The season is more than two weeks long. The season is more than two weeks long. The season is more than two weeks long.

Keep repeating that over and over, and maybe it will lessen the sting of watching your team lose to the Raiders at home. Maybe it will lessen the sting of watching them be bested by a quarterback who completed fewer than 30% of his passes. Maybe it will lessen the sting of watching them run roughshod over a respectable defense, only to spite themselves with the kind of mental mistakes that should have been abandoned at the end of training camp. Maybe. But probably not.

Just as the Chiefs had no business last Sunday keeping stride with the Ravens despite holding the ball for 20 minutes, the Chiefs had no business today matching stride with the Raiders despite holding the ball for over 38 minutes. When 409 yards translates to only 10 points, words like “rebuilding” and “inexperienced” have no place to be used as justification. Make no mistake. This loss is inexcusable. If this was week 12, jobs would be in jeopardy.

But hey, Neil Patrick Harris is singing at the Emmys right now, so the Arrowhead home opener isn’t the biggest travesty to happen on your local CBS affiliate today.

I have a hard time assigning any positive connotations to anything relating to today’s game, but I’ll give it a shot. Here goes:

1. Solomon Wilcots refrained from calling any of the players “athuletic”.

2. Bobby Wade made his presence felt, proving that Scott Pioli really does have a knack for signing receivers with a 600 yard per season cap.

3. Larry Johnson actually caught three of the four passes lobbed in his direction, making up at least in part for the fact that he was bested on the ground by both of his backups.

4. Dwayne Bowe caught all five of his passes, and made a couple of key blocks to boot. No sarcasm here – he did a great job.

5. Ryan Succop didn’t miss the field goal he should have been kicking at the end of the first half.

That officially concludes the compliments section of the article. Now on to the complaints:

1. Everything else.

The season is more than two weeks long. The season is more than two weeks long. The season is more than two weeks long.

Come what may of the rest of the season, the one thing that is painfully clear about the 2009 Kansas City Chiefs is this: at the moment, they do not have the ability to seal the deal, and the buck stops with the coaches. Teams that lose in the last two minutes of a game once might be guilty of nothing more than a mental lapse. Teams that do so twice in a row are guilty of being poorly coached.

That isn’t to say that Todd Haley is a bad coach. He’s just not a good coach yet. I question whether or not he has bitten off more than he can chew by electing to call the offense in his rookie season. I question whether or not he had a clear grasp on Clancy Pendergast’s ability to manage a defense before he brought him aboard. I question whether or not he’s actually willing to start his best players, rather than the ones he’s paying the most.

I question everything he does, and so should you. Replacing a maligned and clearly underqualified predecessor does not merit unchecked loyalty.

More than anything else, I question whether or not he got a head coaching job a little too soon. Only time will tell.

In the meantime, buckle up. The easy stretch of the season has now concluded. Up next: the toughest, most competitive division in football. A division whose teams have a combined two losing seasons in the last four years. A division whose teams have a combined ten playoff berths in the same span. A division with three Pro Bowl quarterbacks and four Pro Bowl tailbacks. A division whose weakest pass rushing defensive end is Trent Cole. The bye week will come not a moment too soon, and there will be a lot of licking of wounds, both literal and figurative.

In other words, it’s gonna be like a growth spurt. It’s gonna hurt, and there’s nothing you can do but wait for it to be over. If the Chiefs are lucky, maybe it’ll result in some actual growth.

Only time will tell.

The season is more than two weeks long.