Mellinger Minutes: Sporting KC’s end, Chiefs-Broncos, Royals, and the holidays

The top this week will be a little different than usual.

Promise, when we get to the questions below we’ll talk about Sporting Kansas City’s disappointment, the Chiefs-Broncos game, the Royals’ offseason and more. We’ll have our usual nonsense, and our usual sort of serious sports stuff.

But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about good fortune, and how I’ve had more of it than I deserve. The holidays are getting to me.

My sister and her family stayed with us last week, and we had a blast. It had been two years, at least. We did all the things. Zoo, College Basketball Experience, football, go karts, baseball, basketball, walks, parks, way too much food and a night or two probably a little too much to drink.

My sister’s oldest is 14, so one night the parents went out and the kids stayed home with no babysitter. It felt like a new world.

It was the first time my wife and I hosted Thanksgiving and for some reason the usual stress never showed up. It was about 14 of us, some meeting for the first time, I’d never cooked a turkey before in my life and for reasons I don’t think I’ll ever understand one of them took two hours longer than the other. And it did. Not. Matter.

One of our guests grabbed my arm on the way out and said it was her favorite Thanksgiving in 10 years. I laughed, thinking it was a joke, but she pulled me in and let me know she was being literal. It was awesome.

So, good fortune. That’s been on my mind, a lot. Because I know that a lot of us don’t have the same experiences, and that this year can be a brutal reminder. I saw an old friend last week, and know he’s going through a painful time, the emotions surely feeling even more raw with the holidays.

I know that the constant reminders and commercials on TV and decorations can pick at scabs, and amplify or even help manufacture some real mental health struggles for many. My grand party is someone else’s painful get-together, or loneliness. My laughs with my sister are someone else’s fights.

I think about my mom a lot this time of year. I think about her all year, of course, but she loved the holidays in a very, very, very Mom way. Food was connections, both to other people and memories. We went to the Nutcracker every year, and had (at least) one night where we binged Christmas movies and ate from a menu of appetizers that everyone helped make.

Every year it breaks my heart that I don’t get to do those things with her anymore, but every year it also does my heart some good that her grandkids go to the Nutcracker and look forward to what she called Cheesy Movie Night.

What I don’t fully understand is why the good from those memories outweighs the pain for me, and why it’s not like that for others. And I don’t want to ever lose track of that gap, which is part of why I’m talking about it here because maybe you’re like me or maybe you’re on the other side, but either way I want to use this very small bit of the internet as a reminder that we’re all in this together.

That the lucky ones like me have a responsibility to think of those who don’t have the same fortune.

And I don’t mean with charitable giving, though that’s obviously a great thing. I mean with straight-up human-to-human empathy. I mean with reaching out to someone who might be going through it, or swallowing that impulse and giving a stranger grace in an awkward moment.

I know this might be sounding corny, and I’m desperately hoping it doesn’t come off as preachy. But we all have different paths to this place, and I think we owe it to each other to remember that.

This week’s reading recommendation is Dan Wetzel with Dick Vitale’s “medicine of sitting courtside,” and the eating recommendation is the wings at Rye.

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You guys, this is bad. Maybe that’s not exactly the right word. Frustrating?

Disappointing?

Aggravating?

Sporting Kansas City is an objectively successful franchise. The club has a clearly established identity and high standards. The club operates with class and ambition and confidence. There is a competitive edge, and a building cohesion with an enviable player development program.

Sporting is in that MLS middle class, trying to both develop young talent from within and win at the league’s highest level. Who knows if this season would have had a different result if the team hadn’t sold Gianluca Busio in July?

But the pattern is pretty clear. Sporting, more often than not, has been just good enough to break your heart.

In the eight seasons since winning the 2013 MLS Cup, Sporting has made seven playoffs but advanced a round just three times.

That simply is not good enough — it’s not up to the standard Sporting earned and sets for itself.

“We weren’t in the game as we normally are for some reason,” Peter Vermes said, and man does that hit hard.

This loss to Real Salt Lake jogged a lot of familiar memories. This makes three home playoff losses in a row, with a set pattern of struggling against opponents that come into Children’s Mercy Park — which was rocking on Sunday, by the way — and generally refuse to engage.

RSL packed its defense, took as much time as possible putting the ball in play, and generally looked content to take it to a coin flip shootout until Johnny Russell converted a penalty kick at the end of the first half.

But what happened after that was even worse than the struggles against a familiar strategy, because RSL appeared more energetic, aggressive, and generally into the game than Sporting for the entirety of the second half. It’s inexplicable. It cannot be explick’d.

I don’t know what the answer is. I know the theories. That Peter Vermes rides his guys too hard in the regular season, so that by the end they’re tired and without depth. Or that MLS’ structure is set up in a way that rewards the hottest teams at the end, and not the best. There is an element of luck involved with this, though we sports fans never seem to want to talk about that (good or bad).

It’s sort of like that old line from Billy Beane, who built the Oakland A’s into a consistent winner that still hasn’t made a World Series since the 1980s: “My (stuff) doesn’t work in the playoffs.”

Kansas City sports fans of a certain age might be getting some Schottenheimer vibes here. The club is consistently successful — one losing season in the last 11 — and consistently let down in the postseason.

This team was supposed to be different. This team had a chance to be remembered as one of the best in franchise history, maybe the best, with a postseason run that would have validated the theory that Sporting simply lacked health.

Instead, that’s gone and replaced with evidence that this Sporting team was exactly like too many others before it — talented and tough but inconsistent, with the wrong letdowns at the wrong time.

They have a structure that makes them easy to believe in. They have good players who are all-in. They operate with purpose. I don’t understand why the results haven’t come in the end.

But I do think some reevaluations are in order to figure it out.

I don’t know that I agree with that assessment. I see and hear plenty of frustration with Vermes.

I also think Vermes is by now established as one of the best managers in the league, and that if Sporting fired him there would be clubs lining up to move mountains to hire him.

You’ve heard me say — probably too many times — that I’ll never tell you how to fan, but pushing for the man who built Sporting from what it was into what it has become to be fired is nonsensical to the point of not being taken seriously.

Vermes is far from perfect, but the man has credibility with players and a structure in place that has been consistently successful and malleable to fit the moment. This isn’t talked about as much, and he has a general stubbornness that belies this point, but he’s been able to shift playing styles to fit his roster or the league or both.

You just don’t kick a track record like that in a ditch.

The biggest priority this offseason should be some serious and honest self-scouting. Vermes and his staff need to figure out what is happening to create the current pattern, and a solution to fix it that does not disrupt the positives.

That’s a difficult challenge.

But that’s the kind of stuff that comes with the job.

They’re all tough games, unless you play the Lions, and I guess I’m not sure if you’d categorize me as sleeping on the Broncos or not.

That defense is tough, especially against the pass, with enough playmakers back there (even without Von Miller) to win games. I still believe the Broncos should have taken Justin Fields, but if you’re going to pass on a quarterback like that then drafting a franchise cover corner like Patrick Surtain II is a sound strategy.

But I just don’t believe a team can expect to win playoff games with Teddy Bridgewater and that group of pass catchers. I don’t believe they can score enough. I especially don’t believe they can score enough against a defense that gave up an average of fewer than 12 points in November.

I feel somewhat hypocritical saying all this, because beating the brakes off the Cowboys and Chargers is impressive.

But I just don’t see it.

What I see is that the Broncos have really only beaten two teams that don’t stink, and each of those teams stunk on the day they played the Broncos.

Now, could the Chiefs stink enough on Sunday night to lose to the Broncos? Of course. We’ve seen them stink more than enough to lose to the Broncos, even if by now those memories are more than a month old.

I also buy into two Andy Reid factors — his 19-3 record after a bye, and his dominance over the AFC West.

I think it matters — and matters a lot — that the bye comes right before a season-ending six-game stretch with four division games.

So … yes, I believe the Broncos *can* beat the Chiefs on Sunday.

I also believe it’s likelier that the Chiefs cover the 10-point spread than lose.

Well, look.

I think it’s OK to pump the brakes a little bit on the Chiefs defense based on the following:

Against Taylor Heinicke, Daniel Jones and Jordan Love, the Chiefs have given up an average of 12.3 points and 196.3 passing yards.

Against (a healthy) Baker Mayfield, Lamar Jackson, Justin Herbert, Jalen Hurts, Josh Allen and Ryan Tannehill, the Chiefs have given up an average of 31.7 points and 291.3 passing yards.

The beatdowns of the Raiders and Cowboys the last two weeks are noteworthy, but so is the fact that both those teams appear to be a mess right now.

Logically, the improvement of the Chiefs defense has credibility because of all the injuries early, Melvin Ingram’s addition (and production) and Steve Spagnuolo’s track record of improving performance as the season goes on.

The whole thing with this defense is the pass rush. They weren’t getting any of it early, and especially against good quarterbacks the back end isn’t good enough to hold up without a pass rush.

Spagnuolo’s scheme and the front office’s roster building are based on pressure. The importance cannot be overstated.

So I want to see what this looks like a little longer, not just against the Broncos and the Raiders after that, but especially in that Thursday night game at the Chargers and against the Bengals the day after New Year’s.

I appreciate that the question notes “it’s still too early,” but I just want to emphasize that it’s about more than the sample size. It’s also about the sample quality, if that’s a term I can make up.

Let’s go through the 12:

Ravens, 8-3.

Patriots and Titans, 8-4.

Chiefs, Bengals, Bills, 7-4.

Chargers, Raiders, Broncos, 6-5.

Colts and Browns, 6-6.

Steelers, 5-5-1.

There’s still a lot of movement. I’m tempted to write off the Broncos, Steelers and Raiders because they have DVOAs in the 20s and quarterbacks and/or other circumstances that aren’t trustworthy.

The Bengals come in at 21, and they’ll be tested down the stretch against the Chargers, 49ers, Broncos, Ravens, Chiefs and Browns. But that’s a dangerous team, with a nice combination of offense and defense.

It’s hard to imagine the Browns surging with whatever Baker Mayfield is dealing with. The Titans’ mojo may be running out. I actually really like the Colts, but they blew that game against the Bucs. I want to see how the Patriots do against the Bills, Colts, and Bills again before buying the hype and if you can figure out the Bills please let me know.

The Ravens’ last five games have been a blowout loss, an overtime win against the Vikings, a loss to the Dolphins, a three-point win against the Bears and a game they desperately tried to lose against the Browns.

That’s a lot of flaws and, when you think about it, exactly what the NFL wants it to look like: as many teams as possible that are good enough to dream on.

The Ravens finish with the Steelers, Browns, Packers, Bengals, Rams and Steelers. Not hard to imagine them losing two of those, and maybe three. We talked about the Patriots’ upcoming schedule, and at some point they’re probably going to need Mac Jones to win a game for them.

The point here is that the Chiefs are likely to be favored in at least five of their six remaining games. We know that guarantees nothing, but it’s an indication that they are well positioned for a strong finish.

FiveThirtyEight’s model has the Ravens (27%), Patriots (22%) and Titans (21%) as sort of co-favorites for the top seed, while Football Outsiders’ model leans heaviest on the Patriots (38.6%) and Ravens (23.2%).

* The Chiefs are at 9% on 538 and 8.6 percent on Football Outsiders.

These are just projections, though, and five of the Chiefs’ remaining six opponents carry DVOAs in the 20s. A 13-4 finish is in play, and a 12-5 finish would not require a ton of luck.

The problem is that the Chiefs’ early season struggles came largely against the AFC. They’ve lost the tiebreaker with three of the five teams tied or ahead of them in the standings — Ravens, Titans and Bills, with the Bengals game still to come.

So, you can’t rule anything out but at the moment the likeliest outcome is the one that’s felt increasingly likely for a while now, which is that the Chiefs play on wild card weekend but do so as a hot team that nobody is going to be excited to go against.

Yes. Precise execution and strategy by the PR team on that one.

Look, I understand the desire for answers. Even for someone beyond Britt Reid to be accountable. I also understand that Britt still has a court date, and that he is still likely to look at bars for a long time.

This is, obviously, a complicated thing. No human being doesn’t hurt for Ariel Young and her family. I cannot imagine anyone who doesn’t believe the settlement — the Chiefs are paying the little girl’s medical expenses, and providing “long-term financial stability,” according to an attorney — is the least the family should receive.

I also believe that addiction is misunderstood, and that at some point a 36-year-old man is responsible for his own actions.

I believe the Chiefs still have questions to answer about what exactly happened that night before Reid left the office, and whether the team followed league protocols regarding alcohol and drugs at facilities. I believe those answers are not going to come from a news conference.

So, to answer the question, no, this is not old news. This is a story that is still very much happening, and one in which the stack of things we still need answers to is much bigger than the stack of answers we have so far.

You know, there’s some of this.

And it’s up to MLS and clubs like Sporting to close that gap, not just in a market like Kansas City with a successful team, but in places like Chicago and Denver and Dallas and others where the MLS team is underperforming the market.

MLS has a lot going for it, and not just with the momentum of soccer more generally. The league is full of innovators, or at least of people willing to consider something new. The league owners are mostly entrepreneurial, having made their fortunes on their own rather than with inheritance, and I think that matters with a league that still has so much room to grow.

The progress is happening. Maybe not at the pace it could, but the progress is happening. Kids all over the country are now growing up having never known a world in which soccer wasn’t a major spectator sport in America. That’s different than the world I grew up in. That’s progress.

I also think that this whole construct in which we view certain sports — not just soccer, but we do it a lot with all sports at times and with women’s sports more generally — as stocks is somewhat annoying and irrelevant.

I don’t think that’s what Mike is referring to in the question, but I know that sentiment is out there. And I don’t really understand the purpose.

Is it interesting to obsess over TV ratings or revenue and make judgments about whether a sport is rising or declining? I guess it can be, but only in spots and the audience is pretty limited to sports obsessives like me.

Is it fun to have those conversations? I would say absolutely not. Especially because a lot of people saying soccer stinks, or nobody watches women’s sports, or whatever are probably people who haven’t given the sport a try and never will.

As a fan, I don’t care about a sport’s revenue or TV ratings anymore than I care about those lists that come out every spring about which conferences wrote which checks to schools. I don’t know sports fans who root for balance sheets, or market trends.

So if you’re bummed this week about Sporting Kansas City disappointing you in the playoffs again, cool, we can talk about that.

And if you don’t know what an RSL is, well, that’s cool too. There’s enough room in here for all of us.

I’m tempted to talk about the logic in selling low on an asset with an astronomical ceiling, or what exactly Royals fans would expect in return for a guy who played 35 games last year with a 90 OPS+, but I’m more focused on this:

The fact that Dayton More — DAYTON MOORE!!! — has a son who is a badass, bat-flipping, power hitting baseball prospect is the best storyline in modern baseball history.

I just love everything about it.

If you haven’t read Vahe’s piece on Dayton and Robert, I hope you do, and not just for this line from Dayton:

“If I could have hit a ball like that, maybe I would have flipped the bat, too; I don’t know.”

Well, you’re not going to like the first part of this answer, which is that with MLB apparently set for a lockout starting on Thursday, you should make sure that any plans you make can be canceled or are refundable.

I know, I know.

So my advice to this is going to be different than it would be in a normal year, because this year the best plan might be to target the last week or two of spring training. That way you’re covered if some games get lopped off from the start of the schedule.

Also, and I know these are first world problems, but that first week of spring training the weather can be a little uneven.

Spring training is great. Always been one of my favorite assignments. People are generally talkative, players are generally accessible to fans*, and even with some brutal traffic you can get to any game in any day you want around Phoenix.

* Though, obviously, Covid.

I’ve never done it, but I know a lot of people (especially families) do a day trip to the Grand Canyon. There are a million golf courses in and around Phoenix, if you’re into that. There’s some great hiking, lots of restaurants, and you can probably get to a Suns or Coyotes game.

I’m looking forward to it, again. Hopefully the full schedule will happen. But, yeah. Just in case you might want to book toward the end of the schedule.

Brother Jeff, come on in here. Let’s talk.

I have stood where you stand, I have heard what you’ve heard, and I’ve thought what you’re thinking.

I do not know your wife. I do not know if she is like mine. I will simply tell you about my experience.

I, too, was skeptical. It feels like a trap, right? It feels like this thing where Christmas morning — and this is probably best-case scenario — you get some passive-aggressive judgment about exactly what kind of husband it turns out you really are.

But, my wife is also honest. She doesn’t say things just to say them. So I called her best friend, just for a safety net, and came away from the conversation with a little more confidence.

Our situation may have been different than yours is. We’d just moved into the house we’ll live in until the coroner comes, and being an interior designer my wife HAD SOME IDEAS.

So the strategy wasn’t “oh, your love and companionship is all I need for a present.”

The strategy was more like “hey, instead of you buying me a necklace I don’t need and me buying you a driver you won’t be able to hit anyway why don’t we put that money together and get something that’s more for both of us?”

This will be the 10th Christmas we’ve had in this house, and I stand before you to say my wife’s words were both honest and smart.

If my memory is right we have used Christmas to paint the house (interior and exterior), buy furniture, a refrigerator (gawd I hate buying refrigerators), a new kitchen (that one was expensive), a trip or two and two beds (one that replaced the first, which, well, dangit).

We still get each other stocking stuff, and sometimes something to open, but the understanding is that the entire point is to be practical. I mean this in the most complimentary way possible: it’s really the only time my wife leans into practical, so I try to take advantage.

I cannot emphasize this enough: results may vary.

Like I said, I suspected it was a trap, and that may very well be what you’re walking into. Process with caution. Ask questions. Read body language.

Maybe get her something small, just in case. But I’m here to tell you this might be real.

This week I’m particularly grateful for the time with my sister’s family last week. Our kids look up to hers like they’re rock stars, and it was great to hang out again. It had been way, way too long.