General Defense

[onejayhawk]

I'm still interested in seeing what Gay will bring to the table. Bolton has his points, but range isn't one of them.

J

[EMAW_KSU]

I’ve been sick of Been Neimann for years, guy shouldn’t be playing JV football.  Keeps his job for the same reason Sorenson does.  Works hard and makes the occasional play at the right time.  Ignoring the fact that he’s out of position and just out matched much of the rest.

[Chiefs_5627]

1 hour ago, EMAW_KSU said:

I’ve been sick of Been Neimann for years, guy shouldn’t be playing JV football.  Keeps his job for the same reason Sorenson does.  Works hard and makes the occasional play at the right time.  Ignoring the fact that he’s out of position and just out matched much of the rest.

You're definitely not alone. Ben is the Wylie of the defense. I just don't understand what the coaches see in either.

[EMAW_KSU]

It amazes me that we have done nothing to address our defensive issues.  All we hear is, yeah there’s improvements to be made… you think?  Hopefully in the next couple days we can clear Clark’s salary and the. Make some things happen.

[RedGold]

I think the secondary has been more concerning.    The coverage mixups are pretty uncommon for our team.    I don’t think Ward gets enough props personally.

[mayanfootball]

Ward is great.......at getting PI called. Denver did great picking up Surtain. We need to a similar next draft. Great CB's are at a Premium. We lucked into L.Sneed, but some want to move him to Safety.

[RedGold]

Sneed hasn't even been that great this year,  though no one in the secondary has.    

Premium CB's are overrated.   Great if you have one, but definitely not needed.      You can filter through the top secondaries,  and it's 50/50 on if a team actually has one of the top CB's in the league.    Plenty of teams with just solid quartets sitting near the top.   Heck Pitt had the best last year with  Joe Haden - Steven Nelson - Mike Hilton - Cameron Sutton.     

Ward is a starting caliber CB, I'm guessing our pass coverage gets more consistent when he comes back.    He will also be hated on though.   

[kingseanjohn]

Could put this in the offensive thread too. But I think the defensive stat is more concerning and more surprising.

 

I'm telling you all, this defense is going to end up historically bad; even without the 17th game. Clark should help some. If we had anyone but Mahomes at QB we'd be dead in the water.

[kingseanjohn]

3 hours ago, RedGold said:

I think the secondary has been more concerning.    The coverage mixups are pretty uncommon for our team.    I don’t think Ward gets enough props personally.

We just aren't getting the pass rush that we've been accustomed to. If we were getting pressure the DBs wouldn't look as bad as they do. Although, I think the DB issue is overblown atm. We were down our #1 and #3 CB this past game. Safety though.... Thank goodness the draft is deep there.

[EMAW_KSU]

13 hours ago, kingseanjohn said:

Could put this in the offensive thread too. But I think the defensive stat is more concerning and more surprising.

 

I'm telling you all, this defense is going to end up historically bad; even without the 17th game. Clark should help some. If we had anyone but Mahomes at QB we'd be dead in the water.

Tell me why you think Clark will help?  Guy was the 53rd ranked defensive lineman last year and makes more money than any non QB IN THE NFL this year.  I don’t wish ill on anyone but him getting convicted for being not smart, would be the best thing for KC at this point.

[kingseanjohn]

 

[EMAW_KSU]

Cowboys planning to cut Smith…this SCREAMS of a Veach move.  Swoop in, late round pick…improve our defense.  Better yet, trade them Clark, Sorenson and Neimann REALLY improve our defense.

[mayanfootball]

On 10/4/2021 at 7:56 PM, RedGold said:

Ward is a starting caliber CB,

Maybe for someone but NOT for a Super Bowl contending team......IMO.

[onejayhawk]

12 minutes ago, mayanfootball said:

Maybe for someone but NOT for a Super Bowl contending team......IMO.

For a Super Bowl winner, or did you forget? 

Pass rush is more a problem than DB. Moving Jones to DE and bringing in Reed was supposed to crank up the rush. That has not happened yet. Indeed, Reed has been a bigger bust than Jones. 

[Jakuvious]

Ward has definitely become underappreciated. The secondary is absolutely talented enough when healthy. A Ward/Sneed/Fenton/Hughes/Baker CB group, and a Mathieu/Thornhill/Sorensen S group is absolutely good enough. I've seen the fans turn on Ward and Sorensen too many times already to think this time it's legitimate. But the biggest issues we've had with coverage have honestly had way more to do with alignment and communication than anything else, and the nice thing with that is it is the kind of thing that can improve as the year goes on. A big part of our red zone issues have been DBs not getting where they need to be pre-snap. Thornhill's snap count has steadily climbed after the post-week 1 benching, so hopefully the S corp gets back to the usual roles of Thornhill deep, to let Sorensen and Mathieu roam a bit more. Will help the underneath coverage, less need for Bolton there. If you can get Gay and Mathieu back in a place to help against backs/TEs/slot WRs, that'll be big.

The thing that continues to surprise me is our DT play. I was a supporter in the offseason of the move to DE for Jones. The rationale, in my eyes, made perfect sense. Get your best 4 players on the field, and we had far more depth and talent at DT than we did at DE. I felt like a Reed/Nnadi/Wharton/Saunders DT rotation was still very good, while counting on Danna/Okafor/Kaindoh to man one of the DE spots was just guaranteeing a lack of playmaking on one edge (both with Clark hurt.) But all of our DTs have been completely invisible without Jones in there. Zero sacks and zero tackles for loss from all 4 DTs, 4 games in. I don't understand why the play at that position has been so poor. Jones's contain issues, communication issues in the secondary, rookie struggles from Bolton, all of that can be ironed out with time. But DTs just not being able to beat blocks isn't going to be fixed magically through more reps. I'm now in the camp of moving Jones back to DE, not because of any of his issues (I still think the contain issues against Baltimore were understandable and reasonable growing pains from him), but because right now Danna at DE is dramatically outplaying anyone not named Jones at DT (not that Danna has been great, mind you.) So a DL of Clark/Reed/Jones/Danna now seems like our strongest combo.

 

Overall though, I do think the issues on D are simultaneously real, but also overblown. Some of the issues are very fixable (Bolton's rookie mistakes, the depth chart at DL, the miscommunications in the secondary, Mathieu being kept deep too much), and some issues have been compounded by some things outside their control (our O is second worst in percentage of drives resulting in a turnover, behind only Jacksonville, and we've now had something like 4 red zone stops where the other team has gone for it on 4th because of how they feel about our offense.) I think a lot of this will even out and reverse course a bit with time. I do not think the defense will be good. It will remain streaky, as it has been the past two years. But it is more talented than too many Chiefs defenses I've seen in the past to remain this bad.