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I'm surprised no one's started a game thread.

I just noticed that it's a 10am PT start, which makes it a noon kickoff in KC. That might mollify weather conditions somewhat as it's the warmest part of the day. I guess I need to get my pre-Christmas grocery shopping done early. Weather conditions actually look pretty decent, as the forecast calls for temperatures in the mid teens, bright sunshine, and winds 10-11 mph, a little breezy but manageable. No one can pre-register any excuses at least not due to the weather.

K9 didn't participate and DJ Dallas was limited in Thursday's practice session. Both are listed as questionable, along with Marquise Goodwin, who didn't practice Thursday. TE Noah Fant is also listed as questionable. Tyler Lockett, Ryan Neal, and Al Woods are all out.

The Chiefs look relatively healthy as the only player listed as out is TE Jody Forston. The illness bug seems to have affected some members of the KC defense as 3 of them were listed as questionable.

The Chiefs are in a fight with the Bills for the coveted first round bye and HFA through the playoffs as both teams have identical 11-3 marks, so they'll be playing hard. As bad as the weather gets in KC, no one wants to go to Buffalo and get pelted with snowballs. We need the win in order to keep up with 3 other teams vying for two playoff spots, the Giants, Commanders, and Lions. The Packers are still alive but a game back of us. The Falcons, Saints, and Panthers are still very much alive for their division title, but a wild card is extremely unlikely.

I think that the Chiefs hang a 40-burger on our defense today and double us up. Chiefs 42, Hawks 17.

I heard a portion of a Carroll interview and he talked about the Chiefs passing game. It almost sounded like they were planning on trying to stop that part and it felt to me like they were again falling into the trap of not preparing for a run attack much like the Bucs game where we got rolled over on the ground. 40 points isn't out of bounds, but this year has been so odd I don't know what to really expect.

Not looking too good. Going into the 2nd quarter, the offense hasn't made a first down yet, blew some great field position after a nice return following KC's TD. Mahomes doesn't look too sharp. Maybe the weather is more of a factor than I had assumed it would be. Low scoring game, might be to our advantage.

KC Offense using the WCO concept of short passes to the RBs as if they are run plays with good success so far.

Although things don't look too good in our game, there are some games of interest that are going our way.

The Lions and Giants, two teams we're fighting with for a wild card seed, are trailing at the half, and the Bears, one of the teams we want to win to make the Denver picks look better, are actually leading the Bills at the half.

Geno is bad . O line is bad . Play calling bad . The d is admirable . Doesn’t look good

The frustrating thing is I would like to be able to watch one of the several other games in progress because they are more competitive but the Hawks' game is the only one available on the major networks in my area.

trents wrote:The frustrating thing is I would like to be able to watch one of the several other games in progress because they are more competitive but the Hawks' game is the only one available on the major networks in my area.

Get the Red Zone. You won't regret it.

At least Ken Walker is having a good game. Seem Lockett might be the more important part of Geno's game than DK.

Aseahawkfan wrote:At least Ken Walker is having a good game. Seem Lockett might be the more important part of Geno's game than DK.

Agreed on both counts. Walker looked good, although it was too little, too late. He didn't get going until the 2nd half.

We keep having to burn timeouts on offense. Not sure what's going on, but it's not the first time. You don't mind burning them in the first quarter, but we burned two of them in the 2nd when we're trailing.

We're going to have to win our last two games then hope we catch a break or two. So far, it's looking pretty good as both the Lions and Giants are losing.

RiverDog wrote:Get the Red Zone. You won't regret it.

Not going to put out any more dough on telecom media. Already costs me a small fortune every month.

trents wrote:
Not going to put out any more dough on telecom media. Already costs me a small fortune every month.

There are streaming sites for this. Not saying you should do something illegal, but the option is there if you are inclined.

Hawks' D looked better as a whole today than it has in several weeks, at least for the last three quarters. And it was against a potent offensive team. However, the D was too slow to get untracked and by the time they did the Hawks were down two touchdowns. Getting behind early has gotten to be a pattern.

I'd like to see the offense go to Colby Parkinson more. His length is an asset that needs to be explored more IMO. He's really buffed up in the past year and there is young Jimmy Graham potential there I believe.

Not having Lockett and having Goodwin playing banged up really hurt us. Geno did about as good as you could expect considering how banged up his receiving corps was and how porous the OL was.

trents wrote:Hawks' D looked better as a whole today than it has in several weeks, at least for the last three quarters. And it was against a potent offensive team. However, the D was too slow to get untracked and by the time they did the Hawks were down two touchdowns. Getting behind early has gotten to be a pattern.

Agreed. We're not a great come from behind team. Geno has just the one game winning drive this season vs. the Rams. Our tackles, after starting the season off great, have seen the league catch up with them somewhat.

trents wrote:I'd like to see the offense go to Colby Parkinson more. His length is an asset that needs to be explored more IMO. He's really buffed up in the past year and there is young Jimmy Graham potential there I believe.

Parkinson has finally come to the party. Up until this season, he had been somewhat of a disappointment. I still like Dissly as our #1 tight end as he's the best blocker of the three, but I really like out tight ends and feel that it's the strongest position group on the team.

trents wrote:Not having Lockett and having Goodwin playing banged up really hurt us. Geno did about as good as you could expect considering how banged up his receiving corps was and how porous the OL was.

Geno played poorly, made some bad decisions and a lot of his throws were off. He had a huge gain on a scramble on a 3rd down scramble had he kept the ball. I don't know what he was thinking on the red zone pick he threw.

The other thing that has bothered me is burning our timeouts on offense to avoid delay of game penalties. It isn't so bad when it happens in the first half, but those 2nd half timeouts are gold, especially when you're trailing as we have been in most of our recent games. We did it 4 times yesterday, twice in the 2nd half. We've also burned timeouts on challenges we weren't likely to win or in situations where winning it doesn't gain us a whole lot.

RiverDog wrote:He had a huge gain on a scramble on a 3rd down scramble had he kept the ball. I don't know what he was thinking on the red zone pick he threw.

The other thing that has bothered me is burning our timeouts on offense to avoid delay of game penalties. It isn't so bad when it happens in the first half, but those 2nd half timeouts are gold, especially when you're trailing as we have been in most of our recent games. We did it 4 times yesterday, twice in the 2nd half. We've also burned timeouts on challenges we weren't likely to win or in situations where winning it doesn't gain us a whole lot.

Agreed. That stuff has to be cleaned up. I have always felt Pete has done a poor job in using the challenge flag.

Pete and timeouts/challenges has always been a point of contention with us starting in the old PI days.
It was one of the first things people started to notice about his coaching and game time management as a whole.

Yesterdays game showed just how far we have to go to truly be competitive. We're a long way away from that point at the moment.
I saw part of Pete's post game interview and it seems he's falling into the same old trap when he alluded to being close to being a real challenger.
I think the reality is we're close to being just a middle of the road team and need big improvements on the IOL and DL to actually take the next step.
Our OTs are showing the strain of playing way more games. I wasn't sure how long it would take, but it seems that the league has caught up to them and
they are feeling the effects of a long season. Lucas getting injured doesn't help, and like the announcer said yesterday it's a bad time to get bit by the injury bug.
In all, as a team, we have a long way to go but we might be able to continue the rebuild if we have another effective draft this year.

"the old PI days"?

Pete's strong point is as a motivator. But, he's not strong when it comes to paying attention to details.

trents wrote:"the old PI days"?

The old Seattle PI Seahawks Forum. When the PI shut it down about 10 years or so ago, this forum was created by a couple of guys, specifically Yoder, for us diehards to continue ragging on each other. About 3/4 of the regular posters, including myself, Hawktawk, North Hawk, Cbob, obi, etc, were members of it.

trents wrote:Pete's strong point is as a motivator. But, he's not strong when it comes to paying attention to details.

I'm not sure if Pete specifically is responsible for burning those timeouts. The offensive coordinator, quarterback, and position coaches each have a role to play. Plus on challenges, he's going on the advice of a coach in the booth as he doesn't have access to a monitor.

This was a tough game to make a judgement about QB performance. Both throwers had trouble with accuracy, and receivers with drops. It was cold. The ball was like a brick. The weather slowed Mahomes more than the Seahawks did.

Old but Slow wrote:This was a tough game to make a judgement about QB performance. Both throwers had trouble with accuracy, and receivers with drops. It was cold. The ball was like a brick. The weather slowed Mahomes more than the Seahawks did.

I agree. Both punters had their difficulties, too.

But there were other mistakes that can't be attributed to the weather, like the red zone pick, Geno's decision not to run when he had a good 20 yards of open field, letting the play clock run out on a number of occasions, etc.

I heard that there were eight games being played in conditions with temperatures below freezing yesterday. The mayor of Nashville asked the NFL to delay the kickoff by an hour due to power outages in the Nashville area. Did you guys see what the conditions were like in Pittsburgh last night?

That shouldn't be a problem with today's games as all three are in the sunbelt, ie Miami, Arizona, and LA.