65 Totally Pathetic Trash

Oh, how the mighty have fallen!

After demolishing the Patriots in Foxborough in week one and smashing the high-flying Eagles (pun intended), we now find that the hapless Chiefs can beat no one – not even the struggling Giants or Bills.

What is going on?

I’m afraid Alex Smith is going on – or not going on as it happens.  I blog every season that it’s a quarter-back league and if your QB goes well then you go well.  When we beat the Pats, he was great. When we beat the Eagles he was great.  After that it has been all down hill. 

Is it all his fault?

No, of course not.  But he must take the major share of the blame. And now as we sit at 6-5 both the Charges 5-6 and the Raiders 5-6 are right on our tail.  We play them both in the next few weeks.  Lose and play-offs are a distant memory.  Win and a poor post season run is still inevitable.

Let’s get the blame game out of the way.  A team's success is not all on the QB’s.  Other parts must function as well. 

Defence is poor.  The last two games against inferior opponents have disguised this, bit it is nevertheless apparent.  The D-line can create no pressure.  The LB’s are a shadow of what they were supposed to be. The Show-Boater-in Chief, Marcus Peters, has been found out – he’s just an average corner back.  The rest of the secondary is pathetic.  (So pathetic that the Chiefs have signed Darrell Revis, whose fall from NFL grace has been spectacular, to try to shore the secondary up.)

Still they played well enough to beat both the Giants and the Bills.

The offence is beyond poor.  Notwithstanding Alex’s failures, the O-line (which should have been one of the team’s strengths) had gone from average to quite poor in a very short time.  After a spectacular start, Kareem Hunt has gone from Rookie of the Year candidate to a low draft pick with limited upside.  The receiving corps is very poor.  Losing Chris Conley to injury has exposed just how poor these receivers are.  Tyreek Hill is not really a receiver, though he made some big plays early on.  He’s very fast, but he’s also a very small target, so if he doesn’t beat you for speed, Alex can not throw him the ball.  There are no other receivers - except for the over-rated Travis Kelce.

Except for the find of the season, Harrison Butker, special teams have been disappointing.  They used to be relied upon to produce some touch-downs every other game.  They are not contributing.

What do the experts say?

"So what blueprint did the Steelers set? A passive one. Instead of attacking Smith and Co., they stayed back in soft zone coverage. They kept everything in front of them and rallied to the ball. It was a simple, but brilliant, approach."

From Sports Illustrated:  “The gadgets and gimmicks that comprise Andy Reid’s offense, the tools they had used to light up the Patriots in Foxboro on opening night, suddenly stopped working. The misdirection that had given opponents fits, with ploys like speedy Tyreek Hill racing one way and the ball optioning back another, became null. If defenders don’t match up and follow offensive players, then those gadgets and misdirections are less effective. Instead of following Hill (or any Chiefs player) and becoming out-leveraged pawns against Reid’s designs, defenders now guard an area of the field, forcing Reid to play to them.”

The solution?  “What the Chiefs must do in the here and now is punish defenses for playing zone. You do that by going for big plays. Re-establishing a sustainable ground and screen game with rookie running back Kareem Hunt is important, sure, but the threat of steady, sustained drives is not what worries defensive coordinators—especially coordinators who are playing zone. Big plays worry them. And it’s that worry that will drag defensive play-callers away from soft zones, giving Kansas City’s foundational misdirection and gadgetry a chance to start working again.

You beat zones by attacking them vertically. Instead of aligning Hill and all-world tight end Travis Kelce all over the formation and finding creative ways to get them the ball, align those two together on the same side and run them downfield against the same zone defender. In football parlance, that’s called sending “two through a zone.” It forces zone defenders to make either-or decisions.

So yes, there’s a blueprint. How do the Chiefs respond? Some are calling for first-round rookie quarterback Patrick Mahomes to take over. But the only reason Reid would bench Smith is if the head coach truly believed that those gadgets and misdirection concepts can never work again. Because if Reid went with the more talented but inexperienced Mahomes, he’d have to throw out much of those concepts, along with many of his multi-progression designs. At Texas Tech, Mahomes played in a spread offense, which, notably, he ran with very little discipline. Raw sandlot play-making prowess works in college, but it does not transfer to the NFL—not as a quarterback’s foundation, anyway. It will take at least an off-season (and probably more) for Mahomes to develop the awareness and discipline to run a full-fledged NFL offense, particularly one as comprehensive as Reid’s.”

Wait a minute!  What has Andy Reid been doing?  If Sports Illustrated are right, should he not have seen this!  Very soon the spotlight is going to turn to the coach and he better have some better comments than, “we have to play better”.

The calls for Patrick Mahomes are becoming vociferous.  All the good reasons from Sports Illustrated as to why he can’t play pale into insignificance if the Chiefs can’t win with what they have. 

it’s difficult not to feel some sympathy for Smith.  Teams have got his number and the coaches have either not seen this or have not schemed better ways to get the job done.

At the bottom line it’s still a QB league.  This season is probably already over.  Time for Alex to slip gracefully into retirement (or seek a new challenge) and let youth have it’s chance.  Don’t forget Mahomes has been the back-up all season.  He must know the offence by now.

Let’s go for it.