Tradition Tuesday: HoGnation Second Guesses Squads

The rough focus of this blog is the rivalry between the Kansas City Chiefs (heralded by Bankmeister) and the Denver Broncos (championed by Cecil and Old No. 7). It may seem unfair that it's two versus one, but once KC gets that second Super Bowl win we'll even out the delegation.

Seven years ago we started The Tradition, in which Bronco fans travel out to the Truman Sports Complex with their team, and Chief-lovers return to the Rocky Mountains with theirs. We tailgate, we talk massive amounts of shit, our wives are occasionally assaulted by rival fans, and we almost always watch the visiting team lose. It's grand old time.

Here at the HoG, we're going to keep The Tradition going with Tradition Tuesday--a weekly state-of-the-rivalry address.

Alright. LJ got paid. The Kansas City Chiefs, sprinkled with puffs of bizarre Priest-Holmes behavior, is now complete. That is, everyone has a contract and has reported to camp/practice. According to Head Coach Herm Edwards, Johnson won't play in Thursday's game versus the Saints, but Dwayne Bowe will get more snaps -- roughly 25 -- and Brodie Croyle will again get the start (I'm sure this didn't have anything to do with that).



While news on the Chiefs pours out of various professional sports-blogging locales, the HoG is a bit more interested in sharing the contents of our totally sober, non-corrupt staff meeting this weekend in Denver.

Mm-hmm. If our meeting notes were a newspaper, the headlines would read: "Teense Bits Nervs." (Editor's Note: Translated, that's "Teeny Bit Nervous"; the original statement is from a self-invented language called Abbrevs Plurals, wherein words in their original format are lopped and pluralized.)

Basically, it unfolds like this: The off-season/OTAs/pre-season swells of confidence have mellowed, leaving Old No. 7, Cecil and myself all wondering what our teams are really made of. The Denver Broncos have, for more than a decade, had their proclaimed (Note: Notice the omission of "self" before proclaimed) system wherein their monstrosity of an offensive line dominates opposing defensive schemes and makes the average Tom, Dick and Harry a 1000-yard-plus rusher and protects the fill-in-the-blank successor to Elway. They've also played some decent defense in that same span, had better-than-average special teams and the always-reliable Jason Elam to kick 74-yard boots through the uprights.

The Chiefs, in that same span of seasons, have had great Ds, mediocre Os, and vice versa, the constants of which have always maintained a respectable level of confidence in its fan base. Insert key factors like the greatest tight end to ever play the game, pride-instilling leadership , and some damn good coaching to boot, and that confidence stays perhaps higher than it should at times. Today, though, is a different era for both Chiefs fans and Broncos fans alike.

In the Centennial State, Ebenezer Ekuban is out for the year. Rumors suggest that the coveted Denver O-line is no longer what it once was. Travis 1500-yards-in-2007 Henry is already nursing an injury and this is Jay Cutler's first year as the opening-day starter. Of course, the secondary is pretty tight and that guy named Javon Walker is pretty good. Elam, however, is old, and, as Cecil put it last year, the special teams "couldn't possibly seem any less special." They're gnawing some cuticle to say the least out there.

The Show-Me-State has worries of equal abundance. Damon Huard is nursing a sore calf. No. That doesn't mean he's breast-feeding an injured baby cow. His leg hurts. Surprisingly, he got a miniscule number of reps in "his game as the starter" last week versus Miami. And, Brodie Croyle slung a touchdown. For all of the Huard Hopefuls of Chiefs Nation, that chapter may as well've never been written. The job is Croyle's and that's that. Sure. "Hard Knocks" has filmed, and will likely continue the trend, General Manager Carl Peterson saying that they've got to give the job to the guy who appears to be the best candidate to help the Chiefs win now. And Herm likes the youth movement. So, we could be ready to see Croyle light up Trent Green's league-leading interception number of the 2001 campaign.

Add to that that the receiving corps is still weak. Bowe will be nice, but Kennison is old, and allegedly, Samie Parker is performing better now that he's had some competition, but come on -- competition in the form of making the team and getting a nice, juicy contract renewal wasn't motivation enough?

In a move of brilliance, the Chiefs brought no one in to compete with rookie kicker Justin Medlock, who whiffed on the first two of his three tries versus Miami. Oops. And I'm now confident that nobody on the planet knows what Priest Holmes is up to other than Priest Holmes. That's not new; he just keeps re-inventing ways to be an odd little duck.

The plus side is this: every year the Chiefs and Broncos play one another early, and then late. Typically, the Chiefs travel west first, lose and then come home and beat the Broncos in December. This year, an odd twist is upon HoGnation. The Broncos come to KC first, but not 'til mid-November. Then the Chiefs take the field at InVesCo in early December. We feel that how these two teams play one another is a good litmus test for how the teams match up against the rest of the league. Old No. 7 capped the discussion best with the adage, "Who you are in September is not who you are in December."

The Cliff's Notes? We've got a lot of football to play before these foes knock heads with one another. And we're hopeful we won't be knocking our own heads on the walls for the first nine weeks of the season.