Chiefs at Eagles: The Good, the Bad & the Ugly

Through the first half of the game my heart rate was hovering around 120. I’m a pretty in-shape sort of guy. My resting heart rate sits right around 70. I hold the Chiefs responsible for this each and every week.

The Good

The Chiefs offense was hitting on all cylinders. To get 6 touchdowns in 7 possessions is fantastic. 42 points should win most weeks in the NFL. The one blemish being Pat’s interception, but I don’t mind those on 3rd down much at all. If we punt, the way our defense was playing, do we really think the Eagles just don’t drive down the field anyway? I don’t think we had a 4th down today, but when we do in the future I think a strong argument could be made to go for 4th downs like our opponents do knowing it’s our best chance to win.

Kelce acting confused was priceless. It’s so rare to see him getting upset that you could just tell he was putting on a show the entire time. It worked to perfection and ended with a pretty touchdown to Fortson. I love the wrinkles this team puts in, so long as it’s not 1st and goal from the 1.

Thankfully for us Jalen Hurts… had poor situational awareness, throwing the 4th down play out of bounds when the game was still in doubt. I don’t see Patrick putting that ball anywhere, but up for grabs. You have a chance for a catch or a penalty to extend the drive. I’m not sure if he’s just selfish and not wanting to risk an interception or simply not being very bright in that position.

The Chiefs defense was poor overall today, but holding the Eagles to field goals in all but 2 situations, not counting the end of game garbage time, was a step perhaps in the right direction.

Lost in the offensive display was Harrison Butker hitting 6 extra point attempts. After previous years struggles it’s reassuring to see him locked in.

Patrick Mahomes had 5 touchdowns and threw a total of 6 incompletions. We are truly fortunate that he plays for us.

For anyone in the media that keeps asking if the Chiefs offense has been figured out? They have 6 touchdowns of 25 or more yards on the season, the best mark in the league. Teams can play cover 2 all they want, we will continue to move the ball up and down the field, and still find a way to do what we do. So, try and stop that narrative.

Shout out to Andy Reid. The first coach ever to win 100 games with 2 different franchises. He’s clearly the best Chiefs coach ever as well as one of the best of all time… period.

The Bad

The Eagles had 4 offensive lineman out, yet on the first drive and essentially every drive thereafter our defense was shredded offering very little resistance. Teams have zero respect for our defense, going for it on 4th the vast majority of the time. I can count the times on about 3 fingers that Chiefs defensive backs were close to a receiver who caught a ball. There were seemingly oceans of space each time an Eagles receiver caught the ball. I don’t believe Hurts is so good that he can find the vastly open receiver each and every time, and we made him look like a Pro Bowler today.

The pass defense must be better. The perplexing part with this defense is it’s essentially the same players as last year minus Bashaud Breeland. Granted we had Ward, Fenton, Clark, and Gay out, and it will be great to see if the defense can improve when everyone is healthy, but every team has players out each week and we simply need a better performance. Missed opportunities on defense were highlighted by Baker dropping a fairly easy interception. You catch the ball with your hands my man, not the forearms.

The Chiefs pass rush was pretty weak today, yet time after time we seemed to get a bit of pressure but could not finish the deal until late in the game. Taking bad angles, over pursuing, just not making the play when needed and we have to wrap up. And speaking of wrapping up, the number of missed tackles today was staggering. Chris Jones and Jarran Reed put up goose eggs in the tackle column. Look no further to see where our issues start, but I did noticed Jones lining up inside more, which could help to fix things. I don’t recall the 2018 defense being this bad. If it continues we will need to lower our expectations for this team.

Lucas Niang had 2 early penalties, and thankfully we overcame both. He seems solid in run blocking, but questionable in pass protection. Many defensive ends seem to be able to get him off balance pretty easily.

This may seem picky, but on Hill’s 2nd touchdown Travis Kelce was right in front of him, drawing his double team and adding defenders to the area. I thought at first the pass was going to Kelce and was going to be a bad play, and was thrilled when it ended up working, but the route seemed questionable.

I’d like to see us get in the habit of running the ball on 1st and goal much more often. One of our shovel passes is going to get picked off at some point and we don’t need to be cute. This is not last year’s offensive line, we need to power those in like we did later in the game. It feels bad complaining about a TD however.

This offensive line’s run blocking was great today, but the pass blocking left something to be desired. We got Pat hit way too many times, and at least one late hit was not called. Eagles got some cheap shots in and the line needs to keep that from happening so much.

The Ugly

In the Patrick Mahomes era I have never understood why we ever bring any kickoffs out of the end zone. You have the best quarterback in the history of the game and you do anything you can do to put the ball in his hands as soon as possible. Today was a perfect example. We had one return to the 30. Big deal. Every other time we didn’t make it to the 25. One time we fumbled which could have been disastrous. Today we avoided the holding calls, but more often than not we seem to get one pinning us back to the 12 yard line. The risk of injury is also greater on a return. There is simply very little reason to bring the ball out of the end zone with the QB we have.

Clyde struggled a bit today in picking up rushers. He has to improve in this area.

Why was there no review on the Eagles first touchdown? Watching live I thought there was a chance the ball came out early. On the reply before the TD happened it was clear it came out. Whoever is in charge of telling Andy to throw that flag has to be better. It cost us 7 points and allowed a bad team to keep it close. In the first half I wouldn’t feel bad about calling a timeout there to give more time to look at the play. We seem to miss those sorts of opportunities more often than we should.

Eagles WR DeVonte Smith had at least 2 push-offs as well as pulling a defender down by the jersey that were not called. Officials seem hesitant to call pass interference on a receiver.

I wish we had receivers who would push off more to equalize that.

Chris Jones trying repeatedly to pick up that end of half fumble was comical, even bouncing the ball off an officials head. Dude, just fall on the ball, let Butker kick a FG. That play was a likely 3 point cost.

The officials struggled a bit. On consecutive plays Kelce was abused as the ball was coming and then Patrick was roughed after whistles had been blown. Why even stop the play there if you are going to let a player tee off on a quarterback.

Overall the refs didn’t do things to really impact the game, but they missed a lot of little things that seemed pretty easy to call.

Summary

All in all, getting a win is still a win. We will have to improve on the defensive side of the ball to stand a chance against Buffalo next week. I’m hoping we chose to rest our defensive starters today knowing this game was winnable without them and that they will be back and healthy next week.

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Shawn Sorter — ArrowheadOne

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