A Level Headed Review Week 2 2023
 

1. Chris Jones return was huge for the Defense. 1.5 Sacks, 2 QB Hits and 1 Pass Defensed. FAU, Danna and Karlaftis showed up huge in QB sacks and pressures. Lawrence was very uncomfortable in the pocket on many drives. Chenal showed up clutch on a few plays most notably not being fooled by the screen pass on 2nd and ten that led to the third and long before Jax turned the ball over on downs.

2. The offense looked much better today, catching the ball, RUNNING THE BALL!. On 3rd and short handing off to Pacheco on the inside rush for a first down instead of trying to be cute. Smash the football down their throat - Pacheco can get you one yard. Toney and Moore atoned for their drops 5/5 for 35 yards and 3/4 for 70 yards and TD respectively. The Jax defense is a good defense, while we didn't play perfect and still have A LOT of room for improvement we definitely ironed out some of the more fixable problems.

3. Jawaan Taylor - this is going to be an ongoing issue with the refs I'm afraid - PTW seemed solid in relief. I'm not sure what to do here bench him and play PTW? Try and trade him? I don't know what the answer is - if he can't figure out his alignment and make his kick out closer to the snap - we can't keep hurting our offense with silly penalties.

4. Travis didn't quite seem himself today - I'm sure the knee is still bothering him. But a hobbled Travis is still better than no Travis.....just like Mahomes. Mahomes on one leg is still a damn good QB. Hopefully he can get healed fast. We are going to need him at 100% to get our offense fully back on track. Love the Kelce punt out of the end zone after his TD. Classic Travis.

5. Pacheco looked like Pacheco again 12 Carries for 70 Yards and 5.8 yd average. I love his running style and that 31 yard rip was a thing of beauty. I just wish he could have put it over the goal at the end of the game for a nice cherry on top of his running day.

6. Justin Watson was clutch again. All this guy does is catch critical passes. Not my favorite WR but he I is definitely a lunch pail guy ready to work. His fumble was just good work on the DB part.

7. I do feel like everyone is still running in sand - there is just no explosiveness yet - not sure if it's still knocking the rust off of the offseason or what. I would expect next week we will see a much more crisp game with our offense. This would have technically been week 1 this week.

8.The James fumble. He just lost it in the Sun. Period. That is gonna happen. While I think he needs to improve on offense I'm not worried about his KO/PR skills. Maybe he should have let it go IDK but is Toub is worried about it I'll let him address it.

I don't think I've ever seen the NFL and officials single out a player like they did today.

It's a load of horse shit.

We were moving the ball just fine until we fumbled (Watson/Toney)and got Taylored by illegal procedures and false starts.

I’m not worried about the O.

You can't say this is a levelheaded review and then talk about benching our new 80 million dollar tackle after 2 games.

:facepalm: I assume you would just let the league continue to kill our O with penalties. I said I don’t know what the answer is. But he is marked man.

I don’t like complaining about officiating but the only thing that bothers me is that this was a non-issue (this year and last year) with Taylor until Collinsworthless complained about it for three straight hours. He clearly had never seen Taylor before because I remember thinking they were false starts every time last year. Not a peep out of the media until he came to KC.

Drives me crazy.

Chiefs were a complete shit show with discipline issues and basically scored 24.

They'll be fine.

Agreee. He earned some of them but that was mostly a hit job.

There's a massive amount of middle ground between allowing a player to have that many penalties and benching the guy.

How about he makes a few small changes and proceeds as the far better option at tackle than the turd you're promoting.

If you're gonna pull this shit every week you'll need to change your thread titles.

You're getting pretty damn good at this, DC

Loved all of it, there are honestly sooo many positives to take from today

Jones triumphant return
Holding a loaded offense to 9 at home
Moore developing chemistry with 15 on a clutch drive
Karlaftis shows up again
FAU flashes yet again
Pacheco ripping off runs
3rd and 1? FIRST DOWN
Rice got valuable work
Even Nnadi was balling
Grey played his part
Chenal beasted
This speedy young secondary smothering fools

The score wasn't flashy, but the play on the field damn sure was

^

Jawaan will be fine. He'll just move up a couple of inches and attention will move elsewhere.

And then call it on EVERYBODY that does the same, otherwise **** off refs.

It is impossible to play at that high level forever.

7. I do feel like everyone is still running in sand - there is just no explosiveness yet - not sure if it's still knocking the rust off of the offseason or what. I would expect next week we will see a much more crisp game with our offense. This would have technically been week 1 this week.

Also this, we've played moar games than anyone in the NFL the last 5 years. Not excusing it, but c'mon man.

2 drops, 2 personal fouls - Kelce needs to get his shit together. He'll be fine, but today was not a good debut to 2023.

3/62 and lost fumble is clutch?

James doesn't seem to have a place on this team. He's showing no explosiveness on returns, and invisible on offense. A major disappointment so far.

I'm not super worried about the squad at this point, but this is anything but "level headed" - this is rose-colored glasses.

That’s the worst thing about NBC’s coverage. They were there for the Playoff game last year when Taylor was false starting on every play for Jacksonville. Collinsworth and NBC didn’t seem to give a damn at the time.

Very excited by what I have seen from this season

I have every reason to think that the offense will get their act together. Just need a little time to work out the kinks with the young WR core. We have seen the defense get better as the season goes and I believe that is what we are going to see from the offense this year.

But that defense. Can't say I saw this coming but they look great. Not allowing a TD against anyone in todays NFL is outstanding. I look forward to seeing more of what they can do. Giving Mahomes a great defense look out NFL

Defense with back to back good games. This crew is starting to look scary, and as we know, Spag's defense only improve over the course of the season. I like it!

WRs did better. When did we exchange MVS for Robinson? WTF is with the running backwards after catching the ball shit? Get the first down, go execute on next play.

Kicking game was great. Butkicker is nails, and Tommy is putting on a punting clinic.

Pacheco is the man. Please start using him more.

They'll figure it out with Taylor... if he's really played the same way all his career, it'll take more than a sudden in-game adjustment in an already new offense for him.

I think we often take for granted that the NFL looks like a well-oiled machine at times, but really it's not... and it's often hot garbage. New guys need chemistry, have to adjust to new shit, and preseason obviously isn't enough.

Talking about benching or trading is premature. The entire offense is still trying to figure shit out and there's no reason at this point to assume they won't.

Jawaan has had more penalties than any other linemen, this was an achievement he brought to KC. Guarantee this guy ****s up the cruicial play in the playoffs. Surely there is someone better they could get for the same amount of money.

Also, nobody talked about Jawaan during the previous season because he played for a shit franchise, he is no longer on a shit franchise. Defending champs have someone on the Oline who gets 4-5 penalties in one game all from him? looks pretty stupid. NFL is a bottom line business it's a miracle this dude has made it this far.

It was a non-issue until Collinsworth decided it was an issue. Ergo, the league now targets him.

A Level Headed Review Week 2 2023
 

If we eliminate bad football and play good football we will win more games.

SCIENCE!

Zay Flowers and Bryan Cook will be on a special Law & Order SVU

Dude put the pipe down. I literally was asking a question. If you re- read the sentence. “What do you if he can’t make the adjustment?” You are jumping way over board on this one. Step away from the keyboard and go get some fresh air.

I don't know what the answer is - if he can't figure out his alignment and make his kick out closer to the snap - we can't keep hurting our offense with silly penalties.

This isn’t a do it today comment. It’s a future can’t fix himself comment.

I was thinking more of:

3rd & 10 at 50
(13:35 - 3rd) (Shotgun) P.Mahomes pass deep left to Ju.Watson to JAX 16 for 34 yards

1st & 10 at KC 25
(13:43 - 4th) (Shotgun) P.Mahomes pass short left to Ju.Watson to KC 40 for 15 yards

:rolleyes:

<iframe src="https://giphy.com/embed/TL6poLzwbHuF2" width="480" height="354" frameBorder="0" class="giphy-embed" allowFullScreen></iframe><p><a href="https://giphy.com/gifs/big-dude-jeff-TL6poLzwbHuF2">via GIPHY</a></p>

I was really impressed with the Defense. They were the toughest unit out of all of them in some really horrid conditions and playing a shitload of snaps. Holy shit. That’s not what I expected. That’s also not what I’ve seen in a long long time.

Maybe Jacksonville sucks :shrug:

Offense needs to happen or this boat don’t float. I still have every confidence it will, but the execution was ****ing ugly.

Kelce looked hobbled at the end. Hopefully he can recover.

Hopefully we rape the Bears for a half and get the offense right and then rest guys. But we know that won’t happen because we never blow anyone out.

I think this is more about trying to fire a team up. Nothing more, nothing less.

Pretty much, collinsworth has hated the Chiefs for decades, he was successful with all the Kareem Hunt chatter, tried again with Hill, he’ll latch onto anything that might hurt our success.

I only saw the highlights and we had three turnovers in the first half on the road and still had the lead?, how did that happen? Dick Vermeil’s head is probably exploding.

I think every week there will be a different WR that stands out a little bit, we're a committee at the WR position.

I'd swap James out for Toney at KR & PR.

Defense is looking really good.

Goddamn. Feels good to get a win and the rest of the division to eat Ls.

Dropping passes and ripping his helmet off in frustration is firing the team up? ROFL

Because we are now THIS:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c6/af...00f216e35d.jpg

The 49ers had the #1 defense in the 1980s.

It is a vastly undersold and underrated part of their dynasty.

Great offenses make great teams. But dynasties ALWAYS have ONE THING in common.

DEFENSE

https://scontent.fmkc1-1.fna.fbcdn.n...uA&oe=652F02C0

A storm is coming.

Nobody going to point out that if the Jaguars receivers could handle the complexity of keeping their feet in bounds/toe tapping, Sunshine's stat line has him eviscerating the Kansas City Chiefs for multiple scores?

All things being equal, Jacksonville beat themselves.

Dont get me wrong, it's great to see a traditionally slow starting Spags unit that doesn't start slow or just drop its panties in the redzone for 7, and definitely raised the difficulty level, but these young receivers for the Jags, they are the MVPs for KC. 0/4 redzone for the Jags. Half step better on the offense, those are big touchdowns. Good on the defense for making those plays difficult plays and not cakewalks.

The sheer refusal to run the football in the first half is concerning. Andy has got to be better in balancing this out. Started the second half with a bang, huge run by Pacheco, followed instantly by Andy grabbing his own ballsack and squeezing hard, throwing ****ing Clyde in there for a run on the ensuing play to just bring everything back to a screeching halt. I'll never understand why this receiver keeps getting snaps at running back for rushes. He's a receiver. That's it.

It was nice to see Andy finally take that HUGE gamble, and just run behind the best interior line in football for one yard with Pacheco.

Teams are wise to all of this cute shit, because this is two weeks in a row all of the artsy fartsy pirouettes and dancing in around in grandma's panties has simply ended with a massive haymaker to the jaw by the defense with the play utterly, hilariously destroyed and seemingly the d saw it coming a mile away.

Sometimes, you just need to line the **** up, and just play ****ing football. Stop going for the sucker punch and just go straight ahead. Andy outsmarting himself on every third and short is excruciating. I have NEVER seen a team convert so poorly on and 1 distance, with the alleged best play designer in NFL history. Give me 3rd and 15 over 3rd and 1 every time. Just take 3 delays, and hit the 27 hard gainer to move the sticks.

It was a sloppy game. 3 turnovers in a half usually gets you beat, but Jax looked very poor today also.

It was good to see the pass rush getting after Lawrence. Chris Jones unfortunate combination of both greed and stupidity has resulted in a situation where he's gonna have to perform at the highest of levels every week, just to break even with what he would have gotten if he'd just reported from the jump, which is a massive boost to that defense. He was on limited snaps today, which has to be frustrating when you're jumping off the screen and you have incentives to meet.

Kelce and Oluakon had some things to say after the game with Mahomes having to step between the two. Kelce out of sorts and clearly not 100%, and two 15 yard penalties called on him today, invoking memories of a younger more hot-headed version of him. Not sure what he has going on, but he's been short tempered all through camp as well. Hope he can get it in check. It's definitely not the same guy we watched last season emotionally.

As they say, a win is a win. Another week to get things cleaned up, and another opponent we should handle if we play Chiefs football.

As for Taylor, he will adjust and be fine. The crew in this game didn't want their asses cooked by the league office for not flagging the guy they sent a tape out about. Line up one step forward, and stop with the early jump shit. The holding call on him was atrocious. The league got their little crackdown they wanted, and things should loosen up with the blatant targeting going forward.

Better balance of run and pass, and emphasis on ball security this week should be the main points, and send Travis to anger management.

This spags D should feast on Justin Fields next week.

Part of playing good D is using the boundary lines as an extra defender. Squeeze WRs to the boundaries is a fundamental part of modern defense. Gives them less area to operate and since push outs are not a auto catch anymore it gives the DBs a bit of an advantage.

Lane Johnson is a savvy veteran getting an advantage.

Taylor is cheating.

What's the difference? I think you know.

A less than 100% kelce is definitely better than not having him at all. Guy still commands attention. I'm mean on 3rd and goal late in the game, he was hit by 3 defenders as he tried to catch the ball.

I agree with almost all of this - the Kelce stuff is just Kelce being Kelce - I don't think this is a regression, I think it's his way of getting his team fired up. If it continues into other games and starts to negatively impact the team it will be concerning - until then....

I think the holding calls were still targeting him, I think because they couldn’t throw a flag for a false start or lining up wrong they were throwing holding flags as retaliation anyways. Jags were holding way more blatantly and being praised by the announcers for it.

A side note from the game today

Calvin Ridley vs KC 2/8 32 yards (Sneed was on him most of the day)
Calvin Ridley vs Ind 8/11 101 Yards 1 TD

That's part of it, part of it is they biffed it up.

Lawrence missed quite a few pretty easy throws too.

We're not ready for playoff football yet, but us overcoming our adversity (which was worse than theirs) and them not, is at least encouraging.

I’ll say one more thing. Donovan Smith is as advertised. Timely holding penalties have haunted him his whole career. I used to hate Andy Heck, but I think the players we had just sucked. Dude has been damn good with what we’ve had the last 4 years. He made OBJ, and Wylie look serviceable (but also Mahomes did) but he’s earned me eating crow. I think he’ll get this figured out. But both tackles have had some penalty issues over their careers. Expecting them to change their spots at this point in the game is likely not happening. Just be glad Smith is on a one year deal.

Lawrence narrowly missed being broken in half backwards on that second lateral pass. Jones dragging him down from behind, and then colliding with another Chiefs defender face first folding him backward. Scary looking but he came out of it okay.

Sometimes it's better to just take the damn sack lol.

Chiefs. Jaguars

Penalties 12-94 2-10
Turnovers 3 1

I can’t believe we held a likely division champ under 10 on the road with those ^^^^ numbers.

Spags, take a bow.

Where's George?

Brett? Retired.

Totally forgot to mentón Donovan Smith got his first career reception today for 0 yards.

Lol, he caught it so cleanly that for a second I thought he was the intended receiver.:eek:

Heard on here there's a statue of him

I agree abut not being ready for playoff football

Here is what is really encouraging. The Defense under Spaggs has always really improved as the season has gone on. Most years they were starting in a much worse place.

The defense has been elite the offense has really struggled. Good news the next 6 teams we play pretty much suck. Kelce will get healthier if the Tackles can even be just average I haven't seen another team in the AFC that looks to be a problem for us

Etienne averaged 5.1 yards per carry last year. Chiefs held him to 3.3 today.

Not enough is being made of the Chiefs run defense.

Chiefs D has been the MVP so far...

I just don’t worry too much about the offense. The defense being so good gives me a ton of hope. We know the offense will come around.

It’s like if the Golden State Warriors start a season cold from 3. You know that will come around. You don’t worry too much about it.

There’s work to do, obviously. Reid and Mahomes are too damn good for the offensive struggles to continue. Clean up the penalties and get Kelce back to himself, it’ll come together nicely. Mahomes was 25/32 on Non-Kelce targets today.

Good morning slut - def. agree here IMO

Hi! I also agree with the thing that I posted.

While we're talking about the Cheifs and all, I don't much mind Ian Eagle but the other dude :rolleyes: I swear I wanted to punch him as hard as possible in the arm when he didn't even acknowledge that dude tackling Sneed and not mentioning the OPI. Heck even Kyle posted about it and he only posts once every 10 years or so.

Charles Davis has indeed got significantly worse since leaving Fox for CBS.

Today was the first time it really stuck out in a bad way for me.

I'm listening to Art Bell podcast from Halloween 1998 - fixing to use the Jews Brazzers login information he'd shared.

We should riot about it IMO.

I'm down

Going to write a sternly written email to CBS before I exit the hot tub

FaceTime me so I can join in.

I want to see CP torpedo this individual, I know that's sick but that's where I am at in this matter.

We can always dox the information on his Wiki page. :fire:

Dar CBS,
You mother****ers. Shit.

Signed,
BB

I wanna catch him lackin in the parking lot

The Chiefs got two key players back and both made the difference in the victory today.

The entire AFC west except Denver is 1-1 right now. Who would have thought that coming into this year's regular season? I thought KC and LA would be 2-0 and LAR would start the season at 0-2

McDuffie is such a shutdown dawg. Him and Cook are the catalysts of the secondary.

The Chargers are 0-2

Behind the Statue?

Patriots have 6 SBs. Guessing this graphic was put out before 2019.

I thought:

- Defense was excellent, obviously. A nice surprise. Jones makes a massive difference, no surprise. DEs looked good, Christ, even Nnadi. Sneed had a few wobbles but I think improved, McDuffie is a stud. I think Williams might be a better athlete than Watson, but right now I'd take the latter. Tranquil looked a little lost at times, when he figures it out we can go another notch up.

- Offense was pretty ugly and I don't think there's a single reason. WRs not separating, Mahomes hesitant, OL was poor, bad play-calling, refs, silly mistakes. Just a bag of ass and one of those days.

- Refs were awful. Just incredible they singled out Taylor that blatantly after Collinsworth's comments. But also...

- OTs. Smith is exactly who he's always been, hopefully Heck can work his magic. Taylor just needs to figure this out. I think he will, but you can't pay $20m a year for a guy giving up those penalties.

- WRs. Good on Moore, promising in patches. I think Toney did OK but wilted, kinda expected given no real off-season. Marginal improvement on the last game maybe?