Chiefs: Rebuilding Confidence and Trust in the Offensive Line

Each off season we all get hyped about the upcoming season. 2021 brings renewed hope for fans and observers, pundits, bloggers, analysts and coaching staff personnel… all. After the failure in Super Bowl LV, suffering a horrid loss to the Buccaneers, it was easy to have a well of disappointment arise, like a 1911 Oil Well Gusher in Oklahoma. It is hope, among Chiefs fanatics, that a few factors address any concerns and worries the public might feel.

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Raising the Bar on the Offensive Line

What Brett Veach accomplished in a couple of months of hard work is amazing. It will pay off when the little ball stops on the roulette wheel and reads: Jackpot. That is what is going to happen and will be revealed about what Veach has done this offseason.

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I am hearing good things about the Chiefs OL and a lot of it is framed by the youth movement. It’s not difficult for me to see that LT Orlando Brown Jr., is also part of that youth movement, as 4 year vet. The old men of the group include Joe Thuney while Kyle Long and/or LDT becomes the designated starter at ROG. We’ll have to wait and see who becomes the Grampy of the group.

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I still see Creed as the starting OC and Lucas Niang at RT. I’m forecasting that both of them will be starters for the Chiefs front five for 2021. Also, in a that projection, I say — a drum roll please — that Trey Smith will end up starting at RG. Which some may see as a big reach. Obviously, veterans Kyle Long and Laurent Duvernay-Tardif will have a leg up on rookie Trey Smith, but he plays the game with extreme violence after the ball is snapped. This, for me, is a sort of re-emergence of what I saw in the value of Brett Veach signing Kelechi Osemele last year. I really loved that signing and it showed high value through week six, when Osemele was injured.

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About Trey Smith? I believe he’s a starting quality Guard straight out of the draft. Author John Buhler wrote a piece for MSN.com about Smith at the time of the draft. Here’s what Buhler said:

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“Despite being an all-conference performer twice in this SEC career, Smith was straight up not having a good time after day two of the 2021 NFL Draft reached its completion. He sent out a very ominous tweet to all the teams who ended up passing on him. Fate would have it that his draft slide would end by the best team who could possibly pick him up drafting him in Kansas City…. I could be totally wrong here, but this feels like the biggest steal of the entire 2021 NFL Draft.”

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The tweet by Smith — referred to by Buhler — speaks to how he felt about his wait into the two hundreds to get selected in the draft. Here’s what he posted.

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Here is what was offered by Offensive Line coach, Andy Heck when asked about Trey Smith:

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“I think that Trey has the [potential to be] a starting guard in his future. How fast will that come? That’s difficult to predict, but he has all the physical and mental tools that you … He loves football, he loves to compete and he’s an extremely physical person – these things jump out at you when you watch the tape. Now, how fast can be learn our system? We’ll see, but he’s certainly off to a good start and he’s working very hard at it.”

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Yesterday, Laddie Morse wrote an article and quoted what Chiefs Hall of Fame Guard, Will Shields, had to say about the OL offseason transition in his interview with Joshua Brisco. Bottom line is: that Shields spoke highly about the upcoming capability of the Chiefs offensive line. You can refer back to that article –> here:

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In the discussion with Brisco, Shields spoke about gelling and getting young guys in to begin that process and reap the benefits soon after as the OL grows together, plus learning the NFL ropes and meshing together as they go. Laddie also wrote about Heck’s appraisal of the OL as a whole, noting his comments of cohesion specifically by September. Andy Heck had high praise for the OL group as a whole, already. When others, talk about “gelling”… they mean that the players grow into working as a unit.

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Continuity, Consistency and Cohesion

I address gelling as the players come together and know each others intricacies of method, play, strengths as well as weaknesses. In my view, that is the practical application of the Three C’s: Continuity, Consistency and Cohesion. This is one of the reasons why I feel the Chiefs should start Trey Smith at RG. We are looking at an offensive line of an upcoming dynasty, which is why I, and now Laddie (acting as Nostradamus in his article on Friday), have predicted the Offensive Line of the Future being comprised as follows:

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Even if I am incorrect in my projection of rookie starters, the veteran additions of: Long, Thuney and Brown each solves a problem that was exposed with the departure of all starting linemen from the 2020 season. Plus, their abject failure as an OL in… The Lost Super Bowl. I have to tell you, as excited as I am about the rookies, I cannot wait to see Orlando Brown, Jr. in action.

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Note: there are 2 lost Super Bowls in the Mahomes era. In 2018 there was a missed opportunity due to a stupid penalty by an OLB. The second was the loss in 2021’s finale to the 2020 season when the Chiefs suffered at the hands of the Buccaneers this past February, largely because the Chiefs offensive line was MIA, and that due to an injury plague.

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Each of the newcomers have very high positives in what they bring to the table, rookies: Niang, Humphrey and Smith. Even if those three young men are not starters, they are the wave of the future. Newly added veterans are extremely important as it stands, no matter what. Specifically: Brown, Thuney and Long.

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It’s not going to hurt my feelings if my 2021 projection is wrong because I have such confidence in the veterans added — by trade or Free Agent signing — and can see the value of breaking rookies into the NFL slowly, giving them time to get their play up to NFL speed. Playing against NFL talent is considerably and consistently a higher level opposition than the players they faced in the NCAA. Call me a dreamer, but there is no way I am not able to see the offensive line as being a huge improvement over that of 2020, even considering the departure of the much beloved Eric Fisher and Mitchell Schwartz.

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No Matter What!

The 2021 outfit, coached by Andy Heck, will become an Offensive Line of stories told around the league in months to come. There it is. That is what we will witness unfolding as the play behind that line is in the hands of a future GOAT: Patrick Mahomes. There is a lot of power that will be deployed due to the improved front five.

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The superior protection afforded by the play of the offensive line will give Patrick Mahomes sufficient time to make plays from the pocket. We’ll see him run an RPO, not flee the pocket. The ground game will improve significantly for Clyde Edwards-Helaire and Darrel Williams and who ever becomes the #3 RB. The plays that feature the RB as a receiver will spring forward.

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No matter which way this falls out, rookies or veterans as starters, you should be confident and believe the Chiefs Offensive Line is going to mistreat their opponents and is going to explode into NFL consciousness very quickly in 2021.

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It may take a little bit of time for the benefit to fully unfold as the linemen mold their game in coordination with their fellow OL, but we should be very confident that it will unfold for us quickly. The Chiefs face a very tough schedule in the first half of the season, let’s hope that it all comes together by September — as Andy Heck believes it will — and it reaps check marks in the win column.

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Next article in this series?

Chiefs: Adding Confidence and Building Trust in the Linebacker Crew

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David Bell — ArrowheadOne

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