Let’s Talk Up Phillip Gaines

You may have heard that the Kansas City Chiefs lost their starting right cornerback, Sean Smith, to free agency when he signed with their long time rival, the Oakland Raiders. That’s sad, and now the Chiefs have no one to play left cornerback for them this season. Oh wait… Phillip Gaines you say? Well, let’s talk up Phillip Gaines.

That’s right, the Chiefs will have third year speedster Phillip Gaines holding down the fort at right cornerback this year. There are fans, with oceans of nocuous notions, who are acting as if the Chiefs will have no one to replace Sean Smith in 2016. Folks need to know that K.C. may be better off with Gaines starting this season. Here’s why.

Listen to Phillip Gaines talk about his offseason:

“I’m running full speed. I’m cutting pretty good… there’s always pressure to perform but, that’s what makes players the players they are. When the pressure’s the highest, that’s when you make plays…. As a player, you want that pressure.”

That was April 16. There’s been a draft… OTA’s… and minicamp since then too.

Gaines was making great progress when he got hurt. There’s no reason to believe he’ll be less of a player now but fans are treating him like a pariah.  For the record, Phillip Gaines suffered a ruptured ACL last September as the result of a non-contact injury and he’s already fully recovered from that injury.

While many are questioning whether Gaines is injury prone, I’m not sure how that started. In January, Pete Sweeney, Chiefs Reporter at Chiefs.com, wrote a piece called, “CB Phillip Gaines Made a Name for Himself in 2014” in which he quoted coach Dave Toub on Gaines play,

“He’s a three-phase starter for us and he’s our number one gunner right now. He’s been making a lot of plays out there. They’ve been singling him up. I told him, ‘Get ready, they’re going to probably start doubling you now.’ But the last two weeks he made some big plays covering those bomb kicks that Colquitt’s been giving us.”

Sweeney also spoke with John Dorsey who said of Gaines, “He’s a really good athlete.”

For those of you who have the “Trust in Dorsey” gene activated in your physiology… but are doubting Dorsey when it comes to Phillip Gaines… Stephen Hawking may be wondering why your anti-quarks are so negative?

For some reason, Phillip Gaines has become the Rodney Dangerfield of the Chiefs defense. If you aren’t old enough to remember this comedian, his tag line was, “I don’t get no respect.” And… then he’d tell why. Like… “I don’t get no respect… my mother never breast fed me, she told me that she only liked me as a friend.”

Anyway… for some reason Phillip Gaines is getting no respect… like Rodney. Well, sort of.

Some are questioning whether or not Gaines can come back from his ACL injury. As if no one has ever done that before. Here are some defensive backs who have come back from an ACL: CB Darrelle Revis has come back from an ACL and played at a Pro Bowl level. So has the Broncos CB Chris Harris. I hope you haven’t forgotten Eric Berry’s ACL brought on by Stevie Johnson who took him out at the knees. Tyrann Mathieu also came back strong after an ACL.

There’s also Jamaal Charles (twice), Ray McDonald, Geno Atkins and Von Miller, to name a few players across the league who’ve come back and played great after an ACL injury.

Perhaps it’s been too long for fans who have forgotten that 6-foot-1 Phillip Gaines ran a 4.31- 40 yard dash coming out of college. In fact, he also ran a 4.21 but that didn’t stick as his official time. By comparison, 6-foot-3 Sean Smith, who is 3 years older, ran a 4.47- 40 with a 4.37 personal best. Gaines has better recovery-speed and has the height to handle the larger receivers the Chiefs will face as well.

Also, think back over the past four years and ask yourself if you recall hearing general manager John Dorsey calling anyone, “A really good athlete?”

For all we know, Phillip Gaines is a Pro Bowl player waiting to happen. Sure, we all want to see, and know, for sure if he can play a whole season at corner as a starter and not get hurt. Don’t forget, he’s already had eight starts, a half season’s worth, and his play as a gunner has been nothing short of sensational.

Maybe it’s just that some fans think… if a player hasn’t shown his worth after two years… he must be a bust.

You know, I think part of it is that we live in an era where people are so dang impatient. Why wouldn’t they be. With technology at the ready, 24-7-365 and up everyone’s under-panties… the idea that we can’t… won’t… or don’t… know right away that a player is a star, even before they are a star… is unacceptable.

Just think about it. When is the last time you heard of a press conference being scheduled to announce a big whatever… before you already heard it reported what the big whatever announcement was going to be?

Phillip Gaines has caught the brunt of such a misfit media maddening mindset… that it could drive a person to drink (not me… sorry, I don’t drink… but it could, if I would). Sean out… Phillip in… 25 years ago we’d all be shrieking for gladness and saying, “Easy come… easy go, Gaines and Peters will rock for years.”

So, when Gaines started 8 games in 2014, was he any good? Or are we just sitting here with wishful thinking and hoping that he “might be good?”

Pro Football Focus rated all corners, with 200 snaps or more, for their “Yards per Cover Snap.” This rating is explained like this,

“YPCS measures the yardage conceded when a player is in primary coverage, on a per snap basis. It lets us move a little closer to measuring just how shutdown a corner is.”

What K.C. fans will be interested in is that Phillip Gaines finished 13th out of all corners that year with 200 or more snaps while Sean Smith finished 14th on a list of corners with 500 or more snaps. Sean Smith finished with a 1.01 YPCS and Phillip Gaines finished with a 0.96 YPCS. The lower the number, the better a cover corner is. You could argue that the more snaps, the truer the results, however, based on what we know, Phillip Gaines is a very good corner and likely in the Sean Smith stratosphere of cover corners. Who knows, maybe Gaines is even higher in the mesosphere!

So, why isn’t everyone crazy excited about Phillip Gaines and the future of the Kansas City Chiefs defensive backfield?

I hope it’s not some kind of hold over negative resentment because Gaines had two marijuana offenses in college. The Chiefs have enough of those guys scattered across the roster that something like that shouldn’t hold people back from loving this guy.

Speaking of college, Gaines played man-coverage 80% of the time at Rice. I don’t even think K.C. plays man-coverage 80% of the time so it’s not like Gaines had to develop that skill once he came here. In other words, Phillip Gaines has lots of experience playing in the kinds of coverage schemes that the Chiefs defensive coordinator Bob Sutton prefers and loves to employ.

I can hear fans now… “IF… HE DOESN’T GET HURT”… then he should be alright.

Well, you can say that about any player now can’t you?

Part of the problem with the public’s current perception of Phillip Gaines is that he’s a quiet guy which he admitted recently.

I’m excited to see what Phillips Gaines can do this year. After all, in college he once led the nation in pass-breakups. Who knows… maybe he’ll be so good that other NFL teams will start throwing at Marcus Peters again. Wouldn’t that be cooler than shiitake mushrooms?

In an interview piece by Reid Ferrin for KCChiefs.com, when Phillip Gaines was first drafted by the Chiefs, he was asked, “How do you go through a daily routine of becoming a better player?” to which Gaines responded,

“Trust me, whatever the coaches tell me, I’ll do that and more. If they may tell me to do this and be here and there in practice, I’ll do that and then, I’ll go home and look at film. I will think about it the whole day. I love football with all my heart. I love football. Whatever they tell me to do, I’ll go above and beyond that. It doesn’t matter to me, because I’m pretty much a perfectionist. Like I said, whatever they tell me to do, I’m going to work on my craft as hard as I can and with the coaches up there and the defense they run, I can’t wait to get up there and listen to what they tell me to do, soak it up like a sponge and move forward.”

It’s not that Phillip Gaines is only good in coverage… he’s also known for laying a lick on opposing players.

Let us remember who Phillip Gaines really is…

“Lest we forget — lest we forget” *

* From “Recessional” (a poem by Rudyard Kipling).

What say ye fans of the Chiefs? Is Phillip Gaines worthy of your benefit of the doubt?