Obviously, it still needs work. Not there yet. But, cant you see the improvement? They are maintaining their gaps instead of free lancing. They are not figuring out what to do in pre-snap. No more confusion. They know their job at least.
In today's NFL, they don't hit each other other, tackle in training camp anymore. They play few snaps in the pre-season games. It's a new scheme. Lots of new starters. I see a defense that is taking shape. Go look at the breakdowns of the defense from last year to the first two games. It's telling.
Without a great corner its not going to be a top 10 defense. But, its already made it from one of the worse to the 19th ranked defense in the NFL. Haven't the majority on here said all off season that we just needed a middle of the pack defense to make a Super Bowl?
We are going to have at least a middle of the pack defense. People need to chill. Start panicking at mid-season at least. [Reply]
Xavier Williams is a liability up front too. No push on passing downs and easily manhandled on running plays. Who was supposed to make him expendable during preseason? [Reply]
Originally Posted by BigRedChief:
Obviously, it still needs work. Not there yet. But, cant you see the improvement? They are maintaining their gaps instead of free lancing. They are not figuring out what to do in pre-snap. No more confusion. They know their job at least.
In today's NFL, they don't hit each other other, tackle in training camp anymore. They play few snaps in the pre-season games. It's a new scheme. Lots of new starters. I see a defense that is taking shape. Go look at the breakdowns of the defense from last year to the first two games. It's telling.
Without a great corner its not going to be a top 10 defense. But, its already made it from one of the worse to the 19th ranked defense in the NFL. Haven't the majority on here said all off season that we just needed a middle of the pack defense to make a Super Bowl?
We are going to have at least a middle of the pack defense. People need to chill. Start panicking at mid-season at least.
We are 24th in yards allowed, as we all know is a lot of the game is out of reach garbage yards. We are 14th in pts allowed which is what really matters. Still just 3 weeks into a completely new defensive scheme and half the starting personnel are new. It will continue to improve. [Reply]
They're absolute shit, Brady is going to destroy us, we're not winning anything with this defense because they're just like the last three years worth of defense. /King [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
He also embarassed the shit out of himself on the Jackson TD run. He's not been the force coming downhill that I thought he would be. He's been okay - him and Thornhill are clearly upgrades on what we had.
But I won't get to 'pretty good' yesterday. He was fine. He wasn't appreciably better than our 2nd round rookie. He wasn't all that much better than Sorensen in the limited reps Sorensen got. He wasn't bad, but he wasn't good. He was fine.
He was a lot like defense writ large yesterday - ultimately not bad but didn't come through in some key spots that could've really made that game go a lot differently.
Like I said - so long as damning with faint praise is the best we can do for the two most visible members of the defense, nobody's gonna be too fired up about the D's performance.
Thornhill had a subpar game yesterday. It's pretty obvious he's struggling with processing at game speed. He's just a step slow a lot of times, thinking too much. I don't know if Tyrann is suffering from the same or suffering from thinking he has to do too much because he sees what I see. Either way, he's got to focus on his job and let Thornhill do his. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
I don't even have a giant problem with the Fuller hail mary - that was just bad luck. He was right there in the guys pocket but the WR found the ball first - shit happens.
The Ward play, OTOH, was !@#$ing terrible. It was lazy. He had that ball lined up easily for the pick and rather than attack it and use his body to shield off anyone that might make a play on it, he just seemed to assume that nobody would try. That was a completion born of sheer complacence and stupidity.
The last TD drive was just as prevent as prevent gets.
The defense was okay. It wasn't great but it wasn't bad. That'll play.
And if Mathieu and Clark can't unfuck themselves, it's as good as we're gonna get. And ultimately that's the real answer - why are people down on the defense right now? Because the two most visible components and high-end additions to it have been varying degrees of invisible to ineffective.
And if this is the play we get from them this season, then the ceiling of the defense truly will be 'eh, alright'. If they start stepping up and playing to the level of their paychecks, perhaps people will be a little more laudatory of the D. And frankly, the D will likely be a hell of a lot better if that does happen.
I agree with most of this. The one thing I will offer is that Baltimore looked to be running away from Frank Clark early in the game. Almost all of the RPO reads were away from him and towards forcing the Chiefs to bottle Jackson up to the defensive left. Credit to the other guys for stepping up. [Reply]
It's just fashionable right now to be negative about our defense; and possibly cultural as well. Most of the talking heads aren't impressed with our D, and the fans view the defense through either the lens of the glory days of the '90s or through the disaster of the recent past with Sutton.
None of it is accurate.
The truth is something like this: there is no such thing as a plug and play defense in the NFL. It's reality; not Madden 20.
It takes time to put a unit together, coach them up, and have them perform at a high level. When I say time, I mean at least several months of competition to iron out the rough spots. More than a year to reach something close to peak performance.
We are seeing the defense at the very beginning; think of the unit as a piece of iron ore. Spags is the blacksmith that must first heat and melt the ore, remove the slag, form an ingot/billet, and then forge the sword. That's a lot of steps in which things can go awry and must be fixed or redone before we end up with a finished product.
Also, we have to remember that we don't need and in fact we're not expecting that our defense be a top-5 unit. Or even a top-10 unit. We know that with this offense and Mahomes we don't need anything better than a top-16 unit, and we probably win the SB.
Regardless, it's a complete overreaction to expect that a new DC can put together a completely new defense compiled from mostly completely new players and have them perform to their potential in just 3 WEEKS. It's ridiculous. [Reply]
I know our run defense still needs a lot of work but.......
This defense will be good enough in the playoffs to make a difference. When we need the defense to get off the field, get a 3rd and 9 stop to get the ball back to Mahomes, they will get it done. I’ve seen enough potential from Spag’s schemes. This defense by the end of the year will be good enough for Mahomes to lead us to a Super Bowl. [Reply]
So much negativity in this board about the defense. How were you guys watching the same game as we were? I’d add to Chiefzilla’s post on why we lost .....HOF QB making HOF throws.
Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501:
In order....
Mccoy fumble
Butker missed fg
Andy not having balls on 4th down
