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Chiefs Soft Take: Excuses, Excuses
Last week, I gave the Chiefs some constructive criticism after a hard fought win (as if they listen to me). This week, I’m here to offer some perspective on a tough loss. As fans, we develop expectations, and given the history of Andy Reid and his offense, those expectations are perfectly reasonable. When we see such an abysmal performance, the phrase that immediately jumps to mind is: “no excuse”. Certainly, if Chiefs were as unprepared as they seemed to be for a game against a tough opponent that would be concerning, but I don’t think that’s the case. I believe that a series of evens that flew under the radar, conspired to greatly diminish the effectiveness of the Chiefs’ offense. Perhaps these are nothing more than excuses, but I will let you be the judge of that.
LDT and Parker Ehinger: Take two starters out from any position group and how confident do you feel in this team? Suppose we lose Gaines and Nelson, Conely and Wilson or Bailey and Howard? Such losses would cause us considerable concern, yet, because the offensive line draws less attention than any other position group we didn’t worry. To understand just how tough the loss of these two was for the Chiefs, there are a couple of things you have to understand. First of all, Chiefs primarily run what is called a Zone Blocking System. What this means, is that players aren’t limited to blocking the players directly in front of them. Rather, each play has it’s own blocking scheme which can involve players pulling (though this was originally more common in power blocking), chips, double teams and a variety of shifts and motions. Here’s what Chris Brown says about the ZBS in The Essential Smart Football:
“Gibb’s style of zone blocking requires total commitment by every offensive player- linemen must be perfect technicians, not just fat guys who push others around; runners must make reads and make one-cut-and-go rather than juke and tap dance like the next Barry Sanders and QBs and WRs can’t treat runs as breaks because they are expected to execute assignments and make blocks.”
When you can keep the same personnel on the field the ZBS works great. When you can’t your team becomes vulnerable to stunts, twists and leaving gaps for LBs to penetrate into the backfield on runs. Sound familiar?
The second thing to understand about the loss of these two relates to the NFL work week. When a team plays on Sunday, they review tape on Monday. Players have Tuesday off while coaches and advance scouts prepare the game plan. Wednesday, teams install the first and second down plays. Chiefs knew Monday that LDT would not be able to play, so they inserted their swing guard in at RG: Zach Fulton. During practice on Wednesday, we’re not sure when, Parker Ehinger got a concussion. Assuming it was at least halfway through practice, this meant that Zach Fulton practiced half the 1st or 2nd down plays at the wrong position; since Chiefs then switched him to LG and Jah Reid to RG. This not only hurt Fulton’s ability to prepare, but it also messed up the game plan. Ehinger is a mobile lineman who’s good in pass pro, but lacks strength. Fulton is the exact opposite. He’s stout, strong, slow, but a bit of a mauler in the run game. At that point, it was too late to drastically alter Chiefs complicated blocking system, but it was put in place with very different personnel in mind. It’s also worth noting that Jah Reid spent very little time at G in preseason or last year and sprained his ankle during the game, but kept playing. These factors led to poor protection for Alex Smith and, I would guess, also hurt Fisher and Schwartz who could no longer be confident in the players beside them. Just not enough time to get on the same page. Thursday and Friday are reserved for 3rd down and special packages. Friday practices are also without pads and essentially useless to the Oline. Saturday’s practice is only 45 minutes long and without pads. It’s usually a pretty relaxed affair with minor corrections to the previous day’s mistakes. This leaves very little time to go back over plays that had already been installed. The NFLPA restrictions on practice time are one of several reasons often given for the overall lack of quality linemen in the game today.
Mourning Maclin: Football players are viewed as super-human. In many ways, both physically and mentally, they are, but we sometimes forget that, emotionally, they’re just like the rest of us. If Maclin looked out of sorts on Sunday, it’s probably because he was. Maclin’s best friend, Isaiah Mares died last week. It’s likely the reason Maclin took a personal day on Thursday. Mares was about Maclin’s age. To lose such a close friend, especially at such a young age, would immobilize most of us. If Maclin had some focus drops because of a heavy heart on Sunday, no one can really blame him. If it’s something you do, say a prayer for Mares’ friends and family.
Alex Smith’s Elbow: In case you missed it. Smith had a bump on his elbow the size of a golf ball after the game against the Chargers. Reid downplayed it, but you can’t help but wonder if his accuracy was a bit affected. I banged my elbow hard on a floor jack one time and it hurt for quite a while. I didn’t even have that much swelling.
Poor Officiating: No list of excuses is ever complete without blaming the refs. Sure the offense was still awful, but Texans only TD came on a completely bogus PI that should have been an obvious OPI (Offensive Pass Interference). Further, refs robbed Tyreek Hill of a terrific touchdown. If I didn’t know better, I would say Goodell personally told the refs to keep Hill from getting any TDs because of Hill’s past. Not only was the flag thrown by a ref 20 yards down-field of the block, it was also thrown a fair bit after the block and, to add fuel to the fires of conspiracy, the number of the offending player was never announced. Andy Reid is rarely one to make comments about bad calls, and even he said that the Texans’ player flopped. Oh yeah, and wagging your finger isn’t taunting. Worst call I’ve EVER seen. The NFL’s freaking promo for the game had JJ Watt doing the finger wag. Get that weak sauce out here! Side note, I don’t ever want to see someone trying to change Marcus Peters. You know what, it’s nice as a fan to not be the only one pissed off when things go poorly. If Chiefs had a guy with Peters attitude on offense, maybe Chiefs could have turned things around last week.
How legitimate are these excuses? Well, we should find out this week. Jets are a very similar team to the Texans. Tough defense, formidable offensive weapons with an average QB, and a really good run game. Chiefs’ performance on Sunday should tell us a lot about how valid these excuses are.
Bonus Excuse: Albert Wilson is a sorry excuse for a player and I won’t be making excuses for him any more. Reid has many fine qualities, but his loyalty is sometimes problematic. In the past we saw him start McGlynn long after we knew he was garbage. Reid needs to learn from his mistakes and ax the dead weight before it’s too late.
There’s your mini harsh take.