Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
I'm writing this game off as an aberration.
Not only were the Chiefs not prepared for Justin Herbert, Frank Clark, Mike Pennel and Khalen Saunders were all unavailable, so the Chargers smartly attacked the Chiefs running defense. And with Ward unavailable in the secondary and Juan Thornhill clearly not 100%, it was impressive to hold the Chargers, in their new stadium debut, to only 20 points.
Herbert is a big, powerful guy with a great arm and sneaky mobility. There's no doubt that defending him will be a challenge in the coming years but I think the Chiefs will do much better when they have their full compliment of defensive starters available.
Lately, there have been several people here on CP that aren't happy with just a victory and somehow have conflated college football with NFL in terms of scoring, which is utterly asinine. NFL teams are so evenly talented that it usually comes down to one or two plays that make the difference in the outcome and there's absolutely no shame in beating a tough divisional rival by 3 points in their stadium.
I think some of the expectations here have become way out of whack. A win is a win.
Time to move on to Baltimore.
No Breeland either. We're starting a bunch of green DB's back there. Snead had another really good game for a guy that has just been thrown into the deep end to sink or swim. [Reply]
Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla:
That was my exact point yesterday. The Chief held the Chargers to 20 points, and Chief Fan was whining about the defense the entire game. Yes, our linebackers suck. No, holding the Chargers to 20 isn't bad at all.
Originally Posted by Pitt Gorilla:
That was my exact point yesterday. The Chief held the Chargers to 20 points, and Chief Fan was whining about the defense the entire game. Yes, our linebackers suck. No, holding the Chargers to 20 isn't bad at all.
I think the bigger issue is how they looked. It was very Sutton-esque.
We know that level of defense will not work against the best teams in the league when it matters most, even if we have Patrick Mahomes. So seeing that performance probably opened up some old wounds. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
I think the bigger issue is how they looked. It was very Sutton-esque.
We know that level of defense will not work against the best teams in the league when it matters most, even if we have Patrick Mahomes. So seeing that performance probably opened up some old wounds.
Expectations are WAY too high, IMO.
Holding a divisional opponent to 20 points or less, on the road, is fantastic, especially when the defense is missing 4 starters.
Had the offense been more efficient, I doubt many people would be complaining about the final score. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
I think the bigger issue is how they looked. It was very Sutton-esque.
We know that level of defense will not work against the best teams in the league when it matters most, even if we have Patrick Mahomes. So seeing that performance probably opened up some old wounds.
It felt like the Colts and Texans games that we lost last year sort of. I'm not as concerned though. We had Pennel, Okafor, Ward and Breeland out. And Clark was out a big chunk of the game as well. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
Expectations are WAY too high, IMO.
Holding a divisional opponent to 20 points or less, on the road, is fantastic, especially when the defense is missing 4 starters.
Had the offense been more efficient, I doubt many people would be complaining about the final score.
That's always the case though. As a fanbase we just got so used to winning games 17-13 when defense was easier (and what our squad was built around) that it's still kinda in our DNA.
This goes all the way back to the Smith days. Really going back to like 2016 we'd have games where we'd lose to the Bucs or Texans and give up like 19 points and my buddy would always be like "damn defense just CANNOT give up that score in the 4th...."
And I'd just be like "hey man - the Defense gave the offense about 7 shots to actually get something done and win that game..."
But there was no convincing him.
I can remember one time where I really think the D directly murdered the offense's chance to compete - the Titans playoff game. They were so ineffective and so interminably slow in dying that it wrecked any offensive rhythm we had and made any single possession entirely too overpowered.
But typically if you can keep a team below 24 points in today's NFL, you've held serve. It doesn't mean you've been incredible, but you've not been awful. And with this offense, 24 should really be the target mark for the D. Keep the other guys below that and you'll win 80% of the time.
On Sunday the Chiefs D was battered and ugly, but they did that.
Hard to hang much on 'em really. Especially when they held LAC to 3 points in the 2nd half/OT.
Originally Posted by DJ's left nut:
They did their job, IMO.
Considering they were without their best run stopper in Pennel, without Khalen Saunders, without Frank Clark and without Charvarious Ward, I think their defensive performance was an A-.
Comparing yesterday performance to Sutton's 2018 defense is ridiculous. Those guys couldn't stop anyone when they had their full compliment of starters, let alone when missing four key players.
Out of the 15 games played this week, the only Road teams that held their opposition to 20 points or less were Chiefs, Rams, Ravens and 49ers, all of whom won their respective games.
The Giants allowed the Bears to score 19 points in a loss. [Reply]
Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud:
Comparing yesterday performance to Sutton's 2018 defense is ridiculous. Those guys couldn't stop anyone when they had their full compliment of starters, let alone when missing four key players.
That's not true. Sutton's defense was pretty good for a lot of his time here. We had a top 10 scoring defense pretty much throughout his tenure and even held the Steelers to 18 and Titans to 24 in the postseason.
We say we were missing players but so were the Chargers and their injuries were arguably more significant.
They just had the misfortune of going against a GOAT QB leading a GOAT offense. They still did a pretty good job. Meanwhile, we were going against an OL down two starters and a rookie QB. I think people expected to dominate given the circumstances. [Reply]
Originally Posted by ThaVirus:
That's not true. Sutton's defense was pretty good for a lot of his time here. We had a top 10 scoring defense pretty much throughout his tenure and even held the Steelers to 18 and Titans to 24 in the postseason.
We say we were missing players but so were the Chargers and their injuries were arguably more significant.
They just had the misfortune of going against a GOAT QB leading a GOAT offense. They still did a pretty good job. Meanwhile, we were going against an OL down two starters and a rookie QB. I think people expected to dominate given the circumstances.
He was talking specifically about 2018.
The 2014 Sutton defense was one of the best in Chiefs history. [Reply]