The first one has to do with a suggestion I'd love to make to Andy Reid. I don't know if anyone else has thought this, but I'd sure like it if Reid heard it and found a way to do it. Yes, I'm not an NFL coach. Yes, I know it's a lot harder than it looks, I got all that.
But I couldn't stop thinking about Alex Smith and his mobility, his vision, and his intelligence. Throw in the mix that he does have so many weapons -- for the passing game here, mind you -- that aren't necessarily his least talented receivers. Those weapons are namely Jamaal Charles, De'Anthony Thomas, Knile Davis, Travis Kelce, Anthony Fasano, and yes, wide receiver Dwayne Bowe.
Look at that mix right there, look at it. I'm sorry, but I'm not just looking through rose-colored glasses to say with some accuracy that these guys are all pretty damn good football players.
What I saw last night was Alex Smith drop straight back a couple of steps to pass while a bunch of receivers ran vanilla routes, and he did this virtually every single time the Chiefs ran a passing play. And sure enough far too often it was snuffed. Smith was sacked six times last night, and one of his passes was batted up and intercepted when he threw it too close to the line. That stinks.
I blame Andy Reid.
I blame Andy Reid because he has stopped being imaginative. It seems in the name of ingeniously disguising his play calling intentions, he refuses to open things up with the weapons that he has. It's almost as if he's bent on showcasing his genius coaching talent at the cost of allowing the skills of his players to just do the work for him and the team.
Added to all of this was the other thing I saw last night, that made me think of the wonders this team could show us. It could be wonderful, really! Did you see it? It was hard to catch because it only happened a few times, and it was when Alex Smith looked the most troubled. Ironically it is in those plays that I truly believe is our salvation.
Those few times Smith scrambled and got away from the rush he was easily able to complete medium to deep passes to all these guys in one way or another.
Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
Here's my suggestion -- are you listening Andy Reid?
Will you deliberately put in plays that take advantage of this situation: quick smart quarterback with a mix of fast and strong receivers? Will you literally design and employ plays that effectively get Smith to scramble, with an deftly arranged but wildly loose deep-drop moving-pocket, one that utilizes Smith's ability to evade pass rushers in the open field and the receivers' ability to find wide spaces down the field for Smith to throw to?
What? Yes, literally, after the snap you have Smith drop back deep and to the side one way or the other, then have him reverse field even if it means he drops more. He can easily evade any pass rusher, he has shown the ability to push the ball back up the field, and he has already proven he can throw the ball to open receivers out of that improvisation. Why can't plays be set up where our receivers have routes for this madness that are somewhat choreographed, and our O-linemen have blocking schemes arranged to help Smith get untracked to make this happen?I know this can't work all the time, and I know most teams with their skill set can't accomplish this. But ya know?
The Chiefs can.
And I believe they can make it work most times -- we have the requisite players and yes, we have the coaching acumen to make it happen.
May I?...
Let's take that Denver game, and say we did this for each of the six times Smith was sacked. Here's how I see it would've worked.
Six plays, each one a designed scramble. Look at this. Take three of them and let's just say we get sacked, the play just doesn't work each of those times, and we even lose a few more yards because of the deeper drops. The fact is we aren't losing any more, really, than we lost when getting sacked as we did anyway.
But let's say they work, big-time, just three of those other times. We get big plays each time. Thomas scampers after the catch for 30 yards. Bowe gets a nice sideline catch 20 yards downfield. Kelce gets a grab and rambles for 40. Each time we get a first down extending our overall possession time, that takes out one more of those Denver possessions and the accompanying FG, so it's now 26-16.
Now take each of those three big plays individually. One of them, let's say afterwards we don't get any further with it. We've still pinned Denver deeper on that particular possession, so after a stop they can't get a FG and instead have to punt. Now it's down to 23-16. Another one gets us into FG range and we get the three points, making it 23-19. (Oh, and now since we're not desperate for points, we can kick the conversion instead of failing on the two-point try after the TD we already had, so it's really 23-20.) With the third one, we do it again, run some more imaginative sets, and we actually score the touchdown.
That is, we get just one more touchdown overall from using the six designed scramble plays, and just like that, the score is now 27-23 us.
Thing is, we have to have the balls to do that. Really, come on, when you think about it, what would we have had to lose? Really?
Look at this. We blast the Patriots. We handle the Dolphins. (In fact this year we amazingly went 4-0 against the AFC East.) We destroy the Rams. We stick it to the Seahawks. All of these teams are in playoff contention this year.
But against the AFC West teams, the teams we're supposed to beat, the teams I'm told we're really working hard specifically drafting and developing to beat? Damn we stink. We've stunk for a long time against them, and we still do. Yes, we did beat the Chargers (barely) earlier this year, but that's a rarity recently.
Here's the scoreboard, just over the past ten years, encompassing 19 to 20 games each, meeting each team twice a season. Here it is:
Raiders: 10-9 record with one more game against them coming up in two weeks. That doesn't sound so bad until you note that the first five of those 19 games were Chiefs wins to close out a 9-0 winning streak against them. That means since then, we are 5-9 against the Raiders. The Raiders. (Oh, and just make this whole thing much stupider for the Chiefs, the Broncos record against the Raiders in these past ten years is 13-6. The Chargers record? 16-4.)
Chargers: 6-13 record with our final game of this season scheduled against them this year.
Broncos: 6-14 including last night's piddle, their sixth straight win against us.
This --- is --- abysmal.
Yeah, I'd say this curse thing is blistering us, blistering us real bad right now. Right now every single game we play against these particular teams it just looks like they're governing everything. We look like weak limpets out there, allowing them to set tempo, to get off their marks quicker, to dictate what'll happen on every play -- on both sides of the ball.
And this has been happening every single time we play these teams. It really has.
If we're going to be genuine contenders, genuinely sustaining that stature as an NFL elite football club, we absolutely must step it up against those teams in our own division. It's nice to dominate the NFC teams, which we've done for some years now. It's nice to do well against the other AFC teams, again, that AFC East domination this year -- sweet. That's all really nice.
But fughedabowdit if we can't turn this thing around with the AFC West. Wanna be a contender in the NFL without soundly beating the Broncos and Raiders and Chargers on a regular basis?
Fughedabowdit.
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