A Levelheaded Review Wk15

[DenverChief]

1. The Texans are not as bad as their record would indicate. They pushed a very good Cowboys team in Week 14 to a very close game. Keep that in mind.

2. Isaiah Pacheco, love how hard he runs, needs to get better at pass protection he completely whiffed on that LB stunt blitz on Patrick's 1st sack of the game. His fumble while perplexing is not all that concerning as it's his 4th fumble in 14 games. His last fumble was against JAX and prior to that against the Colts. Rookie mistakes. I'd like to see him more involved in the pass game.

3. Speaking of turnovers they are killing us. The JJSS fumble was just lucky. But we have to do better at holding on to the ball. We gave the Texans short fields to work with on the Pacheco and JJSS fumble that both resulted in Touchdowns. Seems like at least 2 turnovers (fumbles or Int's) in the last 3-4 games.

4. Patrick running the ball is just magic. He knows exactly when to take off and how to hold defenders to keep his running lanes open.

5. Playing to not lose the game, the last 3-4 plays we ran felt like we were playing to not lose instead of get yards to make the FG closer for Butker. Gotta give the the RB's a chance to gain forward yardage.

6. How lucky have we been on coin tosses? Either to start the game or in OT. Seems like we are almost always kicking off and taking the 2nd half kickoff or taking the kickoff in OT. I wonder if that is tracked somewhere?

7.I have said it many times, Toney and Hardman make this offense different. When Toney was in the game they had to account for him. Can't wait for them to both be back on the field. Without them our offense is Kelce, Juju, McKinnon, Pacheco (repeat). Ocassionally Gray, Watson or MVS chip in but you can pretty well bet where the ball is going every play. We need them back badly. Skyy has almost completely disappeared.

8. Willie Gay with the timely turnovers gets the game ball. Last week it was a "pick 6" this week was recovering the OT fumble. Kudos to Frank Clark on generating that turnover.

9. McKinnon in the right place at the right time seems like every week. Great vision on the OT run to end the game.

10. Butker just seems off this year. I'm not sure if it's the ankle or the confidence but he just seems to make terrible kicks at times. I didn't see anything wrong with the snap on either the XP or FG. The XP kick was super ugly.

Extra Point. Penalties, Extremely Ticky Tacky penalty calling against the Chiefs (See Sneed PI in the 4th Q and the Gay defensive holding). Hate to bring this up but I felt like they were being exceptionally picky against the Chiefs.

[scho63]

You need to play flawless football in the playoffs or you will most likely lose. That means no TOs, little to no penalties, stopping teams on 3rd and long, getting pressure on thr QB and most important no missed PATs or FGs.

We need to fix ALL of those areas. Very messy heading into the playoffs.

[Boxer_Chief]

With our offense end of game tied I want to see more aggressive approach to get a touchdown because butker is broken. That was frustrating end of the 4th.

[frozenchief]

Dallas lost to Jacksonville. Vikings beat Colts by 3 and had to go to OT. Philly beat Chicago by only 5. Buffalo beat Miami by 3. Any given Sunday, yada, yada, yada. But there is a lot of parity in this league. This time of year also seems to result in weird results. It’s like teams that are pretty nearly dead twitch and fight enough for close results or even unexpected results.

That said, we need to:
1) stop the damn turnovers;
2) stop giving up sacks;
3) stop giving up 3rd down conversions when its 3rd and long;
4) stop with stupid penalties, although it does seem we get called for some ticky tack stuff that other teams don’t get called for. But that could just be me being a homer.

Ultimately, we have Patrick Mahomes. He can cover a lot of mistakes but it would be a lot easier if he didn’t have to.

[FloridaMan88]

Memo to Andy… when you are deciding between relying on your MVP QB who finished the game with 20 straight completions and a now unreliable kicker… there is actually no decision to be made.

[T-post Tom]

Well done DenverChief. (Ran out of rep from the rep threads.)

[T-post Tom]

Xtra pts to coaching staff for NO Burton up the middle in critical situations.

[Easy 6]

#8 is a great point, thats two weeks straight now with Gay making a gotta have it clutch play... still can't believe Cheffers didn't steal it back from us

[Megatron96]

Originally Posted by tredadda

The good: KC won, Mahomes was elite today along with Kelce and McKinnon. Pacheco ran well outside of that fumble.

The bad: Turnovers, Butker, the defense was porous and very rarely made a stop when needed, and (while I hate saying it) very questionable and uneven officiating.

Regardless a win is a win, but I struggle to see how KC wins it all with how the defense and Butker are playing.

The defense allowed less than 240 yards of offense. 4/10 3rd down conversions. 3.8 yards/play.

i mean, when the offense plays hot potato with the ball twice, and the rules are already stacked against defense, and the ref has some kind of vendetta that converted 5 1st downs for HOU, what can the defense really do?

[DenverChief]

Originally Posted by scho63

You need to play flawless football in the playoffs or you will most likely lose. That means no TOs, little to no penalties, stopping teams on 3rd and long, getting pressure on thr QB and most important no missed PATs or FGs.

We need to fix ALL of those areas. Very messy heading into the playoffs.

While I wouldn't characterize it as "flawless" turnovers and missed scoring opportunities for sure and no "dumb" penalties. I still think the Kelce "unsportsmanlike" penalty woke this team up. We were kind sleep walking up to that point

[Easy 6]

With #4 yeah its always fun to see him take off running on a busted play organically, thats when it doesnt scare me as much, and where he always does his best work

20-30 yard romps on the regular

But that clearly designed run for him in the 4th had me ready strangle Andy right there on the sideline in front of God and everyone else

Purposely risking him like that is a NO GO

[DenverChief]

Originally Posted by Easy 6

With #4 yeah its always fun to see him take off running on a busted play organically, thats when it doesnt scare me as much, and where he always does his best work

20-30 yard romps on the regular

But that clearly designed run for him in the 4th had me ready strangle Andy right there on the sideline in front of God and everyone else

Purposely risking him like that is a NO GO

- fair enough. I don't mind the occasional scripted runs. I kinda miss the Pitch option plays we played to perfection in our Super Bowl run.

[DenverChief]

Originally Posted by Boxer_Chief

With our offense end of game tied I want to see more aggressive approach to get a touchdown because butker is broken. That was frustrating end of the 4th.

I would have been fine with some designed runs - we were gashing their D up to that point. McKinnon loses 3 yards on 1st down and we went into a shell the next two downs.

[DenverChief]

Also - sorry to everyone for not joining in the conversation after creating the thread- home internet went out so I took a nap

[Titty Meat]

Disagree with #1 that's a bad football team

[DenverChief]

Originally Posted by Hank Hill

We destroyed them on the stat sheet.

Turnovers and penalties are killing this team.

yeah hard to believe by looking at the score...

313 to 125 yards passing
189 to 94 yards rushing