Last Sunday the Kansas City Chiefs lost their second game of the season against the Houston Texans and alarms went on even more than in their defeat against the Colts a week earlier.
Suddenly the castle is collapsing, the foundations do not look so powerful, there are many mistakes everywhere and the magic of Mahomes does not seem to be enough. And it is that after these two weeks the Chiefs seem to be only a castle built in the air.
I don't like his offseason, nor his draft, and I think many don't either. Because the team didn't seem to be better or worse, it was still the same: they changed Dee Ford for Frank Clark, Kareem Hunt for Lesean Mccoy. Eric Berry by Tyrann Mathieu. Players of very similar quality everywhere, if there was a change in the position of defensive coordinator with the arrival of Spagnuolo. But beyond that there was no sense of improvement or difference from last year, it looked the same, and that in the NFL is unforgivable. A week ago I wrote an article about the Bears where I said that in this league being the same two years in a row is suicide. These Chiefs are giving me reason: there is no single argument apart from Spagnuolo's to say that their version of 2019 is better than that of 2018. Because the worrying thing is not that they have lost,
Because there are also many things that we can say about his defeats against the Colts and Texans, very obvious and that they already know what I mean: his lousy defense against the race, his offensive line that doesn't give Mahomes much time, his nonexistent ground attack (I do not understand how you can think or trust that Lesean Mccoy is the answer as the only runner, or as the main running back of this attack), but there is one that I want to concentrate specifically, which seems very serious and that is the problem of Andy Reid as HC: the bad party management of the Chiefs.
And it is that the defense is not disastrous as everyone seems to say: he did not give bad games in the first three days, they were not a wonderful unit but they were solid. But in the match against the Lions, they surpassed in possession time in 33 minutes against 26. In the game against the Colts they had the ball in their possession 37 minutes against 22, and in the Texans they were defeated 39 minutes against 20. A barbarism. If your defense is not good, help her attack. It is a strategy that helps a lot. They did it for example last year the Patriots, their defense if it was crap the first few weeks, how did they rebuild the ship? With long and sustained offensives that eventually won games. Then the team became a very rocky one in that unit, but at first it was difficult to maintain it. The Saints are another good example, I like their defense, I have always thought it is very good, but it has never been an elite unit, to counter it Payton has armed a strong, lasting and prepared offense for long series, something where they have been very successful .
In the American conference game the Chiefs were also far outnumbered against the Patriots, in time, plays and first and ten, and of course their defense ended up being a strainer, not that it is bad, it is fragile, it will not win a match, it will hold a marker. As long as the Mahomes attack continues to want to win the games in two passes, this will always happen. And when they stop it, it gets ugly for the rest of their team. Now, the truth is that Mahomes has shown very few arguments to consider that it can fall, but the problem is that they depend on their excellence. And that in the league is also impossible. Because Mahomes, if you have not noticed, is a human being, and like every human being one day you can stop and say "today the uproar with 6 TD passes" and the other can say "I do not feel very well,
And that is a problem of Andy Reid, he made an offseason that did not concentrate on defending his quarterback, on looking for a good linebacker, on his pass rush, he is still focused on winning matches in 4, 5, or if it is needed , in six passes. That's why I say it, the Chiefs are a very beautiful, fireworks airborne castle, but that gets tired, that it is nothing physical and that depends on the magic of their quarterback, magic that he has demonstrated for more than one year, but as I repeat, it is a human being that can fail.
The Chiefs will win 11 or 12 games this year again, their conference is weak, their division is accessible, but I'm sad to see how a project that was born so well can fall into the defects of Andy Reid and can end up on a more tortuous path than expected.