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The Athletic:
8. The Chiefs’ defense has been a disaster.
The truth is it might not matter. Kansas City’s formula for success revolves around producing an elite offense with the best player on the planet. The defense just has to be passable. Having said that, Steve Spagnuolo’s group has a long way to go to get to passable.
Through two weeks, the Chiefs rank dead last in defensive EPA per play. For context, they were 19th last year and 18th in 2019.
Against the Ravens, Kansas City got a pair of interceptions, including a pick-six, from Tyrann Mathieu. But aside from those two plays, the defense struggled. The Chiefs had just one sack and one QB hit.
TruMedia tracks a metric called success rate. Based on EPA, it looks at every play to determine whether the offense got closer to scoring or further away from scoring. The Chiefs’ success rate of 41.4 percent on defense ranks 32nd through two weeks.
Again, there’s no need to overreact. The Chiefs are obviously still on the short list of Super Bowl favorites. But if the defense doesn’t improve, Kansas City could find itself in a number of shootouts in the weeks ahead.
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