KC defense ready to ice vanilla look
 

KC defense ready to ice vanilla look

Chiefs don’t want to show too much but say they must improve.

By ADAM TEICHER
The Kansas City Star

Notes: No sign of Holmes

Herm Edwards wants to see the Chiefs play defense with a lot more fire than they showed in last week’s loss to the Giants.

One way to get that fire is to turn up the heat. Edwards hinted that the Chiefs, after playing mostly plain, basic defenses in their first two preseason games, might do just that in Saturday night’s game against St. Louis at Arrowhead Stadium.

“We’ll just see,” Edwards said. “Let’s wait until Saturday and see what we do.”

Edwards is conflicted about the defense, which has been a pushover in two games. The Chiefs have yielded a ton of rushing yards and have made no momentum-generating big plays.

The Chiefs haven’t forced a turnover and have just three sacks.

Edwards wants better. He also wants to keep the defenses as plain as possible to reveal as little as possible about their regular-season plans.

Something has to give, and it might be the need to hide their plans.

“This is the third game, so you might see a little bit different,” linebacker Derrick Johnson said. “Whatever we’re going to do, this is the game to do it. We won’t be as vanilla.”

Vanilla isn’t the normal way of defensive coordinator Gunther Cunningham. Blitzing and getting pressure on the quarterback are his favorite tactics, so sitting by idly while opponents take advantage of the Chiefs has to be killing him.

“A little bit,” Edwards said. “You want to work on fundamentals, but you’re right, we’re playing it real vanilla. People know what we’re doing. They can sit there and game-plan for us all they want because they know what kind of coverage we’re going to run.

“We’re trying to implement some things and see if players can play them. That’s very, very important. Believe me, Gunther has a bag of blitzes. We can blitz. We know how to do that. We can put pressure on the quarterback if we need to do that. But we want to get some basic defenses down first. We need to get some principles down. That’s important.”

The Chiefs worked in training camp on some exotic defensive tactics but used precious few in the exhibition losses to Houston and the Giants.

“I believe the coaches are doing the right thing right now in keeping it vanilla,” Johnson said. “They’re making sure we’ve got our base defense down. We can come with the blitzes. You know Gun. He can fire off some stuff. We know his mentality. Right now, he’s probably biting his tongue sometimes. But we’ve got those plays. We’re going to get to that.

“When you play like we’ve been playing and when teams know what you’re going to do, they’re going to get some stuff on you. That’s OK. The coaches know what they’re doing. We’re buying in.”

Safety Sammy Knight agreed.

“What we’re doing is fine,” Knight said. “We’ve just got to play better. It starts by playing with more emotion. If you do that, the plays will come no matter what we’re doing on defense.”

Despite some otherwise gloomy defensive statistics, Edwards sees one positive in the pass defense. The Chiefs have not yielded a throw of more than 15 yards despite defending 59 passes and allowing 38 completions.

“We’re getting them to throw the ball where they don’t want to throw it,” Edwards said.

As far as the largely punchless pass rush, the Chiefs are counting on the return from injury of first-round draft pick Tamba Hali to help. He will start against the Rams.

Edwards indicated he believes the Chiefs are talented enough to play good defense.

“We’ve got it,” Edwards said. “We just have to get on the same page. That’s all. That’s tough. We haven’t revamped everything, but we’re asking them to do some things differently. We’re playing a coverage that’s very disciplined coverage, a very physical coverage. They’re starting to understand that. There are some things we’re going to do to help them. We’re not going to just stay in this coverage.”


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To reach Adam Teicher, Chiefs reporter for The Star, call (816) 234-4875 or send e-mail to [email protected]

One thing that Holthus mentioned to be aware of.

No, they haven't stopped anybody.

They also have given up ZERO big plays, which is a far cry different from previous years.

why try a throw for 30 yards when the defense is giving you three 10 yrd passes?




stopping big plays means nothing if you can prevent the 1st downs.

It doesn't mean "nothing" at all.

Especially when you were giving up nearly 80 plays over 20 yards in ONE SEASON.

I'll believe it when I see it.

Could it be the cover 2 scheme? For not giving up big plays and allowing the short passes?

A return to GROB's bend but don't break philosophy of defense. Ahh, what nostalgia.

That's one of the basic tenants of the Cover 2 - keep everything in front of you.

No consolation. Die by the big play or be dinked and dunked to death. Pick your poison.

The problem is that we never lived up to that philosophy. They gave up HUGE plays all over the place under GRob.

I still firmly believe that it wasn't the coach, it was the players.

Is that the case or is that exxageration?
I'm truly wanting to know.
Not being facetious.

My understanding is, we're not giving up big plays, and allowing short passes. Not stopping anybody?

Then this D-Line really stinks. Sims, Dalton, Hicks....adios. These guys gotta go. They are so bad that they shouldn't even be backups.

*I heard in another thread that Benny Sapp is our best pass rusher right now.

It is absolutely consolation. It's impossible to get dinked and dunked to death 100% of the time. No offense is perfect, they will eventually stumble and half to punt or may even turn it over.

The problem with our defense is that it never gets to that point because we've been allowing teams to score from anywhere on the field.

It IS a small step in the right direction.

Hang on...I'll find it for you.

i SAID .... it means nothing IF you can't stop the 1st downs


IF,IF,IF


ya cranky ol' bitch



stopping the big plays right now doesn't really mean anything UNLESS they prove that they can tighten it up later and stop the easy short stuff.