Power failure

Well, of course, Chiefs 31, Colts 13. It's the No Figuring League, remember?

And so who figures the hottest team in pro football would go out to Arrowhead's winter wonderland and forget how to play football?

And who figures a third-string running back (Damien Williams) would be the first RB this season to gash the Colts' vibrant young defense for 100-plus yards?

And who figures that stout Colts offensive line -- which has kept Andrew Luck off his back and made a luxury-class back out of Marlon Mack --  would be bested by the  worst defense statistically in the NFL?

Against that allegedly lame Kansas City D, the Colts failed to scratch out so much as a first down until the last 90 seconds of the first half. The allegedly lame D sacked Luck three times and knocked down five of his throws at the line of scrimmage. The Allegedly Lame D (because this should be its official title now) never gave Mack a sniff until garbage time; midway through the fourth quarter, he'd scratched out just 15 yards against a defense the Colts were supposed to run on all day.

You sensed this wasn't going to be last week on the first play of the game, when Mack got taken down in the backfield for a loss. Fast forward to the final seconds of the half, when the Colts finally put together a drive and out came the most prolific placekicker of all time to put three points on the board from the 13-yard line.

Adam Vinatieri chimed the left upright instead. On a 23-yard attempt. When do you suppose was the last time he missed a 23-yarder?

Ever?

And then, later on, to flat-out whiff on an extra point?

If there was a signature image for this day, it was the white-bearded Vinatieri sitting on the bench as the final seconds ran out, wearing the thousand-yard stare of the shell-shocked.  Everyone figured this would be a tough go, beating Patrick Mahomes and Co. in the loudest stadium in pro football. No one could have guessed the Colts, from Vinatieri to Luck to the heralded O-line to, well, pretty much everyone, would play such horrendously addled football after winning 10 of their last 11 games.

Vinatieri missing kicks he never misses. Luck missing throws, and sometimes reads, he never misses. Kansas City breezing through the Colts' D like a commuter through a turnstile early on, going 90 yards in just five plays on its first scoring drive and 70 yards in eight plays on its second.

Everyone sort of knew the Chiefs would move the football, because there's no one on whom they haven't moved the football this season. Hardly anyone would have guessed they'd have done so at a dead sprint, however.

But it was that kind of day, and if there was any consolation in it, it's that this young football team is far ahead of curve projected for it, and positioned to push that curve even further moving forward. And maybe this lost snowy afternoon in Arrowhead will serve as a barometer for what that process involves.

Until then, we are left with one final inexplicable image of an inexplicable day: The clock running down, the Colts in striking distance of the end zone for a face-saving, if meaningless, score, and ... did we mention the clock running down?

From 14 seconds to 13 seconds to 12. From 10 to nine to eight. From seven to six to five to four as the Colts kept fiddling around, fiddling around ...

Triple zeroes on the clock now. And the Colts still fiddling around, either unable or unwilling to get the ball snapped.

If the former, it was yet another moment of incompetence on a singularly incompetent day. If the latter, it was simple surrender from a team whose vocabulary hasn't included that word all season.

Fitting.