We need to do better on short yardage and goal line this year. Hopefully Steele will help with that.

We'll just call this Spag's Senior Moment. The prescription of which is winning Super Bowls. Time to up the dosage.

We were actually still 6th in 3rd down conversion percentage last year despite being one of the worst teams on 3rd and short and being bad inside the 20. Really quite a feat.

The turnovers and such killed the offense last year. We're all so used to it being just a monster offense.

By the end of next season this secondary will be even better than it was with Sneed. We have an unbelievable amount of talent there.

I think McDuffie is at least as good as Sneed in coverage, with fewer penalties, and Hicks may rapidly become the best safety on the roster if he isn't already. We're fine.

Spags hella wants Lamar to throw that way, it’s just mind games lol.

Between Williams, Watson and Johnson, I have literally zero doubt that at least 2 of the 3 will step into their roles and be solid players at the very least. It's unlikely any of them will ever be at Sneed's level as far as playmaking ability, but McDuffie will be taking over that role anyway.

As the kids would say, I have 99 problems, however, a #2 cornerback on my favorite football team is not one of the problems that I currently have. Or something of that nature.

Trading him was the right move, but that doesn't mean he won't be missed.

Last year we had 2 of the 5 best corners in football and both of them were elite both outside and in the slot, which helped Spags significantly.

The interesting thing about this year is who is gonna play the slot? It wouldn’t be wise to put McDuffie in the slot against a team like the Bengals when Chase and Higgins are lining up outside. You always want to match your best with the offenses best.

Conner is gonna be really important playing the slot. He needs to do that at an effective level. He was good at tackling and covering TE’s, but it’s the shiftier fast guys with lateral agility that worry me a bit there. Williams and Watson are outside boundary corners who cannot play the slot. Hopefully Nazeeh Johnson can be that slot guy as well. Really high hopes for him.

There’s gonna be a decline in corner play after losing Sneed. No that’s not gonna wreck the offense, but I wonder if teams will pick on one of the guys who is replacing Sneed.

Also I don’t buy the Kelvin Joseph stuff. I don’t think he’s that good. I do like Nic Jones though.

Defense is so much about the group as a whole functioning together. They'll need some guys to step in and play well, but even then there's gonna be some fall off.

Defense is volatile year to year.

They're gonna need a lot more turnovers.

3rd down efficiency is insanely volatile. Year over year, it means very little. There's an excellent chance we regress quite a bit on 3rd downs. And that was how we got teams off the field last season.

Not really through sacks and definitely not through turnovers. But by coming up with big stops on 3rd downs to force punts.

We're gonna have fewer of those without Sneed and due to simple regression to the mean, IMO.

The team could really stand to damn near double their turnover output. League leaders had 31 last season, league average was about 24.

The Chiefs had 17 and were as close to last (11) as they were even league average. They were quietly really bad at forcing turnovers last season. 5th worst in the league.

So they need to add about 10 turnovers this season (and ideally subtract about 5 on the offensive side). And if they do BOTH those things, they'll get to about +4 in giveaway takeaway. There just aren't many teams that have won championships with a -11 turnover margin.

They'll need to fix that. I figure they probably will.

They won the Ravens game because they were +3 in turnover margin. They won the Super Bowl because they managed to stay even. And they put themselves in real trouble against Buffalo because they went -1.

That has to be (and, IMO, has been) a real area of emphasis for them this season. Turn the ball over on defense, be a little safer with it on offense. You're not gonna live on 3rd down stops alone again.

Yup but I think that the offense scoring so much is gonna put them in far more favorable positions. It wasn’t often that we had teams in a hole having to pass last year.

I think this offense can do what they did in prior years and get up on teams fast so the pas rushers can pin their ears back again.

Moreover, IF the offense is back, you'll see more aggressive 4th down decisions against us. So some of the 3rd down stops we do get are gonna be mere preludes to the money down to begin with.

Gonna need more splash plays on defense.

IMO, the issue (if you wanna call it an issue) with the turnovers is they play alot of man on the back end. You just don't get many turnovers doing that.

They've gotta blitz alot to get sacks, really need the front to show up and let them play some more coverage.