Agree 100%.

With this running game, Mahomes, Kelce, and Hill…damn we’re hard to stop. If we even get a solid WR2 out of Gordon….good Lord.

Without 4 turnovers the Chiefs could've put you in at RB and been fine against the Chargers. Its amazing how quickly we forget how easily the Chiefs moved the ball in that game because guys had butterfingers.

And again - you're missing the point here. I'm not saying going out there and being the 2020 Bills is a great plan (though the Chiefs weren't far removed from that last season). I'm saying that the Chiefs are already equipped for a sufficient running game to keep teams honest. The OL they have and the RBs they have can do that. They just have to execute better than they have been.

The Chiefs should still run the ball less often through the first 3 quarters than any team in the league. They should still run the ball less often than any team in the league on 1st downs. They should still see the running game as nothing more than a complement to their passing game. And if they do nothing more than use the running game to force teams out of sell-out tendencies, they will remain the most prolific offense in football.

They have more than enough firepower to do that.

This idea that we should be handing the ball off 25 times/gm to 'keep teams honest' is just wrong. You don't need to do that. 15 times against soft boxes and in short yardage situations is plenty adequate.

Folks, our own defense just isn't good enough to go out there and hold teams down in tight ballgames. You don't want it on their racket. And tilting the knob more towards a ball-control offense will do nothing but keep games closer for longer and put more pressure on a defense that just isn't good enough for that. You don't want the game shortened. You want this offense to stay on the attack and put opposing offenses into more do or die situations that allows the defense to simply its approach.

We aren't built to be a run first team. Or even a 60/40 pass/run team. Everything on this team is built to get a lead and press the advantage. Trying to emphasize the run game is to play into exactly what your opponent wants you to do.

7th in the league in rushing yards in this offense is pretty damn good.

This is the most critical point.

For whatever reason they were focused on outside zone early in the season. And that's super-strange since many of us looked at the personnel they brought in and thought they might get out of a zone-blocking system altogether. They don't have the OL to do that terribly well, let alone the RB.

By emphasizing the inside zone (which still seems slightly more complicated and unnecessary given the strength of the OL) they've been able to be more than good enough running the football.

If you aren’t 1st you’re JAG - Tribal Warfare

Yes. Yessir yepp! Know the strengths of each back and use them. The HOLES the interior line was opening up were insane!

Just as awesome; The power tosses to DW gave me the chills! Then again inside ! Let him pound it Great game plan.

Throw it all over the yard in the first three quarters then salt it away in the fourth with the run.

The offense in 2021 is the best it’s been since Mahomes got here. If they wouldn’t have turned it over like dumb jackasses, they’d be averaging, not scoring occasionally, ****ing averaging 40 points and be sitting at 4-0.

A legitimate possession WR would help more.

And that's definitely been a problem for a few years. We just don't have enough size (it was especially obvious when Watkins was hurt).

Hill can do some amazing stuff in a phone-booth to create space, but when you're in the red zone and there's less grass to cover, you need a guy who can just go get the football and present a big target. That forces teams to be more aware of the shorter zones.

Obviously Kelce is Plan A there, but there's not much of a plan B apart from those RPO actions that can sometimes free Hill up off the line.

A healthy Watkins was huge in that regard and Gordon very well could be.

As for the rest - again, short-yardage rushing is more about your OL. The biggest problem last year in the red zone and short yardage run game was an OL that just couldn't get any push. This line is a much different animal and Clyde can absolutely take advantage of it.

Yeah, I keep seeing folks say "The Chargers have found something against the Chiefs' offense" based on the Week 3 game, and it just doesn't hold up.

The Chiefs cut through that defense, generally, like a hot knife through butter. The 3 early turnovers changed the entire course of the game. If Kemp catches the ball and scores (like he should have) and the uncharacteristic fumbles by Hill and CEH don't happen, you're adding at least 13 points to the board for KC.

The game is likely 10-0, possibly 14-0, entering the second quarter, in KC's favor, and the Chiefs having gained around 150 yards.

When CEH fumble occurs, they were in FG range and facing 2nd and 7. That's likely at least 3 more points, which makes it 17-6 at that point. Here's how the rest of the scoring would have progressed from that point:

17-14 after Chargers TD + 2 PC
20-14 after Chiefs FG
Halftime
27-14 after Chiefs opening TD drive
34-14 after Chiefs force punt and get ball back and score TD
34-21 after Chargers TD at start of 4th
41-21 after Chiefs TD with 6:43 left on the clock

That game was a blowout in disguise. People just aren't seeing it.

Yup.

Nothing has so much has slowed this offense down apart from shooting itself in the foot.

"We need someone who can keep teams honest to prevent them from locking down Kelce and Hill..."

Who's done that? So far the only teams that have been able to so much as lock one of them down have then been gouged by the other one. The only way to slow down Hill and Kelce is to harass Mahomes and the changes on the OL have made that MUCH more difficult.

The offense is excellent as presently constructed. There's no need to go out there making things easier for the opposition by focusing on a less efficient, less productive way of moving the football.

I’m skeptical he will be but if you get a decent Josh Gordon…I’m just not sure what you do.

Hope they go full chargers and fumble it away? That’s about your best bet.

You might be right. But how about we upgrade our absolutely atrocious defense first and then focus on if CEH needs to take a hike?

Its just like the last 2 years. If our defense is AT LEAST middle of the road, we're Super Bowl contenders.

I know people like to believe that we were just SO much better with Hunt, but the truth is he had 1 100 yard game that season, and he had less than 4 YPC in more than 1/3 of the games he was available.

Now, a lot of that has to do with the OL, but this fantasy that we were way better with Hunt is just that.

I could have ran through some of those massive holes. This Oline can run block its ass off.

I'm more intrigued by how Mahomes utilized a true 'possession receiver' more than anything.

Will Mahomes get to a point where he's willing to throw a ball to Gordon when he's not conventionally 'open' with the belief that he'll go get the ball? And I don't mean the sort of 'throw him open' thing he does with Hill and Kelce.

I mean the sort of "that guy has 2 people draped on him but I'm pretty sure he can catch it anyway" kind of thing that Cassel did with Bowe because he just didn't have a plan B.

Because I don't expect that Gordon's going to go out there blazing past people or breaking open on triple moves. He's gonna have to use his body and his length to take balls away from guys. Will Mahomes use him that way when his entire time in this offense hasn't really been geared for it?

I'm not even talking about short yardage.

When you're on the 10 yard line I want to be able to run a toss or stretch and a RB have enough burst to beat a guy to the pylon.

CEH doesn't have that burst. Damien DID. He scored a TD in the AFCCG to give us a 2-score lead just like this.

We're going to come up against a team who's coverage is good enough to shut our receivers down in the red zone. When that happens I would really like this team to have the ability to just get down their and force our will on the opponent.

Better blocking helps of course, but I do think having a faster RB would help immensely.

I'd like to see them run some designed plays where Hardman motions into the RB spot and gets the ball. You can build off that by faking it to him and letting him run circle routes out of the backfield.

No, he probably doesn't.

But we also don't have the OL designed for that sort of approach. You still need someone that can curl and get a seal block in there. Or some really difficult reach block. Or a pulling G or something along those lines. Your OL has to be extremely athletic in space for those kinds of plays to work from that far out.

Ours just isn't that kind of OL. And to my eyes we intentionally got away from that when we moved on from more mobile guys like Fisher, Wylie and Schwartz and replaced them with straight up maulers like Brown, Niang and Smith.

The only RBs that could house one from 10 yards out by simply sprinting to the pylon are generationally fast guys - the CJ2K sorts. That's just not a reasonable expectation. No, Damien Williams wasn't just outrunning guys 10 yards past the LOS and blowing angles apart. He had athletic blockers that could get him that edge and then he could outrun a MLB. For most guys they need blockers that can get 1 or 2 key blocks in space. Our line's just not built for that.

He doesn’t

Don’t ask him to, run straight ahead

Problem solved

Having a WR who can fight through contact on slants and drags and also make high-point catch plays will help in those goal line situations as well.

And I also like the idea of using the jet sweep/pop pass threat action in the red zone to force defenses to defend horizontally. Should improve success rate in running the ball inside in tighter situations as well.

Chiefs are about to be in the top 5 for rushing yards, and it's not because they upgraded the RB position.......

Mahomes was great in the red zone yesterday in terms of making quick decisions. That’s not the place to ad lib. Play within the offense down there

If we all can see this, why cant the coaches? He just runs into the pile so many times when it looks like he has room to run if he goes left/right. That seems to me to be a core skill that's needed to play RB in the NFL.

He's done a good job reading the holes the last couple of games. Granted, some of them were massive, but he had a few were he popped out into the B gap and found some room to work.

That's where both he and his OL strengths lie. I suspect we'll see more of it going forward.

That's hasn't been true these last 3 weeks.

If he can keep running the rest of the season the way he ran yesterday he should statistically finish as a top 5 RB.

Here's something I've noticed. Andy used to be known for his screen passes, like an obnoxious amount of screen passes in his offense. CEH seems like a perfect fit for the screen game but we don't run them with anywhere near the same frequency that we used to. So...what's up with that?

We've run a few more than it seems - they just haven't been working terribly well.

I think part of it is the youth on the OL. 2 weeks ago there was a screen that could've busted for 20+ yards and there was one guy to beat. I think it Smith who was looking downfield instead the guy immediately to his left and the LB just cut in behind him to blow it up.

If Smith takes that guy out, it's a big play. And until Andy sees it work routinely in practice, he's just not going to lean heavily into the screen game.

Also - remember that screen plays really depend on aggressive defenses to work. If you have teams looking to drop into short zones in order to keep Kelce contained and they keep 2 safeties back to keep Hill from going over the top on them, that's just a real nasty look to run a screen into because there are so many defenders still out in front.

Mahomes is so good against the blitz that running an aggressive D on him is damn risky. Part of the absence of screens is almost certainly the defensive looks we're getting because you just cannot fly upfield against this offense. And if you do, PM is so good at hitting the vacated space, you just kinda let him do that instead of forcing a designed single-look play on him.

Short answer may just be that the offense is too good for screen passes to work all that well.

Most obvious difference is likely our center.

o

This is the answer.

Or in other words, the Screen is thought to be an effective tool against man coverage in which the defenders back's are turned to the play, and they can be locked up and isolated.

It's considered to be rather ineffective vs zone defenses because the defenders are always looking forward, allowing them to easily sniff it out and run downhill to gang tackle.

And as we know, no one would dare play the Chiefs in man coverage unless it's in very specific spots.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try it, or at least find creative ways to get the ball in the hands of CEH/Hardman etc.

Hardman was very involved in the short passing game on Sunday.

I took him off the list because I really didn't feel like having the 'Reiter sucks at life' conversation.

But yes, Humphrey is a far stronger player at the point of attack and should help immensely in our efforts to run between the tackles.

CEH should be used more in empty sets, IMO.

I don't even care if its as a WR3 sort of player. Go into the huddle in a 'heavy' formation with CEH and Burton, then send CEH in motion into the slot with Burton in the backfield to pick up a blitz.

The defense will see your FB in the huddle and stay in their base defense. Then you can get Clyde in space. He's really a good route-runner so you can use him in ways you can't use most RBs.

Trying to use him as a poor man's Bell in the passing game should work pretty nicely. Especially if you use it as a tendency breaker.

It's refreshing to see that Clyde was held back by the ankle injury in preseason and not the hip injury in 2020.


He clearly has improved burst and that is making his vision look better too. I think we dodged a bullet.

Clyde has 0 rushing TDs in 4 games.

Don't care what you say, his burst ain't good enough.

Damien was scoring gobs of TDs in the postseason with this team.

Because they sub in Williams or just throw one of those middle screens.

Williams has vultured a couple TDs from CEH.

His burst is IMPROVING and not where it can get to yet hopefully. He was clearly being affected by his ankle and is getting better.

He's had 4 red-zone carries and averaged 6.3 YPC.

He's had 7 carries in short yardage situations (1-3 Yards to gain) and averaged 5.3 YPC.

The problem is that he's had 58 rush attempts and 43 of them have been on 1st or 2nd and 10. When we shouldn't be running the damn ball anyway. And that's where he's been pretty mediocre.

He's been fine in short yardage situations. Hell, he's actually been pretty good at it.

You're seeing what you want to see here.

CEH doesn't have the power to get in there.

I see a guy who can't scoring rushing TDs.

How about a juke buddy?

:facepalm:

Williams burst is noticeably worse than Clyde, but he has rushing TDs. I fully understand you don't care what anyone says, but it's meaningful information.

For comparison: Darrel Williams:

4 red zone carries for 1.5 YPC.
9 carries in short yardage (1-3 yd) situations at 3 YPC.

The Chiefs are splitting the short yardage carries pretty much down the middle but it does look like Williams is getting the real easy cracks. His 3 YPC has still been good for 8 1d in 9 attempts. That sure as hell looks like a team that's using him as a power back.

And Williams has taken 14 carries from under center vs. only 7 in shotgun. Clyde has 28 carries from shotgun vs. 30 from under center.

They're using Williams a bruiser back, which is probably smart as he's just a bigger RB and if you're going to look to take some hits off Clyde, that's the time to do it.

To this point its largely been a usage thing. CEH has been good in short yardage spots and very effective in the red zone.

Clay is so ****ing dumb :facepalm:

I've been one of CEH's harshest critics since he came back from his injury. His game yesterday was what I've been waiting to see. Anyone who finds fault with his performance yesterday is just nit picking. If he continues to play like that we'll be in good shape going forward.

My only complaint on Clyde yesterday was a few times he went looking for contact when he could have just tried to make a guy miss and saved the wear and tear a little.

And as far as screens go, i think the jet sweeps have effectively replaced a portion of the screen game andy used to run.

Edit: I've said it before and ill say it again. I think people are remembering Damien Williams in a light that just isnt accurate. He was speed and a home run hitter and that was pretty much it. I think the Clyde pick was a partial over correction looking for a consistent 4-5 yards instead of several 1 to negative 1 yard runs hoping for a 50 yarder.

Pardon me if this has already been posted.

CEH is averaging 14.5 carries a game for 72.8 yards -- for 5.0 ypc.

He only has 7 receptions on the season, however, at 7.1 ypr. That seems less than ideal.

That's not how it works on CP. If you take a stance, you do not relinquish any ground, and you NEVER say your were wrong.


EVER.


With that said, he's trending in the right direction. At least he's not actively hurting the team anymore.

Because he has power.

CEH isn't a power back.

DW is their best option inside the 5.

Stick to making nerdy Chiefs highlight vids.

This. This. This.

I'll stick to deferring to Andy Reid's opinion on who our best power back is.

DW continues to get those carries for a reason.

And before that 1 postseason where he scored a bunch how was he in regular season?

Thanks for asking.

He scored five rushing TDs on 111 carries behind a far worse OL.

That'd be like Clyde scoring 10+ this year. Think that's happening?

Guy in my work league dropped CEH after last week because ... he's a Vikings fan, I guess, or just a complete mohran?

I would drop a RB who can't score TDs.

He had a good game yesterday. He definitely left yardage on the field that a more explosive back would have taken advantage of, but that's the limitation you deal with when you trot out a back who runs a 4.6 or whatever. He will never be that guy.

But if the dude who showed up yesterday shows up every week, I'll have a lot less to complain about.

I would love Damien as a complimentary running back to CEH and I still don’t like that we released him.

The CEH or Damien conversation is dumb, because we could (maybe should) have both. McKinnon makes $900K to not play. Damien’s dead cap is $500K.

If we still had Damien, he would be making around $2 million this year. Unless I’m missing something, we only saved like $600K by releasing Damien.

What am I missing here?

You are really putting in the overtime lately on trolling. 5 TDs in 16 games and you are making comparisons like one of them is Marcus Allen and the other is Jackie Battle?

JFC

Damien did not play 16 games in 2019. He only started six games.

He only had half of the carries that CEH will get this year and scored 5 TDs.

Do you not understand logic?

I understand your entire argument is completely meaningless as has been shown on the field and by the prolific offense so far this season and last.

How? If Damien had received an entire season's worth of starts, like CEH is going to get, he'd have had 10+ TDs easy.

CEH may never crack that.

If he got that much work he'd get injured.

And he'd probably give way to Williams and go-to-go situations.

Clyde looking good but I hope we don't fall into the trap of running to much. You can run when it's there and they are just giving it to you or on 2nd/3rd and short, and in the goaline. That is about the only time this team should be running the ball unless up by multiple scores.

186 rushing vs the Chargers
200 Rushing vs the Eagles.

Hard to argue with that sort of production.

If Mahomes continues to improve his small ball game, and the Chiefs can continue to run like that, NFL defenses will finally be forced to change how they play us.

Add in a big-body receiver like Gordon to make our small-ball game even more potent....

Except we’ve been running as much as we have this year, and Mahomes is still torching teams on a weekly basis.

We hardly resemble the Baltimore Ravens on offense.

If we can continue to run the ball this offense will be unstoppable like we have never seen. The only thing limiting the points is turnovers (which should go back to their normal low rate) and limited possessions.

The offensive efficiency cannot be overstated, they are killing it with limited opportunity.

I just looked it up and I was off previously, typically teams see 12 possessions a game on average, we are lucky to see 8 with our defense.

I am really hoping Gordon can help open things up for Mahomes & Kelce/Tyreek. It would allow Mahomes to not try to force the ball in bad situations on 3rd down. The horrible defense is putting a lot of pressure on KC to score a TD on every drive. Maybe Gordon can reduce this pressure by giving Mahomes a good 3rd option and taking away some of the double-team coverage on Kelce/Tyreek.

Clyde will score at least 9-10 TDs this season. Just looking at the schedule, and assuming that the OL stays healthy, he'll probably score 3-4 over the next four weeks. Then maybe 2 over the next 4 weeks after that, and 3-4 over the last 5. And that's if the OL doesn't get any better in run-blocking and executing screens.

But as the OL gets better in both areas, CEH will likely see a significant increase in scoring production. It's not hard to project him scoring 10 TDs this season, so long as the OL stays healthy and continues to improve overall.

Silliness.

In 181 carries in 2020 CEH had one fewer rushing TD than Damien did in 2019 on 111 carries.

CEH simply isn't as effective at scoring the round brown pigskin.

Do we count the inside screen yesterday as a "rushing" TD for Clyde? I know we like it as a passing TD for Pat, but that was essentially a goal line plunge for Clyde.

With perfect blocking, the defense thinking it was a pass, and Clyde having to get zero leg drive to get in. No.

Derrius Guice, a former mentor of Clyde and Darrel Williams at LSU, will be able to return to the NFL after week six. His off field issues are now behind him and he's a former second round pick who is still 24, hasn't got many miles in his wheels and ran a 4:40 at the combine. Imo we'd be crazy not to put him on our practice squad and let him work his way onto the roster. The Browns didn't care about Hunt's video, Tampa didn't care about AB's various off field issues and teams are currently trying to trade for Watson. Imo Guice would be the most talented back in our RB room if Veach has the guts to pull the trigger. He's a home run guy which we simply don't have right now.

I'd absolutely give him a shot. Of course, I absolutely would have kept Kareem as well.

To build on this: we're #1 in points per drive at 3.56. No other team is currently above 3 points per drive. The only teams to maintain 3+ points per drive for an entire regular season: '13 Broncos, the '98 Vikings, the '11 Packers, the '10 Patriots, the '11 Saints, and the '07 Patriots. We truly are killing it with limited opportunities so far this season, even with a higher turnover rate than we're accustomed to.

Red zone TD % has shot up to 80% from 61% last season.

We're also #1 in 3rd down conversion % at 64% which is insanely good. Next best team is the Chargers at 54%.

(I stole all of these stats from cthepo, who did the legwork, on the Chiefs subreddit)

I’m in favor of adding as much talent to the team as possible. One way to offset the shitty defense would be to strengthen the offense to the point it has zero weaknesses. Put about 50 or even 60 points on the board every week. Challenge the rest of the league to match it, even against a very weak KC defense.

Nothing to worry about until you start playing elite offenses like Buffalo. Can't fall into the trap of running to much against those types of squads. I'm not even sure our defense CAN let up less than 31 against Buffalo.

Going to be a shoot out.

While Guice would be an excellent addition, i don't know that Clark would sign off on a guy who was suspended for choking out his GF. After the Kareem Hunt thing and the Tyreek thing, idk.

Both guys are still incredibly talented players in the League. If you could get a guy like that for "free", why wouldn't you?

I'm not certain he will - at least not on the ground.

Williams is absolutely the power back and probably will be for the foreseeable future.

Again - the reason is pretty obvious. You rotate your RBs out to keep them a little fresher and minimize the risk of injury. And short yardage plays are always where there's the least room, the most bodies and the greatest risk for some kind of bad roll in a pile.

So let's assume for the sake of argument that Williams is exactly as good in short yardage situations as CEH is - he's NOT faster and he's not better in space. So if you're going to replace Clyde with Williams, you'd do it in a situation where you're not giving those traits up. That's short-yardage.

And that's before you consider that Williams, because of his build, may just be a better extremely short yardage back than Clyde.

Unless you decide to commit to a single back as a 3-down bellcow (and I think we can see at this point why that's not a great idea in the modern NFL), there's just no reason not to send Williams out there for those short yardage situations. Clyde needs a breather at some point, it takes hits off him in a situations where he's going to get hit, and Williams may even be better at it than CEH is.

Unless Reid cares about stat-padding (and he doesn't), then it makes more sense for Williams to get those carries anyway.

Oh for sure. I'd welcome Guice here. But the guy has a lengthy track record of domestic abuse. Hell, he was accused of raping two chicks at LSU, as well as domestic abuse. And then there he goes again abusing some more once he got into the league.

He might be TOO toxic for the Chiefs. IDK, we'll see.

I feel like Tyreek is still on the team because the Chiefs deep down know they jumped the gun on releasing Kareem. Maybe they dont want that added baggage but it was night and day how those 2 situations were handled and the accusations against Tyreek were far worse than what Kareem did.