On the morning of November 7, the Dallas Cowboys were perfect against the point spread and won every game since a narrow opening day loss to the defending Super Bowl Champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida.
The had just completed winning both sides of their bye week and were hosting a struggling Denver Broncos team. The Cowboys were favored at home, by ten points, and most figured they would have an easy home victory.
Seems the Dallas players and coaches thought that too, because on their first two series of downs they skipped field goal attempts to go for the first down on fourth and inches. Both times they failed to pick up the first down, and the underdog Broncos had scored 30 points before the Cowboys cracked the scoreboard late in the game.
Denver won easily.
Whenever a team reaches the point to where they are so confident they are going to win they often make stupid deicisons. The Kansas City Chiefs were victims of the same mindset last week that grounded the Cowboys in November. In their home loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the American Football Conference Championship Game, the Chiefs made more stupid decisions than Paris Hilton in a spelling bee.
The Bengals had sliced through the Bengals defense all through the first half, and the only two scores Cincinnati tallied were a first quarter field goal and a 41-yard touchdown pass from Joe Burrow and scamper by Samage Perine with just over a minute remaining in the first half.
The Chiefs quickly moved down the field and a pass interference gave them a first and goal at the one-yard-line with enough time on the clock to attempt a touchdown and if failing that, kicking the field goal that would bulge their lead to 14 points.
Instead, the Chiefs decided that the possibility of getting a 28-10 lead headed to the locker room was more important than taking the sure field goal after a first down pass fell incomplete and left five seconds on the clock.
A chip-shot field goal here would have advanced the Kansas City lead to 24-10, instead they took a chance at scoring the touchdown and lost that bet. To show how out of sync they were, Mahomes signaled for a timeout after time had expired and after using his third and final timeout of the half moments before.
That is where the Chiefs began their unraveling.
Not because they weren’t physically able to beat the Bengals on their home field, but because of the confidence they had proved fatal to their Super Bowl aspirations.
If a team was on edge, thought they needed every play and advantage they could scratch out to down a respected opponent, they would not be so cavalier as to forgo sure points for the prospect of scoring more and looking for a route.
Kansas City had every reason to be confident they were on their way to a third straight Super Bowl appearance and the gambling world agreed. The Chiefs were 3 point halftime favorites, meaning with their 11 point halftime lead they now were giving 14 points on the halftime spread.
Confident of a win can be a team’s undoing.
Predictable victories come from teams not confident of the outcome, but those teams that respect their opponent and know they need to do anything and everything if they are to win.
One team has this eye of the tiger attitude in Super Bowl LVI, and they are going to complete their season in a hail of confetti while hoisting the Vince Lombardi Trophy.