If you’re going to the Chiefs final home game on Sunday when they play the Browns, it could be a long game with a lot of clock stoppages on incomplete passes. When it comes to trying to hold onto the pigskin, the Chiefs and Browns are the best when it comes to butter fingers.

The Chiefs lead the NFL with 39 dropped passes and Cleveland is right behind them in second with 36. The Chiefs could get a lift this week, when Dwayne Bowe returns. He was back at practice working with the first team unit. He’s coming back from a four game suspension, however he is tied for 10th in the NFL with teammate Mark Bradley with seven drops.

Bobby Wade, who was brought in by Todd Haley because he was a guy that Haley said “can make the tough catches over the middle,” just quite hasn’t played the way the team expected. He’s tied for 2nd in the league with nine drops.

Dropped passes doesn’t necessarily reflect on the team’s record. New England, for example is tied for fourth in the league with 34 dropped passes and they are 8-5 and lead the AFC East. When you look at the Chiefs, Browns, Lions, and Raiders, the next four right at the top of the “All-Thumbs” team, they have a combined 11 wins, so perhaps there is something that goes along with dropped passes. The ability to pick up that key third down play or as was the case in Sunday’s loss to Buffalo when Chris Chambers dropped a third down pass that would have given the Chiefs a 4th and goal late in the game.

The problems with dropped passes, is once it starts it seems it can never be fully corrected. I go back to the start of the Missouri Tigers season back in August. They had a lot of dropped passes in August and it was a problem that crept up every so often during the season.

I’m not sure if it becomes a confidence issue, or lack of concentration, but I understand there are instances where a player will hear footsteps on a pass over the middle, but I can’t believe how many times I’ve seen passes bounce in and out of the hand of Chiefs’ receivers.

So, let’s hope for more of a running attack from both teams this Sunday or this could be a four hour game.