The Chiefs are good enough to give Andy Reid the Super Bowl he deserves

[Direckshun]

My body is willing.

https://www.sbnation.com/2017/9/18/1...bowl-contender

The Chiefs are good enough to give Andy Reid the Super Bowl he deserves
Andy Reid and the Chiefs look like the best team in the NFL right now, and I’m so here for it.
by Louis Bien @louisbien
Sep 18, 2017, 11:01am EDT

There are seven NFL teams sitting at 2-0, and none of them has looked as good as the Kansas City Chiefs. This is weird.

Not that the Chiefs being good is weird. The Chiefs have had a winning record each season and missed the playoffs just once in four years under Andy Reid.

But for the Chiefs to look utterly dominant is something else. Under Reid, the Chiefs have become the sort of high-floor, low-ceiling team that you wouldn’t really expect to see in the Super Bowl. They’ve gone down swinging (read: painfully, excruciatingly) in all three of their playoff losses under Reid and have yet to get past the Divisional round. They could be counted on to be pretty good in all phases — to rush better than most teams, to be frustrating to score on, and to not cough up the ball — but fall short when games are tight and matter most.

In two games against two good opponents this season — the Eagles finished last season fifth in DVOA, the Patriots were first and, like, won a Super Bowl — the Chiefs have scored 69 points and given up 47, rushed for 331 yards, passed for 519, and generally look like an enhanced version of the team we’ve come to know. A rising tide lifts all boats — or in this case, a rejuvenated Alex Smith makes the Chiefs a helluva lot harder to deal with. He has been spectacular through two games, throwing for 619 yards at 9.8 yards per attempt and a 134 passer rating.

With not even two weeks completed in the season, we have only enough data to overreact to what we see. That said, the Chiefs seem worth overreacting to. They have always been good. The idea that they may be great isn’t at all farfetched. They have been building toward this for years. On its current trajectory, this would be one of Reid’s finest teams ever — and oh, it’s bucking NFL conventions along the way, which is always good and never bad.

This is basically a college team

The axiom goes that champions are built through the NFL Draft. By my count, the Chiefs are starting 16 players who they drafted, with just one of those players — veteran linebacker Derrick Johnson — having been on the roster longer than Reid.

This team has been built in Reid’s image, particularly on offense where the Chiefs have finally stockpiled a critical mass of squat, fast-twitch, space-destroyers to hornswoggle the league.

The most shocking thing about the Chiefs’ season-opening win over the Patriots was that they did it while running what looked like a college offense. Early in the game Smith, Tyreek Hill, and Travis Kelce formed a backfield, and Kelce stepped up to take the snap and ran the option:



And it worked! So the Chiefs kept running it all night, sometimes throwing three backs and two tight ends on the field to complete their Navy impression.

A rookie — running back Kareem Hunt — was maybe the most important player on the field. He finished with 148 yards and a touchdown on 17 carries, and he looked explosive, and tough, and remarkably balanced in the process. The circumstances of general manager John Dorsey’s firing this offseason are somewhat cloudy, but he gave the cash-strapped Chiefs an incredible parting gift in the third-rounder.

Hunt and the running game opened up the downfield passing game, and Smith cleaned up, throwing for 178 yards on just three deep balls. He had two more deep passes for 79 yards against the Eagles, which is good for anyone and outstanding for a notorious dink-and-dunker. Smith looks like a brand new quarterback this season.

Alex Smith is playing with cuss

After rookie backup Pat Mahomes unleashed a series of spectacular passes in the Chiefs’ final preseason game, Smith was spotted on the sideline looking ... not enthused. The moment recalled his body language in the midst of losing his starting job to Colin Kaepernick with the 49ers.

Smith never got his starting job back in San Francisco. So far after stepping back into the Chiefs’ lineup, he has not only played well, but so unlike himself.

Smith is averaging 6.8 yards per attempt over his career, which is paltry given he’s completing 62 percent of his passes. Last season, just 8.16 percent of his passes traveled more than 20 yards through the air, according to Cian Fahey’s Pre-Snap Reads Quarterback Catalogue, fewer than every qualified quarterback except Sam Bradford and Jared Goff.

This season, Smith has attempted seven passes longer than 20 yards, roughly 11 percent of his attempts, and complete five of them. One of his best was a dime he dropped to a covered Chris Conley on the Chiefs’ final touchdown drive against the Eagles for a 35-yard gain.

Maybe it took a much younger, rocket-armed existential threat to draw out this new, aggressive Alex Smith, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s finally playing in an offense that he’s truly comfortable in ...

“One of the things we did when Alex came here was we went back and kind of looked at some of the stuff he had done in college and was familiar with,” Reid said, referring to what would become part of the base offense.

Whatever the case, the Chiefs’ offense is well-positioned to go much further than it has in years.

And yet there are two things that could bring the Chiefs to a screeching halt

he first: The Chiefs lost Eric Berry for the season to a non-contact Achilles injury in the season opener. Perhaps no defensive position is as heaped with responsibility as safety in today’s NFL, and Berry plays it as instinctually and beautifully as anyone in the league.

He was a big reason why Rob Gronkowski couldn’t get open against the Chiefs’ secondary. Should they face the Patriots again this season, Berry’s absence could be costly.

The second: This is still an Andy Reid team, and for all the good that means — his teams are as consistent and well-balanced as they come — the Chiefs will be hamstrung in late-game situations.

This is the Reid Paradox: He is somehow both the best and worst thing to happen to NFL teams. There is nothing more to do than to point at the team’s last two playoff losses. Reid is hardwired to make egregious game-management mistakes. And yet, it’s not like we ever see him panic. You get the sense that Reid is a laborious thinker who is uncomfortable being sped up. At some point this season, the Chiefs will enter the final minutes of the fourth quarter with either too many timeouts or not enough, and when they lose by one score, Reid will be the only person who isn’t miffed.

I can’t help but make this personal: I love Andy Reid

I love that his players love him, I love that he loves Hawaiian shirts, and I love how he tweaks the game. He and Bill Belichick are perhaps the only two NFL head coaches who you can count on to truly innovate a game plan rather than simply iterate on a few guiding principles. Every week, they’ll do something that no other NFL team is doing, and it’ll work. And unlike Belichick, Reid is a person. Bill Belichick has never looked this happy.

I’m a Lions fan, so every year I pick another team I want to win a Super Bowl since mine won’t. I am so here for a Chiefs title run. Innovation deserves to be rewarded. Time — not just Reid’s near-20 seasons, but Smith’s quest to be deemed worthy and Berry’s constant battle against his body — deserves to be rewarded. Fun deserves to be rewarded, and it’s been so long since that has felt like the case in the Super Bowl.

This is a team in Reid’s image. It is quirky, and disciplined and unassuming for how good it has been. This is what his tenure in Kansas City has been building up to. The roster is of the team’s own design, and now it’s up to Reid to guide it. He is the biggest reason why this might the Chiefs’ year, but he’ll be the biggest reason if it’s not.

[penbrook]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

I believe it. He's a jack of all trades, master of none type of safety.

It's interesting to compare him to Parker, for example. Parker does one thing and does it well - he's an excellent coverage safety. I think he's a better pure coverage safety than even Berry is. But man, he pretty much sucks in run support.

Sorenson, OTOH, isn't excellent at anything. You can make an argument that he isn't particularly good at anything. But he's not really bad at anything either. He's adequate as a rusher and as a coverage player. He's a bit of a problem in the run game, IMO, but that's also because he played a lot of nickel LB and was given tougher matchups that way; I see nothing in his mentality or physical attributes that says he can't be an average run support safety.

Sorenson is a poor man's Berry. He plays a very similar style of game, he just doesn't play it nearly as well. Parker's nothing like that; he plays a completely different style.

So when Berry goes down, it's not surprising that a mad tinkerer like Sutton would want a swiss-army knife of a player like Sorenson on the field quite a bit. He can do a lot with him (isn't Sorenson also the guy that put the shot into Wentz on the blitz right up the gut, in addition to the flying flip?).

Yep. Proving White men can jump since September 17 2017

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by O.city

For sure.

But i think now, he just has better defensive players than you ahve offensive guys.

Berry not withstanding, they've got what, 4 guys who are legitimately all pro type guys on the field at different levels? Then guys like Parker, Bailey, Logan, Mitchell who are great fillers.

I dunno, I hate to lose Berry, it sucks. But if Nelson can come back and play well, guys keep improving and getting back, they look real nice.

I also want to mention how nice it is to see #50 out there healthy again.

It's a lot like getting DJ back in '15. We just forgot how much he allowed everyone else to do their jobs and when he came back, suddenly things looked way less shitty in the box.

Getting Houston back has obviously been a nice addition against the pass but holy shit, it's easy to forget how much he wrecks the run. You just can't run to his side - period. He's going to destroy that play.

Like you, I hate losing Berry. But I'd trade Berry for getting Houston back every time. This defense can operate at a higher level than last year's by a lot because Houston can truly anchor it.

[Hammock Parties]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

isn't Sorenson also the guy that put the shot into Wentz on the blitz right up the gut, in addition to the flying flip?

Yes. He's ****ing savage. I think he's going to hurt himself eventually.

[chiefzilla1501]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

His hair WASN'T ON FIRE! That's my point - he was up by 1 in the 4th. He was just playing football.

Show me the points he left on the board in that NE game - he had precisely one bad play in that game and it was the self-sack. Otherwise you're maybe talking about the sequence at the beginning of the second where he threw one incompletion in 2 possessions and otherwise handed the ball off.

New England game - 2 straight punts on ineffective drives where we took a passive coverage 3rd down sack both times. Down by 10 points, we turn the gas on and never look back.

Philly game - several very ineffective drives. When we lose the lead, Alex Smith turns into a different QB - very quick release, decisive.

In both games, the turning point for our offense after stalling was when we started to feel like we were in a must-score situation. Even Smith's biggest supporters have to agree that our offense went from stall to turnaround at exactly the right moment in both games. That moment we started to worry that Wentz and Brady were starting to handle our defense. In both games, both Alex and our defense responded. To Alex's credit, no matter how much we fall behind or our offense stalls, he's incredible at clawing his way back into games. He is actually an outstanding game manager. That Alex score when we're up by 1 is a must-score drive when you're against Brady in the 4Q.

But you can see Alex's pattern. He feels the opposing team out to figure out how he needs to play. If our defense is shitting themselves from the beginning, Alex will play aggressive from the beginning. If we play outstanding all game, Alex will play ultra-conservative. And that's what I see in the mid-game stalls we've seen very consistently throughout Alex's career. I don't know why we need to do that.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

It's a lot like getting DJ back in '15. We just forgot how much he allowed everyone else to do their jobs and when he came back, suddenly things looked way less shitty in the box.

Getting Houston back has obviously been a nice addition against the pass but holy shit, it's easy to forget how much he wrecks the run. You just can't run to his side - period. He's going to destroy that play.

Like you, I hate losing Berry. But I'd trade Berry for getting Houston back every time. This defense can operate at a higher level than last year's by a lot because Houston can truly anchor it.

Yeah, I'd for sure rather have Houston, but with Berry, they've have 4 potential all pro type players on one defense. Thats awesome.

Houston seems to be playing with that "I'm tired of answereing if Im healthy or not so I'll ****ing show you" kind of attitude. So thats nice.

[O.city]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

Yes. He's ****ing savage. I think he's going to hurt himself eventually.

One thing I noticed with Wentz is he seems to realize he's a big dude and thinks he can take hits.

He's gonna get himself hurt doing that. Big ben was the same way.

[penbrook]

Best team in the AFC? A 3 way tie with the teams in the AFC West minus the Chargers

[penbrook]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

Yes. He's ****ing savage. I think he's going to hurt himself eventually.

Someone gif up the flying Dirty Dan?

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by chiefzilla1501

New England game - 2 straight punts on ineffective drives where we took a passive coverage 3rd down sack both times. Down by 10 points, we turn the gas on and never look back.

Philly game - several very ineffective drives. When we lose the lead, Alex Smith turns into a different QB - very quick release, decisive.

In both games, the turning point for our offense after stalling was when we started to feel like we were in a must-score situation. Even Smith's biggest supporters have to agree that our offense went from stall to turnaround at exactly the right moment in both games.

Those ineffective drives in NE were largely running drives, no? And yes, one ended on a coverage sack (and a horrible self-sack) and the other was just a damn good DE doing what good DEs do. The other guys get paid to play this game too, y'know. C'mon, that's thin gruel.

Those 'several ineffective drives' included one where he made a perfect deep throw when he was looking to extend a lead. They also included some bad playcalling and admittedly, at least 1 (and really 2) series where he just looked rattled.

A guy facing one of the toughest front 7s in football and getting rattled by it when he sees a premier pass rusher flatten his RB isn't exactly uncommon nor is it grounds for scorn. Hell, did you watch Aaron Rodgers last night? Guy looked like balls until that game was over and it wasn't his fault; he simply couldn't get a feel for where the pressure was going to come from. It happens.

If you ever felt like the Chiefs were in a 'must score' situation in that Eagles game, I dunno what to tell you. That game never felt in doubt.

[O.city]

Penbrook accidentally brings up a good point. The west being the ****ing torture pit that it is, really isn't fun.

They're gonna beat up on each other while the Pats get to cupcake along with 2 tanking teams and the Steelers basically have to score 18 or more points to beat the best team in their division.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by Hammock Parties

Yes. He's ****ing savage. I think he's going to hurt himself eventually.

{6 to midnight}

Yup, that's the one. He absolutely wrecked him. And it was just a perfect hit, too - head across the chest, body driving Wentz's shoulder through his neck.

That was possibly my favorite play of that game - just one of those hits that you know Wentz remembered for awhile.

[O.city]

I didn't see the deep miss to Hill. Was it a bad throw? what happened.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by O.city

Yeah, I'd for sure rather have Houston, but with Berry, they've have 4 potential all pro type players on one defense. Thats awesome.

Houston seems to be playing with that "I'm tired of answereing if Im healthy or not so I'll ****ing show you" kind of attitude. So thats nice.

His interviews might eventually get old, but right this very second he sounds like a hell of a leader.

"We were fine but not as good as we have to be to become the defense we say we are..."

"Yeah, Jones played great but who cares? If I go out there and have 20 sacks but we don't dominate, it's a mediocre day"

"Sure, Hunt looked good, but that whole offense has to play for the team to do what it needs to do. Teamteamteamteamraaaaarr......"

Yeah, so I paraphrased a bit but the guy sounds like someone who's taken on that veteran leader mantle and will swallow one of those ****ers whole if they don't do their jobs. That's a scary, scary man and I damn sure wouldn't want to be the guy he walks up to after a game if he doesn't think I held up my end of the bargain...

[stevieray]

Originally Posted by O.city

Penbrook accidentally brings up a good point. The west being the ****ing torture pit that it is, really isn't fun.

They're gonna beat up on each other while the Pats get to cupcake along with 2 tanking teams and the Steelers basically have to score 18 or more points to beat the best team in their division.

same as it ever was.

...there is no parity in the AFC.

[DJ's left nut]

Originally Posted by O.city

I didn't see the deep miss to Hill. Was it a bad throw? what happened.

I haven't seen an all-22 of it yet but I'll be curious if it supports what I saw.

When Smith released it, it looked done - TD all the way. But around the 10 yard line Hill slowed up a bit like he lost track of where he was. He geared it back up and tried to adjust when he found it, but adjusted a tick late and then lost his footing just as the ball got there (so it looked like he dove but he mostly just kinda fell).

Smith made a beauty of a throw but for whatever reason he and Hill just weren't quite on the same page. They had it and that throw landed right where you'd want it, it just looked to me like Hill had trouble locating the ball and was feeling for it a bit. I think if he sees it out of the hand it hits him right on the button for the easy 6.

Like I said, I'd have to see all-22 if it every surfaces because I can't swear by it on a real-time showing, but me and the folks around me all saw the same thing there.