Ryan Clark Dismisses Rob Gronkowski’s Take on the Chiefs After Week 1 Loss By Comparing the NFL To UFC

The Kansas City Chiefs had been stewing over one of the worst Super Bowl defeats in recent memory for the last six months. You would have thought they’d be chomping at the bit to get that winning feeling back in Week 1 of the new season. Instead, they fell flat against a division rival in Brazil.

They did come out and punch someone in the mouth, but unfortunately, it was themselves. There was more Chiefs friendly fire when Travis Kelce accidentally laid out Xavier Worthy, forcing K.C.’s top wideout to leave the game just three snaps into the season with a dislocated shoulder. It was a somewhat competitive game, but the Chargers led the entire way.

And the surprising thing was that, unlike in previous seasons, you didn’t get the feeling that Patrick Mahomes and company were going to be able to pull a rabbit out of the hat and steal this one. Which they didn’t, as they lost 27-21. Rob Gronkowski, who played these Chiefs in a few big games in his day, believes that the Chiefs are not responding well to being “punched in the face.”

“What I was surprised about is when things aren’t going their way… when they start struggling a little bit, they start yelling at each other,” Gronk told Kay Adams when asked what he found surprising about the Chiefs in Week 1.

“The blame game starts going on. You can see it on the sidelines. And that’s not a good situation… To see them starting to point fingers is not a good sign… The Philadelphia Eagles punched them in the face. The Chiefs didn’t know how to react to that, because no one else was doing that,” he added.

Gronkowski also said that in their Week 1 win, the Chargers did to the Chiefs what the Eagles had done to them in the big game. The future Hall of Famer went on to compare the situation to one of the greatest boxing upsets of all time: Buster Douglas over Mike Tyson.

Once Douglas showed the world that Iron Mike was not, in fact, invincible, others felt more confident to challenge the king. Gronkowski believes that the blowout loss to the Eagles was Kansas City’s Buster Douglas fight.

However, ESPN’s Ryan Clark had to disagree with the former Patriots TE. He argued that the Chiefs had been punched in the mouth before, most notably in their Super Bowl 55 loss to Tom Brady’s Buccaneers. To Clark, football isn’t like boxing … it’s more like the UFC, because nobody goes undefeated (except Khabib Nurmagomedov).

“There’s no champion that hasn’t taken a punch. Every great winner has had to pick themselves off of the mat, or pull themselves back together after being knocked down. The Chiefs are no different! Throughout their reign there has been toughness, resiliency, & perseverance. Stephen A. Smith compared this to boxing, but it’s more UFC. Even Champions have fallen, but there is no quit in KC!” Clark wrote, also sharing his rant session from First Take.

We’ll see who’s got the right of it when the Chiefs host their tormenters, the Eagles, on Sunday afternoon in Week 2. If they don’t respond in that game, Gronkowski might have been right about this particular iteration of the Chiefs.