Kendrick Lewis vs. Lin El - you know.
 

I shall forever be haunted by the vision of Kendrick Lewis running five yards behind that hotel guy on the long touchdown pass. There was no coverage at all. None. Zero. The hotel guy ran down the field and the second-year NFL legend just tossed him the ball. If Kendrick Lewis had been in the locker room watching Clockwork Orange instead of standing on the field, it would have made no difference at all.

So when we consider the two situations, we can make an argument for one of two players being the GOATest (Goatest of all time) against the Colts, if we disregard off-field contributors like Paul Hackett and Herm Edwards.

The argument for The Safety Who Shall Not Be Named to be the GOATest:

The Baltimore Colts or whoever they are are behind by six points. The safety who shall not be named let a wide receiver run more or less straight down the field for a 50+ yard touchdown catch, and at no point was within three yards of said receiver. The receiver, who no one had ever heard of before this game, ended up with the third-highest receiving yardage total in NFL playoff history. All we had to do was protect a 28-point lead for 1.5 quarters of football.

The argument against The Safety Who Shall Not Be Named to be the GOATest:

The modern NFL is designed to make defensive backs look like chumps. If the safety had approached within three yards of the wide receiver, he would have been called for holding or interference. The marketing department has declared that Andrew Luck will be the hero, not some defensive back who wasn't even a first round pick. Also, there were plenty of opportunities to replace Lewis since it was clear that he was struggling for most of the season, and the Chiefs didn't do it. Finally, we know that the NFL marketing department threatened Lewis' life if he didn't take a fall.

The argument for The Kicker Who Shall Not Be Named to be the GOATest:

The Baltimore Colts or whoever they are are ahead by three points. The kicker who shall not be named missed a 42 yard field goal to tie the game up, adding to the two others that he missed earlier in the game that were 35 and 39 yards. His main job was to make field goals, and he went 0 for 3 when it counted most. The team was much stronger and expectations were higher, so his sin is worse.

The argument against The Kicker Who Shall Not Be Named to be the GOATest:

It was one of the coldest games in NFL history, and the ball was a brick. The other kicker missed 2 of 3 attempts, so it's clear that it was a terrible day to be a kicker. Paul Hackett is to blame for the worst game plan in NFL history. There is also some evidence that the NFL marketing department threatened Elliott's life if he didn't take a fall.

Obviously, it's a team game yadda yadda yadda. Feel free to add arguments for or against.

man...

that's a tough call.

My gut says The safety. If bonehead Bono woulda played...well, like an average NFL qb and engineers at least ONE MORE TD DRIVE, then KC wins.

The safety...has no excuse. it's ultimately on HIM.

The kicker is much, much worse. It is virtually impossible that there will ever be a bigger goat than him.

At this point, all we're really doing is comparing the lower levels of Dante's Inferno.

My theory is that the kicker just got out of the deepest circle of hell. His mistakes had more of a spotlight on them since kickers are kind of solo artists, but if you look objectively, the safety made the worst play since Rahim Moore. (No one will ever top Rahim Moore - giggle.) I think the safety has rightfully claimed the crown as the biggest playoff goat in Chiefs history, whether against the Colts or anyone else.

It was terrible conditions and the kickers were a combined 1 of 6. Granted, the Colts' safety also gave up some huge passes, but we never even saw Lewis in the frame. The highlight reels of that final touchdown will make future generations wonder why there were no Chiefs on the field.

That kicker had three opportunities to win the game. There is a special cell in the depths of hell waiting for him. The back did have more screwups than just that play but it was more of the whole team sh#ting in their diaper.

That being said, How do you let that receiver get behind you at that point in the game.

The top ten receiver performances in NFL playoff history by yardage:

Catches-Yards-Avg.-TD

1999 - Eric Moulds - 9-240-26.7-1
1988 - Anthony Carter - 10-227-22.7-0
2014 - TY Hilton - 13-224-17.3-2
2005 - Reggie Wayne - 10-221-22.1-2
2006 - Steve Smith - 12-218-18.2-2
1989 - Jerry Rice - 11-215-19.6-1
2012 - Calvin Johnson - 12-211-17.6-2
2012 - Demaryius Thomas - 4-204-51.0-1
1988 - Ricky Sanders - 9-193-21.4-2
1995 - Michael Irvin - 12-192-16.0-2

The top ten receiver performances in NFL playoff history by number of catches:

15 - Darren Spoles
13 - TY Hilton, Chad Morton, Shannon Sharpe, Thurman Thomas, Kellen Winslow
12 - Michael Irvin, Darrell Jackson, Calvin Johnson, Steve Smith

Chad Morton? WTF

I found that odd, too.

In 2001, he had 13 receptions for 106 yards against the Vikings, while playing for the Saints.

If you look at that receptions list, almost every offensive player I despise is on it. It's like a jerk magnet. I'm shocked that Elway didn't have a game with 12 receptions.

Objectively, it should be a close call, but I think the nameless one will retain the title in a landslide. I'm not a smart football man at all, but some part of me feels that a historically bad safety can be replaced by the coaches or the scheme can be changed to compensate for the weak link. A kicker is on an island, for better or worse. He can't be replaced in-game and his incompetence or emotional fragility will be exposed and magnified.

Even so, the safety has to merit some consideration for his "body of work" with the hotel fiasco as his magnum opus.

This isn't the first time kendick ended a chiefs season. If you'll recall in 2012 he was beat by Heyword Bey in OT which eliminated us from the playoff.

I should have said "the receiver" , like in "No receiver should have gotten behind them at that point in the game. Hilton is pretty good but we made him into a Jerry Rice.

1995 we were a legit SB threat so Lin is far worse. Not even close. Plus he later insulted the org when he went to Dallas or wherever.

HMMMMMM, WHO'S WORSE, THE SERIAL RAPIST OR THE SERIAL MURDERER???

TOUGH CALL

Kicker.

We didn't blow a home playoff game with the #1 seed.

Therefore, Sin Elliot remains the most evil mother****er of them all.

It's Elliot and always will be.

Lewis is terrible, but everyone in the secondary was getting clowned last night.

The kicker who shall remain nameless was much worse. That team had a legit chance to go all the way. This years model did not.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdW2l-NCYAA_AEM.jpg


Not even looking


https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BdY1bYpCIAAWBJG.png


Sky view

It's gotta be Lewis to me because it wasn't just one game. If he makes half the plays he missed, we don't even play in the wildcard round. I never understood the hate on the kickers either. If your team does their job you shouldn't have to kick. I blame the WR who dropped a perfect pass from Gannon more than the kicker.

The POS Kicker who shall remain nameless was much worse. He did it on his own and that team had the pieces to go all the way.

They must all be Purified Through Pain.

That's 2 TDs we allowed playing Cover 2.

I wonder if we played more zone in this game and didn't really have the practice we needed to pull it off effectively.

I hate Sutton.

The kicker shall not be named is infamous mostly for what happened in that game. He at least has an excuse with the weather. Going back Jan Stenerud had an awful day against the Dolphins on Christmas day but otherwise was a HOF kicker.

The safety who shall not be named was a target for big plays the entire second half of the season. The tip-toe down the sidelines against the Raiders a few years ago is totally forgotten in the suck that was his play. Jerome Woods put in more effort when he came back for a paycheck his last year. The safety who shall not be named could not cover, could not tackle and has no speed. Combine that with zero effort and you are talking epic fail.

Whats even worse in that sky view photo was not sending 1 of the linebackers to blitz. **** Lewis but Sutton sucked just as bad.

I don't know about that, the safety position has so much influence on every defensive play.

considering how badly our defense played, Lewis is a pretty big goat.


The kicker has the more obvious mistakes but the safety has constant mistakes.

You guys act like Lynn Eliot is the boogie man. **** Lynn Eliot but I'm not sceered to say his name. He didn't cost us the last 20 years for not winning a playoff game all alone. Why can we say Scott Pioli, Herm Edwards, Greg Robinson, Carl Peterson, Todd Haley....ect.. ?

Lewis is bad, but 35 points surrendered in 10 minutes doesn't fall on just one guy no matter how badly he played. Receivers were running free constantly no matter who lined up on them. Flowers, Smith, Robinson, Abdullah, Cooper, Berry, all were getting toasted quite handily, and quite repeatedly.


The kicker has one job.

Kick.

If he had a ****ing problem with the shoe on his plant foot as he claimed, WHY DIDNT HE CHANGE THE ****ING SHOE AFTER THE FIRST KICK?

Its a lie. There was no problem with the shoe. Guy was struggling to make PAT attempts earlier in the season.

He had 3 shots at very makeable field goals even for the most average NFL kicker. He blew every one of them and we lost by 3 points.

**** that guy. Seriously. Heard he tried to hang himself but couldn't manage to kick the stool out from under himself.

Not really. I was watching a video of an NFL analyst that breaks down almost every single statistical aspect of the game. Kendrick Lewis was responsible for over 130 yards in receptions allowed in 6 or 7 catches and 2 TDs, which is twice the amount of the next worst offender, Dunta Robinson, who gave up 4 catches for 60+ yards and a TD. Sean Smith did give up quit a bit of yardage, but only two passes were completed on him, one being that crazy catch, so I won't be too hard on him.

The other defenders were, actually, half-way decent. Hand it to the Colts offensive staff. They knew who to target when they were in the game and just crushed them both.

Wrong. Flowers, Cooper, and Smith all played fairly average for CB standards. Robinson and Lewis were awful and the Colts were torching them the whole game. Abdullah was actually pretty good from what I saw. I will agree, Berry didn't perform at the level we'd all expect, but he wasn't the reason we lost. It was 200 yards and 3 TDs given up by two defensive non-players.

Really? I don't remember that.. what did he say when he went to Dallas?

Wasn't he on one of KC's AM radio stations 5-6 years ago? Did anyone catch it? If so, how'd it go? That final field goal, the crowd's reaction and that dude's face is an image that has stuck with me forever...and I was only 11-12 years old, pissed off and punching shit when it happened. I've always wanted to see/hear that asswipe's thoughts on that shit... the only thing I remember reading about from the interview is that he wasn't able to wear the same shoe that he was used to wearing or something and that it was the first time that he had worn that type of shoe.

Actually, the Colts game was Elliott's last game in the NFL. He was at Dallas before he came to the Chiefs.

I saw an interview with him once. He basically said the only thing he could say, something like "I hated the misses, but it was hard to kick out there. The other kicker missed two out of three himself."

The interesting thing about Elliott was that he actually had a good career for the Chiefs on field goal up until that miss. He was slightly more accurate in his two years in KC than Nick Lowery was.

From 12/29

Hmm... That's interdasting. I did not know that.

I've always thought the kicker that shall go unnamedt has been short-changed when it comes to post-season Kicker biffs and their notoriety for them.... That Gary Anderson guy seems to get all the credit. Heck...he was even a subtopic on "How I Met Your Mother." You'll never see the kicker who has the same first name as this chick who was a royal slut a few grades behind me on a show like "How I Met Your Mother."

It wasnt ALL Lewis' fault. Chiefs had a 28pt lead and choked. We didnt touch Luck the defense didnt blitz much.

Those missed FGs were all LE's fault.

Wasnt LE missing FGs prior to that game...he was kinda on a cold streak and that carried over into the playoffs. I was like 10 I barely remember specifics.

I vaguely remember that, too. He was running a little cold.

The weird thing about Elliott is that he had trouble with extra points. His FG percentage was actually pretty good for his era, but his extra point percentage was terrible, both with the Chiefs and the Cowboys. He was a 95.8% extra point guy, compared with 98.9 for Lowery, 98.8 for Morten Andersen, 99.2 for Gary Anderson, and so on. Granted, he hit 24 out of every 25 extra points, but that's four times the miss rate that the top kickers had.

Elliott's career field goal rate was actually also terrible, but that's because he struggled at Dallas. Both years with KC he was pretty good on field goals. I wonder why.

You could say the same thing about the team LE was on.


The team screwed up too much and had to kick field goals. If they didn't choke in the redzone they wouldn't of need LE to kick.

Yeah, I tend to view a one-touchdown offense as being in the same realm of futility as a 45-point defense. It's nearly impossible to win with either.

Hopefully, these guys can find a way to mix the defense from before the bye with the offense from after the bye.

We do that next year, were golden.

Clockwork Orange Rep

I understand the viewpoint I was just more trying to point out in a previous post where the choke job by the defense was an entire team effort whereas LE's FG misses were at his fault alone. LE makes the FG's , the Chiefs win the game. Obviously on Sat, if the Chiefs defense doesn't stop luck PERIOD, they would eventually lose the game.

EIther way...both resulted in same outcome......**** this god damn team.

Nobody in their right mind believed this was THE year. Yeah, a playoff win would have been great, broken the drought, capped off a great rebuilding year, etc. etc. But this was never THE year. Lewis was a liability all season, and followed true to form during the post season. But, his failure did nothing more than make the inevitable playoff loss come sooner.

The kicker who cannot be named cost us a Super Bowl.

Only that it wasn't a "team effort". It was two guys that don't belong in the NFL.

Lewis really blew it this season but I would still give the title to THAT kicker.

The goat of '95 was Steve "Pro Bowler" Bono. People don't even remember how shitty he was on account of the kicker.

Steve Bono 11 25 122 1 3 25

TE and WR on that team were a complete disaster: Willie Davis, Lake Dawson, Webster Slaughter, Tamarick Vanover, and Keith Cash. With Steve Bono throwing to them. Holy crap.

Good ole Carl stuck with Bono through '96 even though it was clear you could not win anything meaningful with that guy.

Agreed, and really for the sole purpose of saying that playing a handful of snaps a game for a sole job that you're being paid to do should be 100x easier than playing 60+ snaps a game trying to cover WRs running down the field at 4.3 speed.

Still though, I'll give Lewis one infamous honor. Worst safety ever to wear a Chiefs uniform.

I have no problem calling him THAT safety though.

what happens if good ole Andy sticks with Ken Lewis in '14?

bring out the banners LMAO

Not for Andy but for THAT safety.

That is a good point to bring up. Didn't Bonehead throw like 5 picks?

Oh well, I vote for the horrible safety.

Replace LE with Adam Vinatieri and we win that playoff game, but with that offense, we weren't going to get past Buffalo or the NFC powerhouses.

Replace Kendrick Lewis with Ronnie Lott or an Ed Reed or a Kenny Easly and Sutton's defense is going to hum (when healthy). We probably would not a SB winner, but I think it would put us in the hunt.

The whole defense collapsed when teams realized that we had no ability to double team anyone deep.

I don't think he can. Bono actually played a decent game manager role until the playoff meltdown. Lewis has been a dumpster fire for half the season. He is the weakest link in the secondary, playing the most important secondary position in Sutton's scheme. If we leave Lewis as the single high safety during next season, we won't win more than 6 games.

Nahhh, impossible we would have won that SB... Steve Bono wasn't a 1st round pick, homeslice.

Sutton already has 6 (current/ex) pro bowlers and one of the most expensive defenses in the NFL

Sutton could have 10 hall of famers on his defense and still **** it up in my opinion.

You really cant get any better than what we already have. He has more toys than most d-coordinators in the NFL that are doing way more with little.

Minus THAT safety.

I hear a lot of Wookie screams about how bad Sutton's scheme is, but I don't know how many people really understand it. I have some level of understanding, but I'll concede there are probably a few people who understand it better.

I'll start with the assumption everyone is healthy. Obviously this is going to vary with down and distance and substitution packages.

I'm going to focus on passing situations, since that is where the breakdown occurs. Typically pass rushers will be Poe+Hali+one more. Houston will join them 3/4 of the time and fall into coverage 1/4 of the time. Berry and Houston will blitz occasionally, and anyone else is rarely in the pass rush scheme. In the secondary we are heavy in man coverage. If everything works right the man coverage cuts off short throws, and the pass rush gets there before the long patterns open up.

In pass schemes, Berry typically locks up with the TE and you have 3 CBs locked up with the 1, 2, and 3 WRs, with DJ picking up any backs that enter the pattern. That leaves one player, Kendrick Lewis, to provide over the top help on all the deep patterns. So he has to 1) read who needs help the most (most often the deepest receiver), and 2) get there in time. Secondarily, he needs to close quickly on any underneath receiver and make a sure tackle. This is a tough assignment and you need a stud to do all of these things well. Kendrick Lewis is not that guy.

Our pass defense fails in one of 4 ways:

1) our corner backs get beat quickly. Pass rush doesn't matter because the QB can get rid of the ball too quickly.
2) our pass rush doesn't get there at all. This happens most often when Poe is tired, Hali is held, and/or Houston is injured.
3) the corner gets beat on a deep move, and Lewis doesn't support the deep throw.
4) We don't tackle well or take the right angle and the receiver gets all kinds of YAC. This wasn't happening early in the season.

Having a good FS tha knows where to run, is fast enough and able to tackle when he gets there addresses 3 and 4 directly, and gives the corners more confidence to play more aggressively on 1.

Sutton's scheme can work with a good FS.

Ken Lewis made yahoo today

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-sh...8393--nfl.html

Apparently he so terrible the Colts playbook was based on Luck just looking at him, checking him off and then basing the pass opposite of Lewis's body position. Sad really.

I guess, to summarize the article, they took advantage of Kendrick's bad habits, most notably being slow at turning his hips. The article was being fairly nice to Lewis, but you won't find a national article that just flat-out bashes a guy. It was another way of saying "they were going after Kendrick Lewis all game, and he wasn't good enough to stop them".

Lewis almost single-handedly lost us multiple games this year.

Go back to every one of our losses and watch the tds we allowed...Lewis was involved in a staggering amount f them.

I just don't understand how Lewis was able to stay on the field as much as he has when Abdullah has clearly been the superior player since camp. Same question arrives when I wonder why they let Poe get so winded instead of playing Powe more. Powe has kicked ass every time he got on the field.

All you have to do to fool Lewis is wear the opposing teams jersey and he will personally escort you into the end zone.

BossChief, I agree 100%. Want to improve our defense A LOT? Simply get a better (i.e.competent) free safety. Kendrick did nothing all year. Still, it bothers me more that the coaches continued to start him. What am I missing???

Since we are pretty much hosed at FS and Byrd is gonna be expensive. What about moving Berry to FS and go after a SS in free agency. Maybe bring Pollard back he seemed to play better once be left KC.

Compared to what we had in other years, that's an all-star line-up. That was Cash's best year with 42 receptions. Dawson had 40 catches. Davis fell off hard that year after years of 900 and 800 yards and yet his 16 y/c was just out of the top 10. Vanouver was a return guy. Kimble Anders was their leading receiver. Really not a lot different than 1994 under Montana.