If you know and love “The Office,” then this surprising good video from KCChiefs.com should be right up your alley:

Pam, Toby and Dwight were played rather well. But where was Todd Packer?

Via Arrowhead Pride, Shutdown Corner.

This year, there is an unusual number of NFL teams with no viable option at quarterback. In particular, the Chiefs, Rams and Lions have little to no identity at the position, and are without a solution in the immediate future. What these teams need is a guy who was really good for like two years, like five years ago. Daunte Culpepper to the rescue!

“A number of teams have contacted me since my retirement announcement and have provided some important information that has caused me to reconsider returning to the league,” Culpepper said in an e-mail.

As a fan of one of these hopeless teams, I feel qualified to offer unique perspective. You see, teams like mine operate by committee at quarterback. My team might have a young quarterback waiting in the wings, but said quarterback is a goof who could not stand on the shore and complete a pass to the ocean. Perhaps worst of all, none of the quarterbacks on the roster can generate even the least bit of excitement or celebrity, much less contention.

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This season, future Hall of Fame tight end Tony Gonzalez finally realized something I’ve reconciled myself with long ago: it will be years before the Kansas City Chiefs are a playoff-caliber team, much less a Super Bowl team.

Gonzalez, 32, asked the Chiefs to explore trade possibilities after deciding the rebuilding Chiefs (1-4) would probably not reach championship caliber before time ran out on his career.

…”I know teams offered a third [round draft choice] and in the end, [team president] Carl [Peterson] made the asking price a second,” Gonzalez said, according to Foxsports.com. “I’m very disappointed that he didn’t go through with it after he told me he was going to try to make it happen. I’ve been around this league a long time, it’s a business. There’s nothing I can do about it. I was pissed off about it, but I’ll get over it. I won’t let it affect my play and my preparation.”

I’m usually hopelessly sentimental over players, to the extent that I want my favorite players to stick with my team even if it hurts the team’s chances to win. This, though, was a trade that really needed to happen. In the short term, losing Gonzalez would have left Dwayne Bowe as the only talented receiver, and turned an ugly season into a somehow uglier season. But it’s been made clear that this is a rebuilding year, and in order to rebuild, a team has to move its investments toward young players and draft picks. An extra third-round pick, if nothing else, would have allowed them to take a chance on a quarterback. If you’re a team, and you’re rebuilding, and you’re not willing to part with your top commodities, you’re treading water.

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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the 1970s serve as the answer for that age-old trivia question: “if you were a pair of scissors, and one of your blades just snapped off one day, which football team would you be?”  Their record of 26 consecutive regular-season losses still stands, but they are in danger of being usurped by the modern-day Kansas City Chiefs.

The Chiefs might not be the worst team in the league — the Rams, Lions, Texans and Browns are pretty terrible — but they’re best positioned to make a run at the record.  Allow me to state my case.

- The Chiefs come into Sunday’s game against the Broncos with a twelve-game losing streak that sprawls back to last season, so they only have to lose fifteen more.

- Unlike some of those other terrible teams above, the Chiefs are not really suffering from injury.  Quarterback Brodie Croyle is hurt, but when he returns, he will probably not raise the bar in a meaningful way.  There are no key players sitting injured on the bench, waiting to make an impact.  We are seeing the Chiefs at full strength.

- This is not a completely terrible team.  Their defense is passable, and they have some great offensive weapons (Tony Gonzalez, Larry Johnson, Dwayne Bowe).  But none of these things matter, because they do not possess a quarterback capable of taking advantage of any of them.  Their offensive line is the most miserable group of human beings ever assembled for any purpose.

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With help from Scouts Inc., ESPN.com has compiled a list of each NFL team’s “best play” and illustrated the routes through interactive flash animations.  They’re all interesting, and a few are pretty funny.  The Cowboys animation seems to depict quarterback Tony Romo faking the handoff and then just tripping and falling backwards.  The play suggested to the Falcons seems to require that head coach Mike Smith print it out, hand it to the opposing offensive coordinator, and say, “Listen, this will only work if you guys hold up your end of the bargain.”  And in the Steelers’ animation, the opposing running back appears to see safety Troy Polamalu throttling toward him, say, “i quit i quit i quit,” and conveniently slow to a halt.

If I had the know-how to put these sort of animations together, I’d replace some of them with the following scripts.

Kansas City Chiefs: Offensive line ambles toward the sideline, makes arrangements to buy condominiums in Florida or Arizona.  Running back Larry Johnson takes handoff, plows through for -1 yard, makes the face a two-year-old makes after soiling himself.  Punter Dustin Colquitt, who starts the play at fullback for the sake of expedience, just trots a few yards back and waits for the long snap.

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