Dee Ford Will Be the Key to Chiefs Defense

If that headline isn’t enough to make you go “what the hell?” I don’t know what is.

With perennial starting linebacker Justin Houston starting the season on the PUP list, essentially IR for the preseason, former first-round pick Dee Ford is the likely candidate to get the nod to start the season early on.

In case you have forgotten, Houston injured his knee in the week 12 tilt against the Buffalo Bills and never truly came back from the injury. After the completion of the season, it was discovered that Houston’s ACL had received damage and was not working as it was supposed to. There was no tear to the ligament, but surgery was required nonetheless. An offseason ACL surgery, regardless of a non-tear, means a lot of rehab, a program Houston finds himself in now.

That brings us to the infamous “Five-Oh” being replaced by the lesser known “Five-Five.” Let me start by saying that I’m not a Dee Ford hater. I’m not a huge fan of his by any means, but I’m a firm believer in allowing a player to have enough snaps to prove his worth or non-worth instead of judging him solely on spot reps and garbage time play.

Because so many people want to compare Ford to Houston, I think it’s only fair to see what each has done with the same amount of starts. While Houston was a day-one starter after being drafted in the third round of the 2011 NFL draft, he was less than stellar out of the gate. Houston only drew the start three times in the Chiefs’ first five games of the 2011 season, bringing the franchise to the Bye Week. In those three starts, Houston only managed to garner seven tackles and one pass defensed. There was no “Sack-City” in those days and the term “puff-puff pass rush” was just the thing of dreams in a pot-smoking podcaster’s basement.

If you turn your sights to Ford, you see that he took much better advantage of his starts when they finally came due to injury to Houston. Ford started the final five games of the 2015 season because of the aforementioned injury to Houston. Though he had some insignificant playing time previously, during those five starts, he racked up 14 solo tackles and four sacks, including a masterful three-sack performance against the San Diego Chargers in the second start of his career. For comparison sake, it took Houston until his sixth start to pull a “hat trick” on defense.

What does any of this mean? Honestly, I have no clue. Houston and Ford and two completely different players. Houston is a big-bodied defender who uses strength and leverage to get to the quarterback at a Chiefs’ record-holding pace. Ford uses speed and a wicked “first step” to get past unsuspecting offensive linemen. How this translates to performance on the field in a sustained manner, time will only tell. But I do know one thing for absolute certain: If Ford is truly the bust that many have touted him to be, the Chiefs defense is in some significant trouble in the early part of the season.

Either way, we won’t have to wait long to find out, as kickoff Sunday is only seven short weeks away.