After fast start, Chiefs routed by Browns 30-7

• Eight days after LB Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide, the Chiefs failed to win their second game in a row

CLEVELAND -- The Kansas City Chiefs looked hopeless Sunday.

They played one of their worst games in what has been one of the most awful seasons in franchise history in getting routed by the Cleveland Browns, 30-7, at Browns Stadium.

The Chiefs are 2-11 and tied with the Jacksonville Jaguars for the worst record in the NFL. General manager Scott Pioli and coach Romeo Crennel will almost certainly be fired at the end of the season.

All the Chiefs have to play for now is the first pick in next April's NFL Draft. Even that isn't the prize it normally would be as the Chiefs badly need a franchise quarterback -- no offense, Ricky Stanzi -- and there are none to be had in the current draft crop.

And that's just the football side of things.

The Jovan Belcher murder-suicide hangs over the Chiefs. The fourth-year linebacker shot his girlfriend to death on Dec. 1 then shot himself to death in the Arrowhead Stadium parking lot in front of Pioli, Crennel and linebackers coach Gary Gibbs.

Who could blame Crennel for not seeming too upset about his team's ugly performance on Sunday? When you've watched someone take their life in front of your eyes, a 23-point loss in a desultory season has to seem trivial.

Crennel, though, insists his team will keep plugging through the final three games of the season, which include visits to AFC West rivals Oakland and Denver sandwiched around the home finale with Indianapolis.

"We will stick together and fight together and try to finish the season strong," Crennel said.

It sure didn't look like the Chiefs are capable of doing that with the way they played Sunday. While the Browns have won three in a row, they are still just 5-8 and not exactly one of the NFL's powers.

It was suggested to Crennel that perhaps his team had hit an emotional wall after a tumultuous eight days that included a memorial service for Belcher last Wednesday in Kansas City. He refuted the notion.

"I think that if there was a letdown, we wouldn't have played the first half the way we played the first half," Crennel said.

Indeed, the Browns led just 10-7 at halftime after Travis Benjamin had the longest punt return in team history, a 93-yarder for a touchdown with 14:40 left in the second quarter.

The Browns turned the game into a laugher in the second half, though, as Trent Richardson had two 1-year touchdown runs and Phil Dawson kicked his second and third field goals of the day.

"In the second half, we didn't make the plays we needed to make," Crennel said. "We kind of reverted to how we've been playing in the past."

Which, for the most part, has been awful with eight of the Chiefs' 11 losses coming by double digits this season.

Quarterback Brady Quinn admitted that the loss of a teammate and the circumstances of how it happened will linger throughout the remainder of the season.

"And probably longer than that," he said. "I'm sure it's going to stay with all of us for the rest of our lives and I'm sure it's going to be especially hard for the guys on this team who were close to Javon. You don't just immediately move on when you lose someone you care about."

However, Quinn also thinks the murder-suicide should not impact the Chiefs' performance, primarily because the football field serves as a sanctuary for the players and coaches.

"Playing football is what we love to do," Quinn said. "If anything, it helps us take our minds off what happened."

Like Crennel, Chiefs linebacker Tamba Hali also didn't blame Sunday's performance on an emotional letdown.

"Not at all," he said. "It felt like any other game. We just played bad. That was the problem."

Defensive end Shaun Smith was asked how the Belcher situation might affect the Chiefs over the final three weeks of the season. Perhaps it was a bit of machismo that comes with being a professional football player, but Smith gave a very blunt answer.

"People die every day," he said. "Death is something everyone has to deal with. It's just more public in this case because we're in the NFL.

"I don't mean to sound cruel about this but life goes on and what happened with Javon had nothing to do with the way we played today. We played a bad football game. That's why we lost. Anything else would be an excuse. We can't blame Jovan for this loss or anything else that happens with our team."