and the best supporting award goes to...

... (bet you'll never guess)

... ('cause you're thinking about films or television shows)

... (and not considering sports)

... (even though wrestling has long been considered staged work)

... (even though you have to have heard me talk about staging in baseball)

... (so get ready to add another sport to the mix)

... Kadarius Toney!!!

Yeah, I know the quarterback got the MVP award, but without golden gloves to catch those passes, and fleet feet to have the man in position under that hurled object, the score would have been zippity-doo-dah.

 

So, why this particular wide receiver and not another?

He made two utterly amazing plays for that KC Crew.

It's the fourth quarter and the other team has finessed the lead by making two low-scoring, but well-played, field goals.

Now, a touchdown was needed to bring the team out of the 6-point hole it'd fallen into.

And whaddaya know?

Nobody was watching that right-hand part of the line!

He was able to just skip right across and score!

Then, moments later, he has control of the ball again.

Down the field Toney runs, ball clutched tight!

Ten yards, twenty yards...

thirty, forty, fifty...

sixty-five yards he ran, never getting touched!

That beautifully set up the next player.

The other team expected a run down the middle -

but they ignored the open left-hand corner,

allowing Skyy Moore, another wide receiver,

to literally stroll across for his touchdown.

Wow.

I'd like to say that ended the game, but it did not.

The other team made up the eight-point deficit with a touchdown and a conversion (running the ball instead of kicking over the field goal) to tie up the score.

Wow.

And the clock kept ticking...

with the ball under control of the KC team...

as folks wondered:

will there be an overtime needed to break the tie???

Nope.

That's when I realized that football has a resemblance to chess, just like baseball does.

It's all a matter of perspective and something one of the announcers said gave me that connection to other sports that utilize strategy.

Each team can be thought of as an improv troupe, with the coach serving as director.

Based on the lines/plays that have been performed, the coach tries to direct the next course of action, cuing the players to speak/move in a way to drive the story forward.

With chess, to slow down a game, smaller pieces are taken and different spaces become the travel routes toward the king.

With baseball, to slow down a game, players take walks or pitchers get changed.

In tonight's game, the strategy was to deliberately throw incomplete passes or to deliberately have the quarterback kneel or to deliberately have a caught ball be taken out of bounds instead of across the goal line.

Seriously, I watched as the player put his foot ON TOP OF THE GOAL LINE, but not beyond it, just before he stepped off to the side, making it an incomplete pass.

The coach was deliberately running out the clock so the other team would not have time to get the ball and score.

But how to break the tie?

With a field goal after the third down, leaving just 8 seconds on the clock.

Well played, well played!

Thanks for showing me the smarter side of this sport.