Chiefs The Good, Bad, and the Ugly (Offense)

OldSchool · 12:41 AM

Here's my thoughts of what I saw tonight, position by position, based off of just the live feed. This should be fun.:

QB:

The Good- It was pre-season.

The Bad- To say that Alex Smith was off his game tonight would be an understatement. He was playing like a QB who didn't want to get hit and, for the most part, tried to get rid of the ball as quickly as he could. The INT on his Kelce throw was a pre-meditated quick pass with a half-assed look-off of the safety; he either didn't expect the LB to drop at the angle that he did or he expected Kelce to take that route in front of the LB, either way he didn't bother making any reads on that play after the snap. The timing wasn't there, he was late on the red zone pass to Hammond and it resulted in an INT to the trailing CB. It was as bad as I've seen Smith play in a while, ever since his loss to the Giants in 2012.

Tyler Bray is not ready to take snaps in a real game much less be in consideration for the back-up role on this team. Chase Daniel's job is safe. He struggled a lot against the backup defense while running with a lot of the same pieces that Smith had to work with against the 1st team.

The Ugly- I wouldn't be concerned about Smith's play in this pre-season game. He played like a QB who wanted to avoid an injury in the pre-season while playing behind one of the league's worst OLs. His consistent level of play is much higher during the regular season, when games matter, than what he displayed tonight. Just judging off of his history in the pre-season compared to the regular season and playoffs since 2011, Smith's play always elevates during the season.

OL:

The Good- Eric Fisher looked much better in this game against some pretty good pass rushers in Griffin, Barr, and Robison (the Vikings move them around and from what I could tell on my somewhat grainy feed, Fisher faced each of them at some point in the game); it was a welcome improvement from weeks 1 and 2 where he got beat badly way too often.

Jeff Allen may have also found his home at RT; from what I could see, his play was significantly better there than it is when he is playing LG.

Our OL, overall, played noticeably better than they did in week 1 and especially week 2: The screen game was working much better, the pass blocking held up much better, and the run blocking wasn't completely atrocious. Our success without having Stephenson in the lineup was much better than I anticipated.

The Bad- Zach Fulton for one. He just plain sucks against anyone who has some measure of quickness to them. He moves like he's stuck in molasses and he's a big part of the reason why we never seem to be able to move the DL along the right side during run plays. How the hell was this guy our best option at RG? He got abused as badly by Robison during a sack as Allen was when he got beat by Star Lotulelei last week; Robison is a good player but he isn't at the level that Star is at. Will Andy consider throwing Kush into the mix at RG or C and kicking Hudson out to RG? That might end up being our best bet at having a decent OL judging from how poorly Fulton has been playing. He's been consistently poor, at least Fisher and the others have shown some measure of improvement over these 3 games.

The Ugly- Of course, all of this could just be a facade due to the drop in level of competition. While Robison, Griffin, Floyd, Joseph, and Barr are all good players in this league, they aren't quite on the same level as the guys that play for the Panthers. You could argue that they are close to the level of the Bengals front 4 (excluding Atkins).

With all that said, it was nice to see our OL step up their level of play and hold their own (excluding Fulton) against a front that is still pretty good. We really do need to replace Fulton if we want a better chance of winning this season.

WR:

The Good: Guys, we have a solid prospect in Frankie Hammond. He showed good speed and pretty solid ability to separate against the Vikings DBs that he faced. It looked like he was playing with more effort and wanted to win more than Avery did in this game. He's going to make this roster and be rewarded for all of the work that he put in.

The Bad: AJ Jenkins, what happened to this kid? The FO had high hopes for him and he's now fallen deeper and deeper behind other young WRs on the roster despite having some history with Smith and a leg up on Wilson in learning this offense. I don't think that Jenkins will be making the final roster if they decide to just go with 5 WRs. At this point, it looks like he's behind Hemingway, Hammond, Wilson, and Williams as far as young developing WRs goes. He also offers nothing in the return game and had a bad flub of a tackle attempt on the long run back today.

The Ugly: Due to the camera angles from the game feed, it's very hard to judge how well a WR played if they didn't receive any targets in the game; you simply can't see much of what's happening down the field unless the broadcast team cuts away from the live feed to look at a replay or something from the coaches tape. Our two QBs who played today also didn't throw the ball well enough for us to get a really good look at the rest of the young WRs either. However, from the limited stuff that I saw, we have a few guys who can play in this league.

Now are they starting caliber players? No, of course not. They're still young and fairly raw prospects who will do fine as the #4-5 option on the team. Hammond Jr. could potentially be a solid #3 this year; he'd be a more likely candidate than AJ Jenkins is and also has more speed and better separation ability than Hemingway does.

TE:

The Good- As much as people, me included, hate on Fasano for being an inferior athlete compared to Kelce; next to Bowe and Charles, he's been the most steady player at a skill position on this offense so far. He has displayed solid hands, recognition of zones, solid blocking, and always fights for more yards after he catches the ball (something that Kelce seems to be learning from him very well). Fasano is the little engine that could.

Travis Kelce has had a pretty stellar off-season coming off of his surgery. He has displayed much better hands and concentration compared to last year and continues to look like he hasn't lost any of his speed and explosiveness. He also plays with the same attitude that Fasano brings to the position. I'm liking this pick a lot more now.

The Bad- Travis Kelce needs to become a more consistent blocker if he wants to push Fasano out of that #1 TE position. Kelce sometimes looks like a rookie who is trying his hardest but doesn't really know what to do when it comes to blocking. The other thing is, for whatever reason, there seems to be very little chemistry between Smith and Kelce in the passing game; when Smith did look his way today, he pre-determined the throw and ended up with an INT.

Demetrius Harris, after a camp in which he was reportedly a stand-out player, seems to have been somewhat out of the offense. He's not going to be a significant contributor this season and, like J. Thomas of the Broncos, will not play a significant number of snaps, baring injury, until his 3rd year. At best, we can expect to see him in on special teams and some goal-line packages as a possible red zone target.

RB:

The Good- Davis and Gray have both remained consistent producers as runners during this pre-season. Neither have put the ball on the ground. Charles is able to rest with the depth of our RB unit. It's good to see some plays designed around DAT. Everyone has remained healthy thus far and Joe McKnight has finally been able to show a little bit of what he can do.

The Bad- Knile Davis still doesn't look great in blitz pick-up. While he does a decent job the majority of the time, there are still moments where he gets blown up and just looks bad; that's not good for a 230 pound RB who should be more than adequate at the job. He was also late coming over to help block on a couple of plays and it resulted in a negative play.

The Ugly- I don't think that our ground game, even with Charles, is going to be as effective as it was last season. Why is that? Our run blocking still isn't up to snuff and we still struggle with running the ball to the right side of the line. Even with the switch of Jeff Allen to RT, the problem still remains with Fulton being unable to keep up with his block and thus allowing his man to blow up the play.

I might do a defensive one later on, but I feel like there was a lot more to say about our offense than our defense.

**Buehler445** · 08-23-2014, 11:14 PM

Yeah. The defense owned Matt goddamned mother****ing Cassel save one play and a few runs. And the offense put together 3 points in a half. Getting beat by Matt goddamned morher****ing Cassel is embarrassing.

**hometeam** · 08-23-2014, 11:15 PM

To the ship?

**RealSNR** · 08-23-2014, 11:16 PM

Junior HeMingway

**RealSNR** · 08-23-2014, 11:16 PM

Write his name out 100 times, OldSchool.

RobBlake · 08-23-2014, 11:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SNR

Write his name out 100 times, OldSchool.

lmao, ruthless

**New World Order** · 08-23-2014, 11:28 PM

Eric Fisher looked really good:

Hammock Parties · 08-23-2014, 11:31 PM

I'm going to watch the abortion again tomorrow and focus on Fisher. I'm sure there was a lot more suck.

**Easy 6** · 08-24-2014, 12:03 AM

Fisher looked better than usual in the first half, but that gif of him getting spun out of his jock by a second teamer is terrible.

Maybe its too early to tell, but its looking like Joeckel > Fisher.

OldSchool · 08-24-2014, 12:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Easy 6

Fisher looked better than usual in the first half, but that gif of him getting spun out of his jock by a second teamer is terrible.

Maybe its too early to tell, but its looking like Joeckel > Fisher.

Yup. He looked better than the weeks before, I didn't say that he actually looked good. He was certainly more serviceable, still lacks that powerful or even adequate punch.

Half of the time my feed would blur so much that I couldn't make out much detail at all in plays, on the Hammond INT, I couldn't really tell what happened until they played it back in slow motion and the stream wasn't super grainy. Didn't notice Fisher getting tossed aside on that play.

He did a better job getting out in front of his assignment, he still lacks the strength to really hold up and wouldn't be starting if we actually had a better option or if he wasn't the #1 overall pick. He'll get at least another season before they think about looking for a replacement.

OldSchool · 08-24-2014, 12:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SNR

Write his name out 100 times, OldSchool.

I always spell his name with an extra "m" for some reason. Same reason why I used to add an "s" at the end of "Daniel".

**Bufkin** · 08-24-2014, 12:40 AM

"ERIC FISHER COULDNT HAVE BEEN GOOD, HEREZ 2 GIFS OF HIM GETTING PUSHD BACK!"

You can't make this shit up.

Hammock Parties · 08-24-2014, 12:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bufkin

"ERIC FISHER COULDNT HAVE BEEN GOOD, HEREZ 2 GIFS OF HIM GETTING PUSHD BACK!"

You can't make this shit up.

Patience. If you think those are the only plays on which he sucked, you are wrong.

**Bufkin** · 08-24-2014, 12:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Count Zarth

Patience. If you think those are the only plays on which he sucked, you are wrong.

Can we concede Clay that Fisher held his own for the majority (the key word here) of the first half? I'm not saying that makes him Anthony Munoz, but it does show he's showing improvement. When you accept the fact that his shoulder has significantly weakened him (at least temporarily) physically, the pressured bull rushes become a bit more apologetic.

Hammock Parties · 08-24-2014, 12:54 AM

He did play better. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact the level of competition was not as stiff.

08-23-2014, 10:40 PM
OldSchool MVP Join Date: Sep 2013 Casino cash: $10035212	The Good, Bad, and the Ugly (Offense) Here's my thoughts of what I saw tonight, position by position, based off of just the live feed. This should be fun.: QB: The Good- It was pre-season. The Bad- To say that Alex Smith was off his game tonight would be an understatement. He was playing like a QB who didn't want to get hit and, for the most part, tried to get rid of the ball as quickly as he could. The INT on his Kelce throw was a pre-meditated quick pass with a half-assed look-off of the safety; he either didn't expect the LB to drop at the angle that he did or he expected Kelce to take that route in front of the LB, either way he didn't bother making any reads on that play after the snap. The timing wasn't there, he was late on the red zone pass to Hammond and it resulted in an INT to the trailing CB. It was as bad as I've seen Smith play in a while, ever since his loss to the Giants in 2012. Tyler Bray is not ready to take snaps in a real game much less be in consideration for the back-up role on this team. Chase Daniel's job is safe. He struggled a lot against the backup defense while running with a lot of the same pieces that Smith had to work with against the 1st team. The Ugly- I wouldn't be concerned about Smith's play in this pre-season game. He played like a QB who wanted to avoid an injury in the pre-season while playing behind one of the league's worst OLs. His consistent level of play is much higher during the regular season, when games matter, than what he displayed tonight. Just judging off of his history in the pre-season compared to the regular season and playoffs since 2011, Smith's play always elevates during the season. OL: The Good- Eric Fisher looked much better in this game against some pretty good pass rushers in Griffin, Barr, and Robison (the Vikings move them around and from what I could tell on my somewhat grainy feed, Fisher faced each of them at some point in the game); it was a welcome improvement from weeks 1 and 2 where he got beat badly way too often. Jeff Allen may have also found his home at RT; from what I could see, his play was significantly better there than it is when he is playing LG. Our OL, overall, played noticeably better than they did in week 1 and especially week 2: The screen game was working much better, the pass blocking held up much better, and the run blocking wasn't completely atrocious. Our success without having Stephenson in the lineup was much better than I anticipated. The Bad- Zach Fulton for one. He just plain sucks against anyone who has some measure of quickness to them. He moves like he's stuck in molasses and he's a big part of the reason why we never seem to be able to move the DL along the right side during run plays. How the hell was this guy our best option at RG? He got abused as badly by Robison during a sack as Allen was when he got beat by Star Lotulelei last week; Robison is a good player but he isn't at the level that Star is at. Will Andy consider throwing Kush into the mix at RG or C and kicking Hudson out to RG? That might end up being our best bet at having a decent OL judging from how poorly Fulton has been playing. He's been consistently poor, at least Fisher and the others have shown some measure of improvement over these 3 games. The Ugly- Of course, all of this could just be a facade due to the drop in level of competition. While Robison, Griffin, Floyd, Joseph, and Barr are all good players in this league, they aren't quite on the same level as the guys that play for the Panthers. You could argue that they are close to the level of the Bengals front 4 (excluding Atkins). With all that said, it was nice to see our OL step up their level of play and hold their own (excluding Fulton) against a front that is still pretty good. We really do need to replace Fulton if we want a better chance of winning this season. WR: The Good: Guys, we have a solid prospect in Frankie Hammond. He showed good speed and pretty solid ability to separate against the Vikings DBs that he faced. It looked like he was playing with more effort and wanted to win more than Avery did in this game. He's going to make this roster and be rewarded for all of the work that he put in. The Bad: AJ Jenkins, what happened to this kid? The FO had high hopes for him and he's now fallen deeper and deeper behind other young WRs on the roster despite having some history with Smith and a leg up on Wilson in learning this offense. I don't think that Jenkins will be making the final roster if they decide to just go with 5 WRs. At this point, it looks like he's behind Hemingway, Hammond, Wilson, and Williams as far as young developing WRs goes. He also offers nothing in the return game and had a bad flub of a tackle attempt on the long run back today. The Ugly: Due to the camera angles from the game feed, it's very hard to judge how well a WR played if they didn't receive any targets in the game; you simply can't see much of what's happening down the field unless the broadcast team cuts away from the live feed to look at a replay or something from the coaches tape. Our two QBs who played today also didn't throw the ball well enough for us to get a really good look at the rest of the young WRs either. However, from the limited stuff that I saw, we have a few guys who can play in this league. Now are they starting caliber players? No, of course not. They're still young and fairly raw prospects who will do fine as the #4-5 option on the team. Hammond Jr. could potentially be a solid #3 this year; he'd be a more likely candidate than AJ Jenkins is and also has more speed and better separation ability than Hemingway does. TE: The Good- As much as people, me included, hate on Fasano for being an inferior athlete compared to Kelce; next to Bowe and Charles, he's been the most steady player at a skill position on this offense so far. He has displayed solid hands, recognition of zones, solid blocking, and always fights for more yards after he catches the ball (something that Kelce seems to be learning from him very well). Fasano is the little engine that could. Travis Kelce has had a pretty stellar off-season coming off of his surgery. He has displayed much better hands and concentration compared to last year and continues to look like he hasn't lost any of his speed and explosiveness. He also plays with the same attitude that Fasano brings to the position. I'm liking this pick a lot more now. The Bad- Travis Kelce needs to become a more consistent blocker if he wants to push Fasano out of that #1 TE position. Kelce sometimes looks like a rookie who is trying his hardest but doesn't really know what to do when it comes to blocking. The other thing is, for whatever reason, there seems to be very little chemistry between Smith and Kelce in the passing game; when Smith did look his way today, he pre-determined the throw and ended up with an INT. Demetrius Harris, after a camp in which he was reportedly a stand-out player, seems to have been somewhat out of the offense. He's not going to be a significant contributor this season and, like J. Thomas of the Broncos, will not play a significant number of snaps, baring injury, until his 3rd year. At best, we can expect to see him in on special teams and some goal-line packages as a possible red zone target. RB: The Good- Davis and Gray have both remained consistent producers as runners during this pre-season. Neither have put the ball on the ground. Charles is able to rest with the depth of our RB unit. It's good to see some plays designed around DAT. Everyone has remained healthy thus far and Joe McKnight has finally been able to show a little bit of what he can do. The Bad- Knile Davis still doesn't look great in blitz pick-up. While he does a decent job the majority of the time, there are still moments where he gets blown up and just looks bad; that's not good for a 230 pound RB who should be more than adequate at the job. He was also late coming over to help block on a couple of plays and it resulted in a negative play. The Ugly- I don't think that our ground game, even with Charles, is going to be as effective as it was last season. Why is that? Our run blocking still isn't up to snuff and we still struggle with running the ball to the right side of the line. Even with the switch of Jeff Allen to RT, the problem still remains with Fulton being unable to keep up with his block and thus allowing his man to blow up the play. I might do a defensive one later on, but I feel like there was a lot more to say about our offense than our defense. Last edited by OldSchool; 08-24-2014 at 12:41 AM..
Posts: 12,727

08-23-2014, 11:14 PM	#2
Buehler445 Supporter Join Date: Apr 2007 Location: Scott City KS Casino cash: $2004734	Yeah. The defense owned Matt goddamned mother**ing Cassel save one play and a few runs. And the offense put together 3 points in a half. Getting beat by Matt goddamned morher**ing Cassel is embarrassing.
Posts: 56,927

08-23-2014, 11:28 PM	#7
New World Order Choco Favre Join Date: Jul 2012 Casino cash: $2364765	Eric Fisher looked really good:
Posts: 29,246

08-23-2014, 11:31 PM	#8
Hammock Parties I'll be back. Join Date: Nov 2002 Casino cash: $4400478	I'm going to watch the abortion again tomorrow and focus on Fisher. I'm sure there was a lot more suck.
Posts: 278,766

08-24-2014, 12:03 AM	#9
Easy 6 pie is never free Join Date: Sep 2006 Location: the drivers seat Casino cash: $3417775	Fisher looked better than usual in the first half, but that gif of him getting spun out of his jock by a second teamer is terrible. Maybe its too early to tell, but its looking like Joeckel > Fisher.
Posts: 92,040

08-23-2014, 11:15 PM	#3
hometeam Supporter Join Date: Jul 2011 Casino cash: $3891956	To the ship?
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08-24-2014, 12:40 AM	#12
Bufkin Just here for the Royals Join Date: Jul 2014 Casino cash: $10029260	"ERIC FISHER COULDNT HAVE BEEN GOOD, HEREZ 2 GIFS OF HIM GETTING PUSHD BACK!" You can't make this shit up.
Posts: 4,052

08-24-2014, 12:54 AM	#15
Hammock Parties I'll be back. Join Date: Nov 2002 Casino cash: $4400478	He did play better. I'm sure it had something to do with the fact the level of competition was not as stiff.
Posts: 278,766