I believe there was 1 drive in that span where we didn't score, there was also te grounding penalty in there somewhere

Can anyone confirm this?
I remember some huge drops.
Drive killers I thought.

.

I didn't think so.

One drive in the third. Jenkins and Fasano drops.

The other drive we scored a touchdown.

Here is the 3rd quarter drive.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playbyplay?ga...01012&period=3

Here is the 4th quarter drive.
http://espn.go.com/nfl/playbyplay?ga...01012&period=4

Something that as gone somewhat unnoticed/unmentioned (TMK anyway) is that Alex has been throwing the ball intermediate to deep with some consistency as of the last few weeks. The trouble is that the majority of those throws have been dropped by Avery and Jenkins.

I think the biggest reason we killed Oakland on all those screens was because they had a gameplan in place to try and limit our ability to pass by blitzing a lot and keeping their safeties deep to get pressure to try to eliminate those throws and we had a haymaker as a punter punch that they kept walking right into.

T

He says they didn't stop the drive. But there were some long passes that we're dropped.

We did not score on said drives they just didn't die.

Not sure but isn't that the game that Dex dropped the sure TD?
Maybe not.

Looking at the drives, and sure, with hindsight, we should have gone for that 4th and 2 on the Broncos 42 in the third.

Confucius say drops are momentum killers, need port-o-jon...

We also punted on the drive that Fasano and Jenkins dropped 50+ yards of throws that were on the money.

The idea that Alex didn't do anything in the third quarter of that game doesn't hold water.

No, that drop was a long time ago. Dex has been one of our most reliable 4th quarter receivers this year. Since the by week, he had a huge 18 yard and 28 yard reception on a critical 4th quarter drive, in addition to a huge almost TD on the 6 (short by 1 yard due to a face mask).

It is absolutely insane that anyone would give Alex Smith a tough time for his performance against Denver. Look, Alex Smith isn't an elite QB. But he played like an excellent QB that game and did enough to win.

To beat Peyton Manning, your QB has to be close to perfect. Smith was asked to be perfect AND cover up boneheaded mistakes. You said Smith didn't do anything for 2 quarters. In the 2nd quarter, he had a 2nd and 20 forced on him on a horseshit grounding call. In another drive, should probably ask why Dex decided to pin his team on the 3 yard line, which to me, completely destroyed our momentum in that game and limited our playbook on that drive. In the 3rd quarter, one drive was killed by 2 drops. On the other 3rd quarter drive, he didn't convert a 3rd and 18.

In the final drives, rather than say we scored in spite of the drops, it's interesting that people don't point to the fact that Smith overcame an insane number of drops and still got us into scoring distance.

There are a lot of games to pick on Smith. I wasn't please with most of his performances the first half of the year, nor did I at all like his performance at Denver. But against Denver at home, San Diego, Washington, and Oakland he has been outstanding.

Perhaps that the first 8-9 games was the fact that Smith and the whole offense (including coaches) were trying to figure out how they will perform under Reid's new scheme, combined with the timing of the QB/WR/TE's along with the Offensive line.

It's not a coincidence that after 10 weeks (including the bye week) that it probably got to a point where it suddenly makes sense for the players and the timing between the QB's/WR's/TE's has improved and the gelling of the O-Line, combined with shuffling them to find the best players on the line, where everybody's comfort factor has improved, which would correspond with the increase of the PPG offensively.

Case in point. The first 9 weeks, the O-line was a nightmare, giving up sacks from left, middle, right, defenders blowing by them, etc, etc. While they still struggle on certain situations, the improvement on the offensive line has shown. There has been more clean pockets recently than I could imagine during the first 9 games. There's improvement.

And that's the part, where I bolded, (Not directed at you by any means) that people blame Alex for losing the game because the Chiefs only got 30% on 3rd down situations. Well, then who's fault is it for SD's getting 50% of their 3rd down situations? Last I checked, Alex isn't the defensive coordinator or the CB/FS that let a wide open receiver/tight end convert that 3rd down.