Chiefs Week One: Offensive Line Vignettes

From the first outing of the 2021 season, I was struck by several things that I want to list before I dig into thoughts about the performance of the Kansas City Chiefs “brand spankin’ new” Offensive Line. I came away with several impressions that haven’t changed since the game ended, these are my thoughts about how things unfolded and where deficiencies existed. I wanted to cover them briefly before getting to the two main Vignettes of the article.

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Some Areas of Concern from Week One

1. The Chiefs DL did not perform well for a full 60 minutes of the game.
2. The Linebacker Crew failed to address themselves to stopping the run — or at least were not a factor versus the Browns in the first half specifically. The Chiefs even used a base 43 set several times throughout the game that was not effective until the 2nd half.
3. I was disappointed with the secondary in the first half.
4. The OL did not exert their will on the opposing defense in the run attack.
5. As a team, I didn’t get the feeling of urgency and energy from the team – It just was not present well into the 3rd Quarter. For the Defensive side of the ball, I observed, was due to the absence of Tyrann Mathieu on defense. I did greatly appreciate the ‘Juan and Only’ stepping up and taking the persona on in the 2nd half.

That list was made worse for most of the first half and the early part of the 3rd Quarter. From about the midway point of quarter 3 and on, the Chiefs had broken through and outscored the Browns 23-7 starting in the 3rd Quarter. They forced errors. The Browns could not sustain perfect execution. Their plan fell apart as did the hopes of the Browns for a big upset.

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Pass Protection

From Patrick Mahomes presser on Monday:

“Yeah, I thought they did a great job… There were times where I drifted to the back just a bit too far and they were kind of getting those guys around the 10-yard area so I had to step up pretty quickly, but we’ll continue to work on that. They’re doing a great job of being firm in the front and kind of edging those guys so I can still be in the pocket. They did a great job today against like you said a really good defensive line.” 

The OL did do some very good things versus the Browns as pointed out by Nick Jacobs:

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I also want to share a particular pass coverage play that typifies the basics of pass protection from the Chiefs/Browns game. Mitch Schwartz shows one single video that captures the Chiefs OL line Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith, and Lucas Niang. It was an exemplary high-quality snap. it tells a bunch about the three rookies who are starting on the front five of the Offensive Line. In Fact, all 5 offensive linemen blocked well on this play. Incidentally, the call for Holding on Joe Thuney on the Chief’s first drive, the one which resulted in the Chiefs settling for Butker’s 3 points was –> “Horsefeathers!”

Having said that, I am aware that there were breakdowns on pass protection by LT Orlando Brown and Lucas Niang, especially evident for Brown. You can write about it and analyze it, but despite a couple of breakdowns, the OT’s played pass protection well. Again, I refer to the Bieniemy/Heck Pocket scheme, and again, I want to give credit to another observer, Matt Lane (KCNS). I need to make sure and cover that with a couple of video pieces where the breakdowns occurred.

As Matt Lane shows in an article for the KCSN called, “Understanding the Chiefs Pass Protection: Tackles Fitting Right In” the Chiefs offensive line pass protection was solid. Patrick Mahomes owned one of his own snaps noting that he caused it by retreating beyond the back end of the pocket. Lane addresses a 10-yard deep pocket and covers the topic well.

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The Chiefs Running Game

In a piece by Charles Goldman called, “Chiefs pleased with offensive line’s performance in debut vs. Browns” he quotes Andy Reid as saying:

“I thought we came off and had bodies on bodies. I thought we did a pretty good job with that and then I think we just have to coordinate a little bit more with the line and with the running back and how they’re going about their business together. I think that becomes important. The runners can set things up better or the O-Line needs to have a better idea of what the running back’s trying to get done with his part. I’ve got to make sure I get that straightened out as we go. Between Andy Heck and EB (Eric Bieniemy) and Greg (Lewis), I mean that group right there has a pretty good understanding.”

This is a hot topic which really gets me down. One of our most ardent followers observed that he wished the Chiefs to go heavy with the run game and… they did not. To illustrate what I regarded as the most looming problem I would point to the inability of the Chiefs to run the ball between the tackles. They just were turned back time after time, from the beginning of the game, to the end. The frustration occurred simply because the plays were stacked up at the Line of Scrimmage (LoS). Yahoo Sports also commented on CEH getting stacked up by the Browns several times at the LoS.

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Why Did the Inside Run Game Fail?

This is where the game’s play-calling comes into the picture. The failure partially needs to be shouldered by Andy Reid. I watched every play and began to anticipate when the Chiefs would run the football and they did with unerring regularity. If, as a viewer far remote from Arrowhead Stadium, I could anticipate the play-calling by Andy Reid for the ground and pound effort, then how difficult would it be for Kevin Stefani and Joe Woods to make the right defensive call? How difficult would it have been for a player on the field to approach those snaps and be ready to stuff the ballcarrier?

The Browns came to KC with their “A” game. They had a game plan. It was a good plan, but it required a full game of near perfect execution to succeed. They still could not overcome the Chiefs. Seth Keysor penned an article, called, “KC/CLE demonstrated the flaw in the “template” to beat the Chiefs” (subscription needed) about the game plan and that it was essentially doomed for failure due to the need to play flawlessly in order to beat the Chiefs, even when the Chiefs did not play their best football. Seth was right about this. Seth started out by saying:

“The vast majority of the time, teams lining up against the

Kansas City Chiefs need to hope that they beat themselves.”

It didn’t work.

With Stats to Back It Up

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• 73 TOTAL RUSHING YARDS (as compared to 153 for the Browns)
• 43 Rushing Yards, 14 attempts – Clyde Edwards-Helaire (10 of those yards on 1 play up the gut at the 9:50 mark of the 3rd quarter)
• 4 Rushing Yards, 1 attempt – Darrel Williams
• 2 Rushing Yards, 1 attempt – Michael Burton (it was a big first down though)
• 18 Rushing Yards, 5 attempts – Patrick Mahomes
• 3.1 yards per carry for CEH
• 36 passes to 23 runs: a 64% passing rate.

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Nowhere in these stats do I see a huge effort to have the offense assert their will in the run game. Plus, too often, during the game, the result of the attempt was short or nil. Andy Reid said in his Presser that he thought the run game went okay. I think that is a preposterous statement. It did not go well as evidenced by the numbers. Only one running back in week one — Derrick Henry — performed worse than expected, and his team, the Titans, lost to the Arizona Cardinals, 38-to-13:

With our Big Men on the Offensive Line, the Chiefs should have been able to have their way even against a good defense. It was not to be.

A good example of a play where the call was made to run CEH up the middle was the 2nd play of the 2nd drive. Tyreek Hill picked up 8 yards on first down. On 2nd and two saw Clyde stuffed for one yard. On the next play, was the 1-yard up the middle fight for a first down by Mike Burton. It took 2 plays to get 2 yards up the middle. This is to be expected in this type of situation — always tough yards with the defense faced up, expecting these runs. Note: expecting these runs!

If you look at the tape of the game, this is the drive where Andy Reid had Mike Remmers report in as an eligible receiver, the pass went to Remmers. It was stuffed behind the LoS — Reid telegraphed the play on this occasion as well.

At this point, time needs to be taken to go back through each snap of the game and watch what down and result of run game snaps were inside the tackles and jot down the result. I think Andy Reid telegraphed what downs the Chiefs were going to run the ball, giving the side up to the defense. The game results are noted above. You be the judge. As for me? Andy and Eric need to review what they did with the run game and put their thinking hats on because we have men who are capable of exerting their nastiness in run-blocking and the Chiefs playcalling did not put the Linemen in a position to succeed.

This is my one huge critique of this game –> the playcalling by Andy Reid and/or Eric Bieniemy appeared to “telegraph” the run plays to the defense.

When you only use your feature back 14 times in a game, playcalling is “off” in my view and the mix and timing of the plays was “not” a thing of beauty. I write this in the face of my aside caveat — the lack of “energy” in the first half of the game — on both sides of the ball!

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David Bell — ArrowheadOne

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