Hall of Fame cases — and this seems like the case with every Chiefs player, doesn’t it? — his lack of postseason success (so far) will also be a factor.
Kelce is still in his prime, which is the main reason this hasn’t taken traction as a topic. So much can change, good and bad. You look at the list of tight end leaders through first six seasons or age 30 and you see some names like Jeremy Shockey and Todd Heap and others who won’t get in.
Kelce has a chance, and I do think he’s on track. But there’s a long way to go still.
The drama with Eric Berry last year overshadowed the fact that the Chiefs were, actually, pretty healthy. Football Outsiders runs an Adjusted Games Lost metric that had the Chiefs as the ninth healthiest team last year.
They ranked 19th in 2017 and 26th in 2016. That’s a three-year average of 18th, which is slightly below average but nothing to be alarmed over.
Rick Burkholder has a strong reputation in his field, and the medical team deserves at least some credit for Patrick Mahomes missing just two games because of a dislocated kneecap.
For the most part, I’m a strong believer in luck. I think a lot of us — and I’m including myself here, so I’m not just throwing rocks — sometimes search for explanations when the answer is just good or bad luck.
I’m not saying that everything the Chiefs do is perfect. I’m just saying I don’t buy the idea that the Chiefs are negligent here.
Lets stick with games in the 21st century. Using that as the cutoff, the NFL has played games in London, Mexico City, Toronto, Tokyo, and Beijing.
Montreal and Vancouver are obvious candidates. The league has mentioned Berlin as a possibility. Shanghai. They’ve played in Sydney before, but I’m not sure the logistics there are sustainable. I wonder how the league would be received in Barcelona. Moscow is an interesting possibility.
The challenge here is that the league sees foreign countries as place for clear revenue growth, but they also have a history of being deliberate with big picture change like this.
The wild card here is that the owners want to trade two preseason games for a 17th regular season game in the next CBA, and it makes a lot of sense to have everyone play one international game in addition to the customary eight road and eight home.
If you do that, you can have, maybe, five-game packages in London and Mexico City, and then one game each for Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, Shanghai/Beijing and Barcelona.
China presents all sorts of issues, logistical and otherwise, but there are so many people and so much money there it’s hard to imagine the NFL not moving mountains to make that happen.
Well, first of all, I’m not sure Rivers is going into the Hall of Fame. I’m aware of where he ranks all-time in a lot of passing categories, but I’m also aware he’s never really been a top five quarterback in his time.
That should count for something, but that’s not really the question you’re asking, so you know what’s wild?
There are football people who’d say the answer to that question right now is Len Dawson.
/ducks/
Love this question, because it does seem like it, right? Been some high profile misses, including Father Time apparently catching up with Adam Vinatieri.
The Chiefs have had some issues here, obviously, but it should be noted that Harrison Butker is performing well within his peer group. His 85.2% accuracy ranks 10th among regular kickers, and he’s 22 of 23 inside 50 yards.
So, anyway, let’s see what the numbers say about the issue as a whole.
I looked at the last five years. It’s a round number, and 2015 was the year the extra point was moved back, so I feel like it works. Full transparency: I ran the numbers before the Monday night game.
In 2019, NFL kickers are hitting 93.6% of their extra points. The previous four years the league has been between 93.6% and 94.3%. Even if we assume the numbers tail off toward the end of seasons, with more weather, that’s close enough.
Now, for the field goals. Kickers are making 79.7 this season, which is a drop. In the four previous seasons the number hovered between 84.7 and 84.2 percent. Five percentage points seems significant.
But where are those misses coming from?
This year, the league is making 90.2% from 30 to 39 yards, 69.4% from 40 to 49, and 52.5% from 50 or longer.
It’s interesting that with the exception of distances in the 30s in 2017 each of those numbers is the worst in the last five seasons.
The next-lowest percentage in the 40s is 75.7 in 2015, and the next-lowest percentage from 50 or longer is 53.5 in 2016. Those numbers peak at 94.1 in the 30s, 79.4 in the 40s, and 69.5 at 50 or longer.
In short, NFL kickers are collectively having their worst season at virtually every distance in at least five years.
A quick Google search doesn’t turn up any articles with researched explanations of what’s causing this, though FiveThirtyEight did wonder if more misses mean teams should be going for even more fourth down conversions*.
*Spoiler alert: yes, they absolutely should, but they should be doing that anyway.
John Sherman has not spoken publicly yet. Lynn Worthy and I will be at the owners meetings this week in Arlington, though I’m not expecting Sherman to talk then, either.
We will know more when the Royals do Sherman’s introductory news conference, which I’d guess would be sometime early next week, between the sale being official-official and Thanksgiving.
So, all of this can be wiped out on Sherman’s whim.
But I’m not expecting anything major. The Royals are in the part of the rebuild that usually shaves payroll.
They will — to answer another question that was submitted — likely give Bubba Starling the benefit of the doubt in center field, for instance. They’re in a spot where they can afford (financially and otherwise) to see which of a group of 10 or so pre-arbitration players they can build around.
Most notably, they’ll plan their roster with the expectation that Brady Singer and Jackson Kowar will lead a wave of minor leaguers transitioning to the majors.
They need to give those guys opportunities and see who can help. It’s the right baseball thing to do and comes with the added benefit of saving money.
It’s probably not the answer a lot of fans are looking for, but whatever it’s worth, I do think it’s the right thing to do.
Probably Garrett.
I’m not sure what progress came from the Kaepernick workout. He proved he can still play, but whether he can play has never been the question. The drama with the waiver and media access and everything else just put a brighter spotlight on the mistrust that has existed between Kaepernick and the league from the beginning.
You can take whatever you want from that workout.
If you think Kaepernick should have a job, your point of view was confirmed by the highlights.
You have probably thought about how the knock on Kaepernick has been that he didn’t really want to play, but the fact that he has obviously stayed in good shape and as sharp as could be expected while out of the league for three years is the strongest statement possible that he still wants to play.
If you think Kaepernick should not have a job, your point of view was confirmed by how the day went down.
You have probably thought that Kaepernick has held himself above the league, and that he believes the rules don’t apply, so the fact that he wouldn’t sign the waiver and moved the workout from the Falcons’ facility to an Atlanta area high school so reporters could show up is the strongest statement possible that he’s less interested in football than his brand.
Whatever it’s worth it seems pretty clear to me that there’s a middle ground.
Seems pretty clear that Kaepernick still wants to play, because he only had four days notice of the workout and looked pretty sharp.
Also seems pretty clear that Kaepernick won’t compromise to play.
The NFL is used to the world’s best athletes begging for a chance. Kaepernick has his own priorities, and football is not No. 1.
I don’t know what to make of the workout. I don’t know whether to read it as the league trying to open a door for someone to sign him, or whether it was a PR stunt from the beginning to make people believe the league was making him signable.
What I do feel pretty confident in saying is that he’s good enough to be a bottom-level starter or backup, at least.
And I actually think the Chiefs would make sense in a lot of ways. They have the MVP, so there would be no controversy over whether Kaepernick should be the starter. They have a smart coach who can adapt to different skill sets. Who knows, maybe Kaepernick could have been good enough to win the Packers game.
Now, obviously there would be some non-football stuff that the organization would have to go through. Clark Hunt has said he’d be in favor of signing Kaepernick if his coaches thought it was the right football move.
I don’t believe it’s that simple. The Chiefs remember the blowback from many fans when Marcus Peters kneeled. There would be conversations.
But if those conversations haven’t happened yet — not just with the Chiefs, but 31 other teams — I don’t know what was solved by the workout.
This is Barry Odom’s fourth season after taking over a difficult situation. We can have an intelligent conversation about whether he should get a fifth season, but lets not act like Mizzou is holding onto some obviously failed plan.
Odom went to bowl games the last two years and, the NCAA’s obnoxious overstep aside, can quality for a third with one more win.
Odom can keep the worst of the speculation from spreading by winning the last two games.
Missouri opened as a 7-point favorite* for its home game with Tennessee on Saturday.
*It was quickly bet down.
It’s an enormously important game for Odom’s fan confidence. Tennessee has only lost to top 10 teams since Sept. 7, and has won three in a row.
A win would be Mizzou’s best of the year. A loss would be ground shifting, and present a difficult decision to Jim Sterk.
Some of us who’ve wanted success for Odom have pointed to his teams rallying away from hard times. That’s a heck of a skill, and a positive indication on a lot of levels.
But at some point a program needs to graduate from that base expectation into something that involves not getting into such hard times so often.
I know Gabe DeArmond and others have wondered if something significant behind the scenes snapped after the Ole Miss game, and those dots are there to connect. But whether that or something else caused the slide, at some point the reason doesn’t matter.
It’s a results business. This is supposed to be the time Odom’s program lifted to higher heights. Instead, it appears stuck again.
As I type this I’m only at three, but I’m hoping to add some more, and I’d like to make a clarification on the three.
They were from Taqueria Gonzalez, and they were spectacular.
If you click that link there’s a picture of a giant bowl of what has to be the hottest salsa I’ve ever had in my life. Eating it changed both my day and what I thought salsa could do.
Step 1: holy $%@& that’s good.
Step 2: hiccups.
Step 3: eyes watering.
Step 4: yessssss I need more.
Mexico City has been a joy, by the way. I don’t know that I’d recommend it for a vacation, necessarily, but that might just be because to be vacations should be at a beach or in the mountains.
But it’s one of a kind. The sheer size is hard to describe in words, but you get a sense of the grand scale — it says here that 22 million people make it the fifth-biggest city in the world — from the moment the city comes into view from the airplane.
There’s a crazy amount of history here, too. Cathedrals a half-century old, Spanish castles over looking the city, expansive parks, insane traffic, all the stuff you’d want from a place like this. Great food, fairly easy to navigate, and really nice people, too.
Mexico City has its problems, like any big city. There are some parts of town you want to avoid. You’ll feel a lot more comfortable if you can speak even a little Spanish.
But the architecture, history, food, and everything else is quite the experience.
I’m actually left with this thought: Mexico City should be the NFL’s first international team.
Everyone talks about London, but the logistics just don’t make sense. It’s an eight-hour flight to the closest team.
Mexico City is much better geographically and has more than enough people to support a team. They’re passionate, too. You could spot jerseys of just about every NFL team at the game, and the stadium was buzzing all night. A team here would be embraced.
I think it’d work here, you guys.
We’re in the trust tree, right?
There is no Disney+ at the Mellinger house.
I’m probably forgetting about something, but here is our video setup: Google Fiber, Netflix, Amazon Prime, Showtime* and ESPN+.
*We’ll swap that out with HBO depending on what we want to watch.
That’s probably more than we should spend already, because we really don’t end up watching all that much. Cable ends up being mostly for sports, with ESPN+ filling in some gaps. There’s a bunch of good kids’ stuff on Netflix and Amazon, and HBO/Showtime is good for a show for me and my wife to watch a night or two a week when the kids are down.
Where does Disney+ fit in?
I’m just not sure I need it.
But, speaking of streaming...
Not really.
I assume we’re talking about more than newspapers owned by the same chain here. Never say never, and this business changes on a dime, but I’m not sure how viable that would be.
If you are interested in Kansas City news and sports, what are the chances you’re also interested enough to pay for, say, Phoenix news and sports?
The advantage newspapers have is they cover a specific city with more time, energy and resources than anyone else. But how interested would you be in that level of coverage for a city you don’t live in and are not from?
The business model you’re suggesting is essentially The Athletic. That model makes more sense to me because it’s all sports. If you like the Chiefs, you’re much more likely to be interested in reading about the Broncos or national NFL stuff than a Kansas City news hound would be in reading about the Minneapolis school board.
But, hell, I don’t know.
Underrated: stuffing, but I’m specifically talking about stuffing that cooks inside the turkey.
Because people have scratch or box stuffing recipes and those are fine for what they are but they should have a different name than the stuff that comes out of a cooked turkey. One can be pretty good, the other is mind blowing.
I would pay wagyu prices for real stuffing, is what I’m trying to tell you.
Overrated: cranberry sauce, and I’m not trying to offer a hot take or start a war here, but every single one of you people who pretends to love cranberry sauce should do the rest of us a favor and stop the lie.
The most I’m willing to cede is that you think a spoonful or so of cranberry sauce is tolerable enough, and you’re bowing to tradition.
I can respect that!
But I’m not going to let you keep saying it’s good without calling you on your lies.
I’m a little mixed here.
On the one hand, I want people to enjoy Christmas however they wish. Tree, no tree, decorations, whatever. It’s your life. Do you.
On the other hand, we’re seeing an all-out disrespect for Thanksgiving and I, for one, am sick and tired of it.
I get that capitalism gon’ capitalism, but I have long believed that Thanksgiving is our greatest holiday and I’m tired of it ceding ground to a holiday that already owned an entire month.
If it was up to me, we’d have a sort of Thanksgiving advent calendar, where every day of November you write down something you’re thankful for and put it in a little slot and then take a piece of chocolate.
Then, on the big day, everyone picks a piece of paper or two and reads them before dinner.
Actually, you know what, I may have just created a new Mellinger family tradition.
Anyway, it is for these reasons and more than Christmas decorations don’t go up any earlier than Black Friday.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for a work trip to terrific city I’d never otherwise visit. I’ve always wanted to see a game at Estadio Azteca, and even if I’d always envisioned it as a USA-Mexico soccer game, the place lived up to the hype. It’s an experience I won’t soon forget, and I can’t say that about a lot of games.
This story was originally published November 20, 2019 at 5:00 AM with the headline "Mellinger Minutes: Mexico City Diablos (?), Chiefs’ crossroads, and Reid’s playcalls."