First Units Impressions
 

Things that I noticed off the bat:

Offense:

Alex Smith - Looked good except for a couple of misfires. He was hit way too much in this game.

Eric Fisher - Looks alright but he had a couple of glaringly bad moments, both against Hardy. Completely whiffed on a pass play and run play. He played better than I expected but not as well as you would hope.

Run plays - We were successful almost exclusively on runs to the left of our formation but anything going to the right was almost always stuffed right away.

Interior OL - It's about as bad as I thought it would be. Star had his way with Jeff Allen way too often. Fulton is a terrible blocker in the screen game.

TE Fasano - I think he is best described as slow but steady. I hope Kelce replaces him in the starting role sooner rather than later.

Bowe - Looks like he did in the later part of the season and into the playoffs. He'll be fine as long as he stays healthy.

DAT - Fast as hell with great vision and showed fantastic awareness and burst on his carry.

Knile Davis - For some reason, he looks slower to me this year. I thought he was Gray on a couple of plays. He had one bad play in pass pro but was ok otherwise.

Play calling - Way too predictable but that's the pre-season for you. Expect them to open it up a little more in week 3 for the dress-up and then shut it down for week 4 before the regular season.

Defense:

Houston - He looks sluggish out there and really ineffective. This is the guy that everyone wants to extend for $60+ mil a year? Could just be him being out of shape from his holdout but we'll see if he can turn it on for the season.

Hali - Same as always. Steady and high motor player who shows no quit. Looks much better than Houston.

DBs - Can we please switch to Seattle's cover scheme? We lack the dominant, or at least technically sound corners, that can run the man coverage scheme effectively. Cooper is our best CB and he's still a bit too raw to be trusted on an island. Smith just doesn't really have the foot speed to be effective in man coverage, especially with the new rules today.

Joe Mays - He's an upgrade over Jordan so far, at least as a blitzer and in the run game.

DL - Poe looks solid and was held on an awful lot of plays. We still gave up the short TD runs far too easily though.

What did you guys notice out of the first unit out there?

My impressions:

Our offensive line is extremely suspect unless I'm underestimating Carolina's defensive line

As much as I want to see Bray get a chance I like Alex Smith. Guy has game game 7 Stanley Cup playoff look in his eyes.

The secondary is not good. Bottom of the league with the exception of Berry.

DAT has Dante Hall potential. His speed and shiftyness is amazing.

Why didn't we draft a WR last draft?

Noticed the same about Fulton. The guy is slow as shit in the screen game. It's too bad Rishaw Johnson isn't out there and I'm pretty upset he pissed his season away.

Agree that Smith had a solid game even though he was knocked around. I'm not going to knock him for throwing lots of designed screens, which is what you'll see a lot of in the preseason.

I think right now the biggest problem with the defense is coaching. I would hope that Sutton will be held accountable if this doesn't shape up. Our secondary sucks and we know that, but it doesn't explain enough why our talented players are not playing well.

This team is what I thought they would be. Lots of young guys who will make mistakes. A few pieces away. And a DC who should be coaching to save his job... at least, I hope.

Fulton is atrocious in space.

How did Rishaw Johnson piss his season away? What did I miss?

Our OL would be fine if Jeff Allen didn't suck so much AIDSshit.

He's our worst starter by far.

He had 1 terrible play, but against that front 7, all things considered, our OL was fine.

You may be. They have a pretty good front 7.


I thought the first half was mix and match, but a little more good than bad. Still sloppy but better than last week. I'm actually more optimistic than I was heading into the game, because I expected the line to get steam-rolled.

Carolina has the best front 7 in the NFL.

4-game drug suspension. He was probably going to be the guy starting, not Fulton.

Oh, I posted about it in the chat earlier but I feel like Knile pokes around too often in traffic. I'd like to see him choose a lane and hit it hard and fast.

Of course, sometimes he's showing good patience, but more often than not I'd rather see him just lower his head and build up some steam.

That was Rokevious Watkins, not Rishaw Johnson.

Watkins has since been cut from the team.

Debatable.

Rams
49ers
Seahawks
Cardinals
Broncos
Texans

They are all up there with the Panthers. Panthers have several players who are dominant as hell though. Johnson, Hardy, and Lotulelei are all monsters and Kuechley is as good as they come at LB.

Agreed, he dances around a bit too much for a back who weighs 220+.

Shit, you're right. So then I have no idea why Fulton is out there. Either way, it should be Fulton and Rishaw. Get Jeff Allen the **** out of there.

OL issues are being blown out of proportion.

Defensive issues may be an issue.

With their 2 ILB"s they're better than any of those teams.

Maybe the Texans when healthy though.

49ers have Bowman and Willis . . .

Sure.

But the Panthers 2 are better IMO

thry were worse last week?
what is the over under on smith making 8 games

I've noticed you've said this a couple times.

Thomas Davis is an OLB. The Panthers run a 4-3.

Defensive coaching is a giant question mark going into this season.

Eh, I would disagree with you. There is no tandem better than Bowman and Willis when they are healthy.

I was thinking it was a hybrid.

Not really.


It's pretty obvious they suck.

I think Willis is a bit overrated at this point in his career to be honest. He's good, but he's got/had great guys in front of him.

Most great ILB's do though.

I don't think the PFF review of the game will be kind to them.

I just posted this in the game thread but Dee Ford and Vance Walker are getting tossed by 3rd stringers right about now.

Of course they're not starters but they're supposed to make an impact this season..

I wasn't really counting on Ford making an impact this year. I don't expect him to play much until Hali is gone.

I need to look at the Chiefs 2016 FA's to see who they are going to target in the 2015 draft.

You're right. The Secondary BLOWS and the scheme combined with the new league emphasis on defensive holding could spell DISASTER.

Yep. 2nd year in a row.

I need to see more of Ford.

Fisher needs work.

LT - Fisher
LG - Allen
C - Kush
RG - Hudson
RT - Stepenson

I don't think we should rush Fulton. I'd slide Hudson over and see how it goes.

I really like what I see out of Kush.

Id be all for running a zone defense. we simply do not have the personnel required to run press man effectively. the new rules makes it even worse. I really think you need a guy like revis, or Patrick Peterson to line up with the #1 in order to run a good man d. And then you need some solid guys after that guy.

We have WR's getting open down field. Gonna have to keep being aggressive towards that.

I was also pretty disappointed with the pass rush. There were some plays where cam had the ball for a very long time, and the pass rush didn't get there. What makes it even worse. Is that Carolinas o line is pretty suspect.

I want to see Kelce with the first team next week. I don't care how much you're paying Fasano, he's not dynamic like Kelce is with his speed. To make matters worse, I don't like how he has been juggling passes lately.

Our O-line played horribly. Get that fixed and we might be able to do something on offense.

60 mil a year not.

Yeah, Houston might as well have not been on the field. Seemed like the only time that we got any pressure at all was when we blitzed a DB. That's not a good sign, IMO.

I said the same thing in Chat during the game.

Sutton needs to get his shit together because his scheme sucks asshole. We should have the talent to be able to keep 2 safeties back most of the time

Fisher got beat like a dog in a trailerpark.

Fisher was ****ing awful. OP, what game were you watching?

I saw him make a lot of solid blocks and look bad on a few. I said he looked better than I expected because I expected Hardy to just destroy him on every other play, that didn't happen and Fisher held his own more often then not.

Btw, he still seems to lack some power in his left punch. The bad pass blocking attempt that he made really reminded me of Baker's failed attempt on Clowney that resulted in a sack. Fisher looked slow with his reaction to the outside rush on that play and I have no idea why it took him so long to react and get his hands up.

Sadly, yes. The NFL had a chance to really poke at this and actually enforce the pick play. They did the opposite and that hurts the Chiefs. And once again, I worry that we're running an obsolete scheme. The 2-gap seems to be in some trouble as you can tell with the Chiefs targeting smaller DEs, which is going to make it harder for the Chiefs to swap those guys into a 4-3 nose as the traditional Ryan defense likes. The corners are too big if the defense can't even play press anymore. The main thing that makes the scheme innovative right is Berry, and if he's playing more single-high, you take that edge away too.

I think our defensive scheme is in big trouble. What scares me is that I almost feel like we need a Romeo-bad / Pioli-bad year to convince Reid to make a coaching change. If Sutton is anything but disastrously bad I worry he'll still stick around. So I find myself again in the awkward situation of wondering if I should be rooting for our defense to suck.

Simply didnt want to hear them at first, but the cornerback meltdown crowd my not be far off the mark.

Its been very shaky so far.

That hardy breakdown on Fisher on that run play. A run play!

Knile would have benefited from a few things.
1. Make 1 cut and go.
2. Get behind Sherman build your speed and hit the hole he creates. There may only be two people on the entire team who are as good or better at the one job they have than Sherman(Charles,colquitt). Get behind him Holmes and t.rich style and run. Jamaal can be patient because he has a lightning first step. Knile seems to take 2-3 to really get moving.
3. Don't go to the right. Period.

only read the OP, My impressions Your QB's better call their AFFLAC insurance rep real quick. The line can't pass pro for s__t. The Panthers do have a pretty good pass rush, though.

Kelce is impressive, real speed and good hands. Once you've got Charles back things will open up a little.
Chiefs and Broncs about the toughest schedules in the league this year. Going to be hard to equal last years win loss totals.

The OL issues annoy me, the DB issues make me want to not watch.

+eleventybillion

I'm not sure what to expect of Fisher after having two offseason surgeries and spending all spring rehabbing from injury. It is expected he will struggle this year.

For a coach who loves to call screen passes, you'd think the team would have retained and/or grabbed some guards who can pull and move. As far as the DB's are concerned - wow. Not much you can do with an absence of talent in a league that already hamstrings DBs.

they sucked. period

First unit offense was pretty good.

We were missing our best player and going against the best front seven in the league.

Fisher made a couple of mistakes but was good 90% of the time. He's almost good enough and will be soon imo. Allen and Stephenson were not good.

Bowe stepped up but he's done that after the media got all over his ass before. I'm not going to get excited about last night's performance.

If we are going to run a bunch of screens the receivers need to block much much better. All of them sucked in this area (even Bowe).

Alex looked good to me.

Succop won the job last night. Santos sucks on kick offs.

Fasano is as solid as ever. He will continue to start over Kelce because he can block.

Davis did a nice job imo. He held the ball well against a damn good defense.



First unit defense looked great.

Carolina's first three drives were three and outs.

Parker lost the job last night because that's twice he hasn't been able to get his head around and it's cost us both times.

Mays looks really good. He's the best player we've had next to DJ since switching to the 3-4.

Sorenson needs to wrap up and quit going for big hits.

We never need to have Abdullah lined up over the opposing #1 WR. Even if Hali is going to bump him. That's an disaster waiting to happen.

Bailey has gotten better for sure.

Owens looks good in the nickel. He might be an upgrade over Flowers.

I wish we had drafted at the 28th spot instead of 23rd.

Please trade for alex Boone.

This x100. I'd trade a back-up QB and a 5th for him in a heartbeat. Maybe a 4th given the fact that he is one of the best guards in the league.

When the time clock finally hit 0:00, it felt like getting the life support machine unplugged from the wall after living as a vegetable for Eleventy Billion years.

Hell, Boone can play tackle lol.

Don't let his size fool you.
He is NOT a power back.

Shit, Jamaal is more of a power back than he is.

But he is a home run threat.
We have 3 of them on the team right now.

And pay him with what? Dude wants to be paid like the top OG he is and we don't have the money for him right now.

Check the bold! :)

Haven't you heard, the salary cap isn't real.

Bowe hopefully shut some people up, he looked solid.

Kelce is going to be a great weapon.

O line sucks dong.

I'm excited that Kelce is doing well. We desperately need a good TE.

Yep

Jeff Allen is our most consistent Olineman, consistently bad

the rest are wildly up and down

seems like they take turns screwing up

Solid?!?

He supposed to be elite.

That's OldSchool for ya, ladies and gentlemen.

Doesn't want to pay out the ass for Justin Houston.

Wants to pay out the ass for Alex Boone.

Alexes Smith and Boone are all you need to build a championship team.

So you think Houston actually looked good out there and the interior of our OL isn't a major issue? ROFL

You're splitting hairs.

He looked quicker than usual and was catching every throw, no sign of finger problems... I was pleased with his showing.

Not really

He's not just supposed to be another guy.

He's supposed be a #1 elite receiver, who forces the defense to account for him on every play. Not only do defenses not have to do that but he doesn't even dominate on just regular 1-on-1 coverage.

I guess we have different opinions on what an elite,top 10 wr is supposed to do.

You don't think defenses game plan for Bowe?

JFC.

Anytime someone mentions the Chiefs offense 3 names always come out. Charles, Bowe, and Smith.

All of our guys have been hot dogging it, IMO. That's why we haven't been hearing a damn thing about Houston, DJ, Poe, or even Hali.

You do realize that Houston is playing for a contract, right? You really expect him to go out there and risk injury in an exhibition game?

Very little. He is not Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, etc.

If he's playing for a contract then he should be proving his worth any chance he gets, even if it's just the pre-season.

Yeah because we so often hear, "remember the play he made in that preseason game".
He should be playing but trying to protect himself. He has had injuries before and he needs to stay as nick free as possible. Preseason doesn't count or mean very much.

I guess Hali didn't get the memo to take it easy then.

Preseason means nothing to an established veteran.

Houston is, at the very least, borderline elite. He stands to gain absolutely nothing from making a good play in preseason and stands to lose everything on a freak injury.

If I were him, I wouldn't be going all out either.

well that's a lame excuse