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From ESPN's Bill Barnwell:
The myth: The Kansas City defense is trash.
You have to be more constructive with your feedback! The Chiefs' rush defense is an abject disaster. Kansas City is last in the league in rush defense DVOA, 31st in yards per carry allowed, last in average yards after first contact, and last in first down percentage. The return of Eric Berry should theoretically improve this, but the star safety played only a game and a half before struggling with heel pain, which caused Berry to sit out the Week 17 win over the Raiders. Berry's only full game came against the Seahawks in Week 16, when Seattle ran the ball 43 times for 210 yards and two touchdowns.
As a pass defense, though, the Chiefs are better than you think. The raw stats aren't pretty -- they have allowed 4,374 passing yards, second in the league behind the Bengals -- but Kansas City ranks 12th in the league in pass defense DVOA, ahead of more-heralded defenses like the Cowboys, who rank 16th.
Their raw numbers look bad because Kansas City has been way ahead of its opponents for a huge chunk of 2018. Opposing quarterbacks facing the Chiefs have thrown 230 passes on drives that began with their teams possessing no more than a 5 percent chance of winning. No other team in the league faced 200 such attempts this season. This is essentially garbage time, and in meaningless situations, the Chiefs really shouldn't care about what their pass defense is doing. They have racked up eight interceptions in those spots, which inflates their total some, but their goal in those moments is really just to burn clock.
What has really driven the Chiefs to competency against the pass is a ferocious pass rush. To put their production in context, consider that the Bears sacked opposing quarterbacks 7.3 percent of the time and pressured those same passers on 30.0 percent of their dropbacks during the regular season. Bob Sutton's defense took down opposing signal-callers on 7.4 percent of their pass plays and pressured them 31.1 percent of the time. Kansas City also has done this with the league's ninth-lowest blitz rate, so it is getting home without sending extra rushers.
The pass rush could end up deciding this weekend's game against the Colts, given that Andrew Luck has been taking home a clean uniform a good amount of the time during their hot stretch. The Colts haven't allowed a rusher to rack up more than one sack in a game against them since Week 4, but the Chiefs have a special duo in Dee Ford and Chris Jones. Pro Football Reference has quarterback knockdown data going back through 2006, and the only team over that time frame with two players who each have 12.5 sacks and 25 knockdowns is this year's Chiefs.
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