Originally Posted by O.city:
Not last years Alex Smith. That was a top 5ish offense.
I don't think any of us thought we'd get THIS.
Then shame on them. The ONLY thing lacking in last year's offense was the willingness to stretch the field. If nobody saw an improvement coming, they're idiots. Plain and simple. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
Then shame on them. The ONLY thing lacking in last year's offense was the willingness to stretch the field. If nobody saw an improvement coming, they're idiots. Plain and simple.
They stretched it enough last year.
Come on man. They should have seen 5000 yards and 50 tds coming? That's pretty crazy.
Improvement, sure.
But they still had a QB that had never started before in the NFL. [Reply]
Originally Posted by O.city:
They stretched it enough last year.
Come on man. They should have seen 5000 yards and 50 tds coming? That's pretty crazy.
Improvement, sure.
But they still had a QB that had never started before in the NFL.
If they saw improvement coming then why load up to stop the run? I'm not suggesting they should have expected THIS but if they expected even modest improvement over last year, it's obvious they were going to score a lot of points. Their draft made ZERO sense, it's almost like they thought Alex was coming back. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
Then shame on them. The ONLY thing lacking in last year's offense was the willingness to stretch the field. If nobody saw an improvement coming, they're idiots. Plain and simple.
You saw an offense coming who's worst day was better than a top 5 teams average? That would put up 11 more PPG than a top 5 unit with a first year starter?
Nobody thought Mahomes would be this great in his 1st year starting. They may say it out of homerism because they WANTED him to be great. A lot of people thought Mahomes would be good but have too many turnovers in his 1st season. His 2nd season it where people thought he might really turn it on. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
Then shame on them. The ONLY thing lacking in last year's offense was the willingness to stretch the field. If nobody saw an improvement coming, they're idiots. Plain and simple.
So I guess you are looking forward to cashing that betting slip in at the end of the season. You know, the one that had Mahomes winning the MVP with odds of 66-1...
At best, most expected more touchdowns, but with a whole lot of turnovers. That's doesn't me we didn't hope for it, be realisticly, no one expected this... [Reply]
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
You saw an offense coming who's worst day was better than a top 5 teams average? That would put up 11 more PPG than a top 5 unit with a first year starter?
Nobody saw this coming...
I never said anybody should have seen THIS coming. I'm saying they should have expected a different dynamic, and possibly modest improvement, just by the willingness to stretch the field.
Unless they thought the offense was going to drop off DRAMATICALLY, back to pre-2017 numbers, the approach to the offseason makes no sense. Quite frankly, even if THIS season caught them off guard, there's still the rest of Patrick Mahomes career to think of - surely they didn't think the next 4-5 years are going to be like the Alex years. Drafting Speaks in the 2nd round just doesn't make sense. I'm not sure it will ever make sense. [Reply]
Originally Posted by IowaHawkeyeChief:
So I guess you are looking forward to cashing that betting slip in at the end of the season. You know, the one that had Mahomes winning the MVP with odds of 66-1...
At best, most expected more touchdowns, but with a whole lot of turnovers. That's doesn't me we didn't hope for it, be realisticly, no one expected this...
Originally Posted by JakeF:
Nobody thought Mahomes would be this great in his 1st year starting. They may say it out of homerism because they WANTED him to be great. A lot of people thought Mahomes would be good but have too many turnovers in his 1st season. His 2nd season it where people thought he might really turn it on.
You guys are completely missing the point.
I freaking KNOW nobody expected Mahomes to turn in an historic season. I'm not suggesting and have never suggested that the staff should have been been prepared for this season exactly as it has played out. [Reply]
Originally Posted by htismaqe:
You guys are completely missing the point.
I freaking KNOW nobody expected Mahomes to turn in an historic season. I'm not suggesting and have never suggested that the staff should have been been prepared for this season exactly as it has played out.
You said they should have seen improvement coming. I'm sure they did. I don't really understand the draft either. [Reply]
Here's the irritating part - this whole "It's the same problems, year after year" nonsense is just the dumbest of the dumb.
First off - this is the 2nd year we've had a 'bad' defense. We were annually in the top 10 as a defense prior to 2017 so let's dispense with that particular brand of horseshit out of hand. But more critically, the 'why' has changed according to the detractors.
NOBODY accused Sutton of having a 'complicated scheme' last season. Ever. The bitching about him last year was that his scheme was too simple; too vanilla. People were slamming on him for being a one-trick dinosaur. But then one dumb-ass DB gets signed, talks about how complicated the scheme is, a talking head on the radio repeats it and suddenly the narrative flips 180 degrees for no reason whatsoever. And the funny thing is they were closer to right the first time.
If I have a complaint about scheme here, it's that we do a bad job of disguising our coverages. When the D lines up, you can usually look at the alignment and tell what they're doing. But a funny thing happened when I started to pay attention to it more (odd how that works) - I learned a thing or two.
It stood out most obviously in the Rams game. When the Chiefs tried to disguise their coverages, they ended up caught in the middle almost every time. One play really stood out and it was when Parker gave a Cover 1 look with a Cover 2 call. Parker got down in the box and they showed Murray over the top as a CF shaded over the slot WR (leaving space over the right deep half). It made perfect sense given the amount of 46 they'd played in that game. And it had EXACTLY the effect Sutton intended.
Goff saw a shaded Cover 1 with Murray over the left side of his formation and at the snap he immediately looked to 'beat' the Cover 1 on the wide side of the field. Murray went to the near side in Cover 2 and Parker went flying back to get into deep halves as well on the far side. The problem was that he simply couldn't get there. His job was to get deep, trick Goff into trying to get over top of him and then be there as a robber to pick it off. But he was still trying to get depth as the deep crosser made it into his zone. It was an easy pitch and catch for 20+ yards.
And when you start to really dig into some of these plays while trying to figure something out rather than just see what you wanted to see, you'll notice that you're wrong a lot. I damn sure was - I thought we had communication problems. We don't have them very often at all - we have simple execution issues. Sutton called a great play, the parties involved knew what they were to be doing and had Parker been able to execute, he would've been in a great spot for a pick. But he didn't. Because he couldn't.
And I think that's why we don't disguise our looks very often - we just can't. If we try to show a cover 1 and run a cover 2 - we'll end up in Cover Half and leave a huge hole over the top. So we have to be vanilla because we just lack the physical tools in our defense to pull it off.
Personally, I think Lucas has a shot in that same play so to me, Sutton's not without criticism. He's the guy that keeps putting Parker out there. But it's not because of creativity or scheme. He has a good scheme and he has plenty of tricks up his sleeve. He's just making himself do this with one hand behind his back because he's not willing to put athletes out there that can take advantage of some of the things he's able to dial up.
And in positions where he DOES have those athletes (essentially OLB and DE), he's been able to create havoc with Jones, Bailey, Ford and Houston. Because those are guys with above average physical tool sets. [Reply]
That's kind of what I come back to with him, when he had the horses, the defenses were pretty solid at worst and damn good at best.
Look around the league at the top defenses. Not many guys are making chicken salad out of shit on those elite D"s. The Bears are just stacked, the Cowboys have been building that for a while and the Ravens may be the most sound and physical group of the bunch of em.
It's give and take. You've gotta hit on some picks and get some luck to be that way on both sides of the ball. We just haven't had that [Reply]
Originally Posted by Reerun_KC:
Our offense was not top 5 in the playoffs.
The playoffs was exactly why we did what we did.
The Titans took the ball at half, threw our defense around the field and simply kept the offense dry-docked. We got four possessions in that second half. The offense didn't do much with them but their margin for error was zero and their rhythm was understandably fucked.
The problem was that a team went out there and did what the Ravens just did - they said "fuck this, we're just going to run it every time" and proceeded to fish our D and keep the O off the field.
For the 2nd half of that Ravens game, everything looked identical. Our offense went flat and our Defense got shoved around too much. Hell, we even got the obligatory FG miss in there. The difference is that our defense got 3 stops on Sunday. It wasn't good, but it was juuuuust good enough to get us that 4th possession with a chance to tie. Last year's defense didn't get a single stop in that 2nd half and that made all the difference.
The defense saw a virtually identical scenario to last season's playoff debacle and it was just enough better under virtually identical circumstances to keep us in it. And the offense, also clearly better, came up with that 4th quarter drive that Smith and company couldn't come up with last season.
The 'why' of what they did this off-season is easy enough. They were simply unwilling to put themselves in a situation where an opponent could go out there and choke the life out of them. They're not much better at avoiding that, mind you. But they were just better enough to pull off the W.
Was the juice worth the squeeze? Probably not. But you can see why they did what they did and there WERE some gains made. [Reply]