Laddie Morse
Happy New Year every one! We’ve all been waiting for this time of year to come and deliver us a new Super Bowl Champion. However, there is unfinished business to be taken care of in the form of two AFC West rivals and two very broken teams. While I won’t get into the Chiefs last game versus the Raiders, some of the nearly identical problem face them as the Broncos in Denver. Before we get into that, let’s take a look at what DC Steve Spagnuolo — Spags — did with his coverage last when he had his best DB, L’Jarius Sneed mirroring WR DK Metcalf.
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As a long time Chiefs fan, I’ve often wondered why the DC didn’t use his best DB to mirror the opponent’s best Wideout. Well, that’s exactly what Spags did against the Seattle Seahawks last Sunday… and for good reason. First of all, Spags said it partly had to do with their best WR being out with an injury, Tyler Lockett. With Locket being sidelined, that meant that only DK Metcalf would pose a real threat to the Chiefs DBs and if Metcalf went unchecked, because most of the other Chiefs DBs are rookies, then K.C. would be in jeopardy of losing that game.
I doubt Spags was inferring at all that his rookie DBs were not capable of covering Metcalf, but since he was their only real threat… why not take him away, if possible. As it turned out, Metcalf led all receivers with 7 catches for 81 yards.
Ron Kopp of ArrowheadPride had a great article this week called, “Chiefs’ defense boosted to win by trusting L’Jarius Sneed on D.K. Metcalf” in which he quoted HC Andy Reid as saying:
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“I thought overall our defense had just a great day. Some of those young guys — 21, 6, 35 — those guys played their tails off. [Linebacker Nick] Bolton had another big day with 17 tackles. The defensive line was extraordinary. I know it was an emotional game for Frank Clark, having played there… he did a nice job.”
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Reid went on to add this specifically about Sneed:
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“That was the scheme that Spags had set up going in. I thought he did a nice job; [Metcalf is] a good football player there. Sneed is a good football player too, so matching them up was a smart thing by Spags. I thought our coaches did have a good game plan together. My hat goes off to them.”
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As I’ve ofen wondered why the Chiefs don’t have their best CBs covering the other team’s best WR, we now know that if Spags has a chance to do that again in the coming weeks, if pull the trigger.
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“Oh we got Trouble, right here in River City, with a capital T and that rhymes with P and that stands for pool.” Well, Denver may not be a river city, but they indeed have got Trouble… with a capital T… which had nothing to do with pool. Back in March of this year, the Seahawks traded Russell Wilson and a 4th-round pick to the Denver Broncos in exchange for… 2 – 1st-round picks, 2 – 2nd-round picks, a 5th-round pick, and also sent QB Drew Lock, DL Shelby Harris, and TE Noah Fant to the NW. The problem for the Broncos is… Wilson lost his ability to play at a high level — IOW, you can delete the elite from his resume — and while the Seahawks may have already noticed his decline, they made the right trade at the right time for him, and should end up reaping the rewards of that trade for years to come.
On the flip side, the Broncos are so screwed up now that they may end up as the lowest man on the AFC West totem pole for the next 5-to-10 years. While they made the trade back in March, they finalized a new contract for him on September 1st for five-years and $245 million. As David Bell so succinctly put it just yesterday in his article called: “Chiefs: Who They Are in the Trenches“…
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“This week, the Chiefs need to take care of business at Arrowhead Stadium and notch up their 13th win of the season vs. a team that appears to have followed the Texans into the quagmire of bad decisions –> the Denver Broncos.”
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David has kept us abreast of the Houston Texans failures of the past few years and while I don’t wish those failures on anyone, the Broncos are headed down a sad, sad, path with Russell Wilson. The biggest problem is Wilson himself. He has a big head and refuses to change or adapt to the situations in Denver. His teammates feel estranged from him and no new Head Coaching hire is going to change any of that, even if they’re capable of it. I listened to a Broncos Podcast recently, and the two gentlemen were convinced that the best path for the team was to release Wilson, and for the Broncos to take the hit financially. They don’t believe the Broncos will have the money to go out and sign someone like Jimmy Garoppolo but they believe that he is a better option than Russell Wilson.
If you ask yourself the question: why did Denver just fire their head coach? The answer is: Russell Wilson. Nathaniel Hackett may have been a bad hire as a Head Coach in the first place, but who among all the coaches you know — whether they have a job right now or not — would want to go to Denver to try and fix a bad, bad situation, knowing that they can’t? While the internet has gone crazy trolling Russell Wilson, I’m trying to look at their situations realistically, and I don’t see a way out… except for him to retire, and as I said recently, “That ain’t gonna happen.”
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The Buffalo Bills have to go to Cincinnati to play the Bengals on Monday Night Football this weekend. The Bills are tied with the Chiefs right now in the AFC so since they’ve already beaten K.C. they have the advantage and consequently, the Bye Week belongs to them… for now. After this coming Monday night, they may not be the case. However, giving the Bengals any room to crow is not what Chiefs Kingdom wants to hear either. If the Bengals beat the Bills and … if the Chiefs lose one of their remaining two games… the Bengals will get the first round playoff Bye and all post season games will go through Cincinnati. And who wants to see that happen? No one I know. So, K.C. needs to take care of their own business this weekend, to make sure they are putting themselves in the right position for the coming playoffs.
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While I still think K.C. wins out, I’m not so sure that the Bills will be able to take care of their won business in Cincinnati.
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I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, life moves pretty fast.
If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you
could miss it.” – from “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”
Now, what I have said before — and I believe I’m just parroting Patrick Mahomes here — is that the MVP trophy is not what you play for… you play to win the Lombardi Trophy. A lot is being made of the MVP, which Patrick Mahomes will in all likelihood win this year — again — but it’s the Super Bowl trophy that we really want to see Mahomes bring home. Yes, we have the good fortune of being able to watch the best QB on the planet ply his trade every week, but Chiefs Kingdom needs to recognize that if Patrick Mahomes wins another MVP trophy, it will matter little in the grand scheme of things if they don’t win the Super Bowl … and especially in terms of football history. We all know the Cowboys won three Championships in the early 1990s… but can you name even one of the MVP recipients from that time period? No? Me either.
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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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