Time for another Friday AMA! Every week, you can send me your questions to me on Twitter, @jbbrisco. AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything,” I’m open to questions about the Chiefs or Royals, football or basketball, cake or pie, summer or winter — any questions you need answers to. My answers may be wrong, of course, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.
Strictly for this season and this season’s performances, I think it’s relatively easy. It’s Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Tyrann Mathieu and Frank Clark. Mahomes is Mahomes. Kelce has been the offense’s most consistent weapon this season. Mathieu and Clark have teamed up to overhaul the defense on and off the field. Boom. Mountain carved.
If coaches are eligible, it’s Reid, Mahomes, Spags and a half-Mathieu/half-Clark hybrid, basically creating Batman’s Two-Face, but now he’s excellent at football.
This question might be easier than the last one. Crunchy. Banana. I love peanut butter, and creamy peanut butter is only bringing half of the goodness to the party. I’m looking for that textural experience that only the crunchy can provide. Also, bananas and peanut butter are made for each other. Conversely, I’ve probably bought, like, one jar of jelly in my adult life. It’s fine, but I really don’t need it.
This has been a conversation in the last few weeks, but I’m not terribly passionate about either side of the debate. Being able to go up 7-0 before the other team has a chance to get the ball sounds great, but so does the ability to take that guaranteed possession when you know how the game is going to start off the second half. It also keeps the opponent from getting that second-half opportunity, when the fear is that a 24-10 game late in the second quarter could be tied before you see the ball again. I’d probably defer, but I’m generally pretty open to the arguments.
For this year, at least, I’d be pretty surprised if it was ever especially obvious that the Royals changed hands this offseason. The rest of the changes — from Mike Matheney all the way down — will be fascinating. Specifically for ownership, it could be interesting to see how the team behaves around the trade deadline (when I don’t expect them to be anywhere particularly near contention), but even then, that would presumably say more about Dayton Moore than John Sherman.
Although, in fairness, even a quiet first year from Sherman would supposedly tell us something about him. For now, I expect those impacts to exist only subtly.
This is in response to how I opened my AMA for questions this week: while I waited for AAA on the side of the road, ten minutes away from Arrowhead. I have changed a tire, believe it or not. Several, actually! On my first car, a 1998 Plymouth Neon personally cursed by the devil himself, I took off the rear tires to search out the source of a rattling sound, and I went to war with my Volvo a few months ago when it got a flat. The latter experience was an absolute nightmare that ultimately led to me happily paying for a AAA membership, which came in clutch on Thursday.
We’ll end on this one.
I think Florio’s now-viral minute on Mahomes has moments of reason and moments of absurdity. “Hit the quarterback when you can” is a lesson taught on every high school practice field. There’s nothing wrong with that. But “when you can” typically implies “when you can while remaining within the rules of this already-violent game.” And to suggest that it’s more worthwhile to purposefully hit Mahomes (or any player) in a late or dirty way because it’s the Super Bowl is completely morally bankrupt if you have any interest in making football a somewhat-moral sport in the first place.
So there’s a paragraph, but I don’t think it’s that simple. We talked about this issue extensively in the second segment of Thursday night’s (Almost) Entirely Sports, which you can listen to below. You can skip ahead if you don’t want the flat tire play-by-play, but honestly, why wouldn’t you?