Ten Things About Last Night's Game

[gblowfish]

Ten Things About Last Night's Game

10) I was guarded in my optimism going into last night's game. I haven't been able to make it up to St. Joe this year, but some of my best buds have, and I trust their judgement. They said offense still looked weak, and they're still not sold on Cassel as a legit leader. To me, he still has a slight stench of Grbac about him. I hoped the first string offense in general would play better. On defense, considering we went in tied at 3-3 at the half, I'll take that every time this year. Succop doinked a 53-yarder off the uprights, or we would have had the lead at the half. And the first half is really all that matters in these games, the second half is a battle of "who's third stringers and cuts are better?"

9) Who looked good? Charles looked like Charles. He averaged over 9 yards a carry. McCluster looked great on the sweeps, but I'm afraid he may get killed if they send him across the middle on a pass pattern. I know the guy is tough, but this is the NFL. I love his burst, he seems to have a fifth gear that our other backs, except for Charles, don't seem to have. The new DBs all looked pretty good. Berry made a nice open field tackle, Kendrick Lewis looked good on a safety blitz. Arenas averaged over 28 yards on kickoff returns, and had a TD called back on a hold by Cole (which should get him cut in the first cutdown, btw). All in all positive production by all our top round picks. Studebaker looked better

8) Who not so good? Both starting offensive and defensive lines. Falcon's first string guys pushed our defensive front all over the field with real vanilla straight ahead running plays. That's not good. I can't remember seeing an outstanding play by Dorsey or Jackson. They had four tackles between them, and no sacks. Considering how much we have invested in these guys, they should have a bigger impact. Leonard Pope sucks at TE. If he catches the ball, he falls down immediately. That's if he catches it at all. He has hands of stone. His only positive is he's 6'8". Even at that, Cassel overthrew him. How do you overthrow a target that's almost seven feet tall? Let's hope Brokiaki can get over his Croyle's disease and actually suit up and play. Speaking of Brokie, his interception was ugly. I think we have to look for a better number two guy. He's never won a game in the NFL, and I just don't think he's got the chops to be a winner. Palko? Telegraphs his passes. He's going to get his receivers killed. I'd rather have Shane Falco as my third guy. Ryan O'Callahan was basically a speed bump all night. He got beat over and over and over again in the first half. Barry Richardson looked a little better, then he got a leg injury at the very end of the game. DJ was basically invisible the whole game. Disappointing. He seems to either be all impact, or useless, no in between.

7) Todd Haley's body language on the sideline was interesting. Looked like he was doing a slow burn the whole game. He stood around with his arms crossed glowering at this players, and had some terse exchanges with some of the sideline coaches. Seems like the front office has drilled it into him NOT to make scene on the sideline this year. He's trying to stay calm, but you can see his true angry nature boiling under the surface. I predict he'll have a couple of Lou Pinella type explosions in pre-season. He just can't help it.

6) So far not impressed much with Charlie Weis. I know we run a pretty vanilla offense in pre-season, but we only threw the ball more than ten or fifteen yards twice that I can remember. Both times the receiver -some scrub named Horne- was wide open, but our QBs couldn't come close to hitting him. Lots of little dink and dunk passes. I'm afraid we're going to have a lot of six yard passed on third and ten again this year. And that makes me crazy. Special teams looked decent, our kicking and returning game should be above average this year.

5) When you compare the stats in the game -except for the score, of course- it looks more even than you might think. Chiefs gained more yards, had more first downs, went 50% in third down conversions, and ran the ball for 4.6 yards per carry. The big difference was turnovers and sacks. We had two picks, one fumble lost, and two sacks. Falcons had no turnovers and gave up no sacks.

4) I noticed our skill guys kept falling down on cuts a lot. Falcon skill guys seemed to have better footing. You'd think our equipment staff would get the right shoes for indoor field turf for our guys. Maybe their players are just more used to the Georgia Dome surface than our players, although our new indoor training field should have a fairly similar surface.

3) On the TV broadcast, this years pairing was Trent Green and Mike Kelly. Kelly is the radio play by play guy for Mizzou. He seemed to struggle. He mis-identified running backs several times, and Trent Green had to tactfully correct him. I think Green is very good. He's smart, and I can see him taking over for Len Dawson when he retires. Lenny is starting to get up there, and probably won't do games for too many more years. Green would be a natural replacement. I couldn't listen to Mitch and Lenny, because the lag between the TV broadcast and radio broadcast was about five or six seconds, and that was making me crazy. Radio was ahead of the TV. 101 needs to fix that, or lots of people are going to have to turn the radio off. It's just too distracting.

2) Tony Gonzalez looked great. But we got Arenas for his pick, and I feel like that's a good deal for both teams. Barring injury, we might have the best young secondary since we had Ross, Lewis, Burruss and Cherry. That's saying something.

1) Overall, I think we'll improve maybe by a couple games this year. I think 6-10 is about right. I'm just not sold on Cassel. He's been injury prone, he's not an accurate passer, and Chambers, who is supposed to be a main weapon, had one catch for six yards, so you can't tell much from that. I think teams will stack up to stop Charles on the run, and dare us to pass. When we do, there's no guarantee we'll be able to pass protect well enough to keep Cassel from throwing picks or fumbling, like he did last night. If Cassel goes down, we're really screwed. Croyle just isn't the answer. I'm not really disappointed, last night was about what I expected. It would just be nice to actually win a game now and then, even if they don't count.

[DaneMcCloud]

Originally Posted by DeezNutz

Be optimistic that this will be his last year in a Chiefs uniform.

Will that apply to the rest of the '09 draft class?

[DeezNutz]

Originally Posted by DaneMcCloud

Will that apply to the rest of the '09 draft class?

I appreciate your optimism.

[jAZ]

Originally Posted by loochy

http://bigearcreations.blogspot.com/...1_archive.html

One of my favorite all-time stories is about Elvis Grbac (left), Rich Gannon (right) and People Magazine's Sexiest Men issue from 1998. It is both outlandish and 100-percent true.

Back in the day I knew many People staffers, and they were all cool, fun, intelligent-and woefully ignorant about sports. Every year, in planning the Sexiest Men issue, People's editors would ask a bunch of us at Sports Illustrated for suggestions and insight. In 1998, for a reason I'll never understand, they decided not to seek out help.

The magazine chose Rich Gannon as its Sexiest Athlete. At the time, Gannon was a member of the Kansas City Chiefs. Still a couple of seasons removed from his golden tenure with the Raiders, Gannon was 33, handsome and likable. In other words, a solid choice. Yet People, being People, simply informed the photographer assigned to the piece that the Sexiest Athlete was the Chiefs' quarterback. Hence, he took pictures of the Chiefs' quarterback. Well, one of the Chiefs' quarterbacks: Elvis Grbac.

Yup.

The pictures made their way back to the New York offices, and editors were dumbfounded. This was their Sexiest Athlete? Yet upon learning the truth, no one with the magazine had the heart (guts?) to tell Grbac that an unfathomable mistake had been made. As a result, Elvis Grbac reigns as People's 1998 Sexiest Athlete.

The article's final line says it all: "His personality makes him sexy."
Amen.

[TEX]

Originally Posted by DeezNutz

Nice job with this post, dude.

Disagree with the above, though. If you told me that we'd trade Gonzo for a nickle corner/return specialist, I would have preferred to keep TG to help with the development of Cassel and the offense as a whole.

Yep.

[Ugly Duck]

What I learned from watching the Chiefs 1st preseason game: A defender cannot just take a line on Charles & expect to tackle him. He just jukes & squirts out of the way. It will take at least two defenders to corral the guy. I hate him.

['Hamas' Jenkins]

Originally Posted by tk13

I think people forget when Weis was OC for the Pats, they excelled in the short passing game. That was their bread and butter. They didn't have Moss and Welker... they'd put 4 and 5 WR's on the field, spread you out and Brady would cut you up with the short passing game. I kind of expect us to have a similar approach. I think that's exactly why we drafted who we did offensively.

That's really only partially true. The one year they ran that a lot with Weis as OC was 2002. The opened against the Steelers in the first game @ Gillette Stadium on MNF. Brady threw the ball all over them, and people were talking repeat.

They promptly went 9-7 and missed the playoffs. Lo and behold, they trade for Corey Dillon and become a much more balanced team that wins two more Super Bowls, despite never having a true #1 receiver.