When I say, “One Giant Leap” I’m not saying they need to go take a leap, as in: get out of here. No, there are Kansas City Chiefs players who need to step up and have a good game — as well as a good year — to make sure this team turns things around. The loss to the Ravens may have only been of the one-point variety, but it was a loss nevertheless. So, we’ll need to see discernible progress from these players, and we need to see it now.
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Clyde Edwards-Helaire — CEH
CEH hasn’t been the breakout RB we all had hoped our 1st round pick, 32nd overall, in 2020 would be. From an article by Brad Berreman for FanSided, he offered a list of comparable RBs to CEH when he came out of LSU last year:
- “Lance Zierlein of NFL.com compares Edwards-Helaire to [Devonta] Freeman
- The Draft Network sees Devin Singletary or [Mark] Ingram
- Walter Football sees some Brian Westbrook in Edwards-Helaire
- Mike Tagliere of Fantasy Pros sees a mix of Doug Martin and Ray Rice in Edwards-Helaire
- ESPN’s Matt Bowen is on the bandwagon comparing Edwards-Helaire to Freeman
- Eric Edholm of Yahoo! Sports compares Edwards-Helaire to [Maurice] Jones-Drew and Westbrook, with a mention of LSU running backs coach Kevin Faulk seeing some Barry Sanders in his former pupil”
Devonta Freeman, Mark Ingram, Brian Westbrook (a comparison Andy Reid made), Doug Martin, Ray Rice, Maurice Jones-Drew, Kevin Faulk, and even the esteemed Barry Sanders. Wow, what a list. Maybe it was the expectations that came with those comparisons that’s kept him from excelling this far, but he’s definitely not lived up to those expectations.
There are those who think CEH is already a bust, or a very bad draft pick, at the least:
I’m not one of those naysayers, so let’s take another look at those comps.
So far, in Clyde Edwards-Helaire’s career, he’s played in 15 NFL games and gained 992 yards with a 4.3 average per carry. While CEH’s stats compare favorably with Ray Rice’s — they both had 4.3 YPC averages — the receiving yards CEH has had so far don’t add up to the numbers we would expect: 326 total receiving yards, over 15 games. Although CEH does have better rushing average numbers than Kevin Faulk — 59.5 to 22.4 — it was Faulk’s use in the passing game that made him special as he had more yards receiving, than rushing. Faulk average over 350 yards receiving per year, over ten seasons.
Why single out those two players? Because they were the two on the list of comps that CEH even comes close to, so far. CEH is fortunate to be on a team that doesn’t point fingers, but he still has to prove himself. He says he’s had a great week of practice, now it just needs to translate to the game vs the Chargers. Do I expect he’s going to get better, a giant leap better? Yes. However, until we see it happen, we can’t be counting our chickens.
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Daniel Sorensen — aka: Dirty Dan
Seven (7) years ago, Daniel Sorensen signed as an Undrafted Free Agent out of Brigham Young University. When I looked this up — again — I was rather shocked that it’s been that long ago that Sorensen came to K.C.. However, in thinking back to all the offseasons that I was hoping that the Chiefs would let him go, or replace him, I can see now why it’s been so long. Two years ago, when the Eric Berry saga was coming to an end, you could tell that GM Brett Veach had set out to fix the Safety position and he appeared to have done that, by signing Tyrann Mathieu then drafting Juan Thornhill, in the second round (63rd overall). Throughout the 2019 season the Safety position was in great hands with Mathieu playing at a Pro Bowl level as well as Juan Thornhill made the Pro Football Writer’s of America All Rookie team. Then, in the last game of the 2019 season vs the Chargers Thornhill tore his ACL and missed out on the Chiefs run to Super Bowl glory.
Daniel Sorensen has always been an excellent box Safety, but rarely has been useful in coverage. DC Steve Spagnuolo has continued to stick up for Sorensen even when it appears to fans that Juan Thornhill has been blessed with much greater coverage skills. We can only guess that Sorensen has shown the ability to be in the right place at the right time –> during practices… and that’s the reason he continues to be given more snaps that Thornhill. There is a general perspective among Chiefs fans:
Why all the fuss you ask? Because Sorensen hasn’t been so good at tackling. From Charles Goldman at ChiefsWire:
“If Sorensen continues to play 100% of the defensive snaps and miss tackles at his current rate, he’ll have 76 missed tackles at the end of Week 17. To put that number into context, the defender with the most missed tackles in 2020 had 22 missed tackles.”
Any time you are playing so badly that you could triple the worst defensive performance… ever… it’s a very, very, very bad thing. Since it looks like Steve Spagnuolo is going to continue to make Daniel Sorensen a primary Safety it will be up to Sorensen to make the necessary changes… or this defense is going to continue to have one major hole in their bucket.
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Ben Niemann, LB
With Willie Gay Jr. sitting out this game because he’s on the IR, Ben Niemann had 48 snaps, or played on 69% of the Chiefs defensive plays. There’s plenty of angst out there in Chiefs Kingdom about Niemann’s play, much like Sorensen’s:
The angst goes on…
On that particular play, I can see the hole that Gay would likely have jumped into to stop that first down run. But… the Niemann angst doesn’t stop there:
While some are frustrated with the play of Ben Niemann and Daniel Sorensen, they also think it’s the responsibility of Brett Veach for bringing them back each year:
I’m not so much into the doom-and-gloom of the roster, and I also think the reason Veach brings certain players back year after year is because of the feedback he gets from his coaches.
Three years ago, in 2018, Niemann was a UDFA signee by the Chiefs after playing his college ball at Iowa. He also has four (4) missed tackles this year and if you extend that out over a 17 game schedule, he’d have 34 missed tackles this year (or 12 more than the NFL defender who had the most missed tackles in 2020). Niemann is a lot like Sorensen, same height, only 25 more pounds. Would he be a good 4th LB coming off the bench or in rotation? Probably, and that’s the role I would limit him to in the future.
Unless the Chiefs coaches can get more out of these three players, they may end up hanging by a thread and a one-point loss again soon. It may not be this week, but if I’m an NFL offensive coordinator, I’d be planning on attacking both Daniel Sorensen and Ben Niemann… and if I can see that weakness in this team, they surely can.
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Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne
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