Kansas City Chiefs Laddie Morse

The Chiefs Must Make the Secondary Primary

LadnerMorse February 20, 2019 No Comments

 

 

 

The Chiefs Must Make the Secondary Primary

 

by Laddie Morse | February 20, 2019

 

 

Being the second son of a second son comes with it’s fair share of sacrifices. I always had to sleep in the lower bunk growing up and hand me down jeans were a way of life. Oh, I’m not complaining, I had it good… comparatively. But being second isn’t always a good thing. Not when you’re talking about being second in line for a promotion… or when you’re been waiting in the DMV line for an hour and a half and as soon as you reach the counter the man says, “Wait a second,” then gets up and leaves on a break. It’s also not good to be the first or second worst secondary in the league, especially if your GM doesn’t see it. Not that this is the case with the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs General Manager… we don’t know yet for sure but… now the Chiefs must make the secondary primary.

 

In recent years, head coach Andy Reid has said of defensive backs, “You can never have enough of those guys.” That’s one way to approach the problem of not having enough good DBs… just throw as many of them at the wall as you can and see what, or who, sticks. It appears the Chiefs took that approach to the defensive backs position last year.

 

The secondary was the primary weakness in 2018… at least that’s the premise for this piece. If you ask some others, they might say the Defensive Line was/is the primary weakness. However, if you think about all the changes to the secondary last year, it makes sense that Veach is thinking about making as many moves this year… only it’ll be a much higher priority: Job One… or it should be. At least we hope so.

 

Here a look at what the Chiefs did last year with the defensive backfield:

  1. Darrelle Revis released
  2. Marcus Peters traded
  3. Kendall Fuller traded for
  4. Terrance Mitchell allowed to walk
  5. Will Redmond signed and released
  6. Keith Reaser signed and released
  7. Drafted Armani Watts
  8. Ron Parker released, re-signed, released again
  9. Traded for Kenneth Acker
  10. Signed then cut David Amerson
  11. Josh Shaw, catch and release
  12. Signed Orlando Scandrick, started and benched
  13. Jordan Lucas was traded for and looks hopeful
  14. Charvarius Ward was traded for and will be a starter
  15. Leon McQuay was released then signed to the practice squad
  16. Arrion Springs was released then signed to the practice squad
  17. D’Montre Wade was released then signed to the practice squad

 

 

There were other non-names — or you could call them camp bodies —  who came and went in 2018 who were hopefuls too:

  1. Ashton Lampkins
  2. Malik Reaves
  3. Makinton Dorleant
  4. Step Durham
  5. Jordan Sterns

 

 

The point of that is really to say that although the Chiefs made more than 20 moves in the defensive backfield in 2018, they only came away with two keepers: Kendall Fuller and Charvarius Ward. One corner — a slot corner — and one corner who would make a good #2 CB.

 

 

 

Armani Watts may be a keeper at the Safety position but his injury short circuited his progress. Eric Berry may be the Safety he was two years ago but it’s a day-to-day question. Tremon Smith may be a player who can do more than return kickoffs but we’ll have to see. The Chiefs have spent this draft capital on the secondary:

 

 

  • pick #124, Armani Watts and a #196, Tremon Smith, in 2018
  • pick #218, Leon McQuay, a Safety, in 2017
  • pick #74 on CB KeiVarae Russell, pick #106 on Safety Eric Murray and pick #178 on CB D.J. White in 2016
  • pick #18 in Marcus Peters in 2015
  • pick #87 on Phillip Gaines in 2014
  • pick #134 on Sanders Commings in 2013

 

 

 

* Only the 4 players underlined are still with the team.

 

 

 

That’s the totality of DBs drafted by the Chiefs in the Andy Reid era and none of them are starters (note: Eric Murray has started 11 games in his 3 years with the Chiefs, due to injuries of other Safeties).

 

 

 

Teams have to find players who will be good who haven’t been first round picks… that obvious. Any championship team is made up of players from all over the draft board, as well as UDFAs, plus players who have been traded for. Both Ward and Fuller are “traded for” players. It’s time the Chiefs make the secondary primary by drafting one or two of these players high in the draft. It’s time for that investment.

 

I can hear the naysayers now, “But we had our CB of the future in Marcus Peters and the Chiefs traded him away.” Well, your CB of the future didn’t have such a great year and finished with 3 INTs and 8 passes defensed. In his first three years in the league (with Kansas City) he averaged 6.5 INTs per year and 18.3 PDs so maybe he was good in the Chiefs scheme but he certainly wasn’t performing at a Pro Bowl level this year, although he did improve when Aquib Talib returned later in the season.

 

That’s water under the bridge now. Now, the Chiefs need to go for a defensive back. Lyle Graversen wrote a great little piece on Monday at ArrowheadAddict called, “The Kansas City Chiefs Don’t Need to do Much in Free Agency” in which he states,

 

“My guess is that in the coming week we will find out that the Chiefs are using the franchise tag on Dee Ford. That will leave cornerback as the single biggest spot to fill on the team. After that, the Chiefs will just need to figure out what they are doing with their current group of safeties. If they feel they can count on Berry for next year I wouldn’t anticipate a big move there.”

 

We’ve heard all sorts of suggestions about trading Dee Ford or Justin Houston but that just puts the defense back in a hole it doesn’t need to crawl out of if they can help it… and… they can help it. There are two big bugaboos with this defense and they are hard to ignore: 1) stopping the run, and 2) stopping the pass.  In every mock I’ve done over the past month, all the great defensive linemen are gone baby gone by pick #29. There is a much larger pool of corners in this draft, enough that it appears clear — at this point — that the Chiefs will most likely jump on the best corner they can get early on in the draft.

 

Of course, as Lyle mentions, if Eric Berry is in good shape, the task becomes much simpler and so the path to solving this offseason’s roster improvement puzzle gets much, much easier.

 

Of course, like Paul Pulley has suggested, if there is a way the Chiefs can sign a Safety like Landon Collins, then the puzzle gets simpler and simpler and simpler. Paul also suggests that improving the play at Safety will improve the CB play. That may be true but the Chiefs needs more bodies right now at corner. Period.

 

 

“But wait a minute… what about stopping the run?” Geez, I never claimed I could solve all he Chiefs offseason roster problems in one article. C’Mon man! However, Ryan Wilson as NFL.com says the Chiefs problems are two-fold, that they need both defensive line help and D-back help as well. Then again… DUH! Wilson offers this,

 

“This was a recurring storyline throughout the regular season and it all came to head in the AFC Championship Game, when the Chiefs couldn’t get off the field because they were equally incapable of stopping the run and the pass. The unit ranked 26th overall and was dead last in rush defense. Put another way: Draft a defender and it will help this group.”

Yep, draft a defender. That’s the ticket. The Chiefs also have a new DB coach in Sam Madison. Here’s a look at the crew of Defensive coaches for the Chiefs. Notice that Britt Reid appears to have a job under Steve Spagnuolo and is the only hold over:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I will likely be ecstatic with any defender the Chiefs choose in April, but at this point I believe they need to solve their defensive backfield problems first and foremost. Afterall, it’s a passing league now. Mostly. Right?

 

 

 

 

Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne

 

 

 

 

 

 

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