After entering the NFL season as a possible Super Bowl contender, the Kansas City Chiefs’ 2015 season is in tatters.
However it’s not exactly surprising that they are sitting at 1-3, having just finished their toughest three-game stretch of the season.
Hosting Denver, a match they should never have lost, and visiting both Green Bay and Cincinnati is not an easy period. While they would have liked to win at least one of those games it’s not the end of the world that they lost all three.
The remainder of the Chiefs’ schedule is relatively easy, with four tough matches left, and two of them at home.
They host the Bears next week in a match that should kick-start their season. They should comfortably beat the Lions at home. The Browns, Chargers, Raiders and Ravens all pose tricky match-ups but a team of the Chiefs’ calibre should get past them.
An easier schedule definitely helps but there are still major concerns. The defence that was expected to be great has been average, giving up almost 300 passing yards per game, while the offensive line has been a mess.
We’ll start with the offensive line, perhaps their most concerning issue. The Chiefs have given up a league-high 19 sacks so far, seven more than any other team. It’s not possible for Alex Smith to go to work when he’s under that much pressure. According to Football Outsiders the Chiefs have the worst pass blocking offensive line in the entire competition. With the receiving corps as bad as they are Jeremy Maclin has been an upgrade on Dwayne Bowe, but they are still atrocious. Smith needs time in the pocket to find any receivers that manage to get open. His line isn’t giving him that time.
Another concerning stat for the Chiefs is the fact that they are 12 for 46 on third down. Two weeks ago against Denver they went zero for seven. As the season progresses and the Chiefs face more third downs this completion rate will likely rise, however it remains a concerning trend.
This inability to convert on third down cost the Chiefs this weekend’s game against Cincinnati. They went 7 for 16 and were forced to kick seven field goals. A nice club record for Cairo Santos but not a good result for his team. When you’re kicking field goals and the opposition is scoring touchdowns it’s not hard to figure out who will win.
You can’t win football games if you are unable to keep your offence on the field, and the Chiefs aren’t able to because they’re constantly facing third and long, due to all the sacks Smith is taking. Generate some third and shorts and the Chiefs will have a better chance to keep the offence on.
On the defensive side of the ball the Chiefs have struggled against passing offences. The 23rd ranked passing DVOA have been torched by Aaron Rodgers, Andy Dalton and Peyton Manning for some stretches of that Week 2 match-up. With star cornerback Sean Smith absent for the first three weeks, the secondary has been heavily outmatched. After an atrocious game last week against Green Bay, Marcus Cooper was moved out of the nickel position and hardly played in Cincinnati. Then this week Marcus Peters was badly burned on the Bengals’ only touchdown pass of the game
Thankfully for fans, the Chiefs face just two top-10 passing defences during the remainder of the season. One of those two is a Ben Roethlisberger-less Steelers, the other the Buffalo Bills, who have feasted on some dreadful pass defences but struggled against New York this weekend.
At 1-3 the warning signs are starting to flash for the Chiefs, but there is no reason to panic just yet. If the offensive line can keep Smith upright and the pass defence show improvement, a playoff sport is certainly not out of the question.
While it’s not time for alarm bells in Kansas City, it definitely is in Houston. The Texans were beaten convincingly by the Chiefs in Week 1 and their season has only gone from bad to worse since then. They picked up a victory over the still-winless Buccaneers last weekend but other than that, this team has had only one bright spot – the meta-human known as J.J. Watt.
You almost feel sorry for Watt having to play for this team. You also have to wonder how long until Bill O’Brien puts him in as quarterback – surely he can’t do a worse job than Brian Hoyer or Ryan Mallett.
While those in Houston expected to compete for the playoffs this season, the advanced stats suggested otherwise. I briefly touched on this a few weeks ago when I discussed the Titans, but Houston made an astronomical leap from 2-14 to 9-7. After such a jump teams almost always regress the following year. It’s simply unsustainable to keep improving. Barring a fluke season, such as the 2011 Colts who went 2-14 without Peyton Manning then drafted Andrew Luck with almost the exact same team, bad rosters don’t suddenly get good overnight.
Like last season the Texans defence is their strength. However rather than being good, thus far it has just been average, ranked 13th in defensive efficiency. The offence is ranked 25th.
Surprisingly, the Texans defence has struggled to get to the quarterback, recording just six sacks through four games, tied for 22nd in the league. Watt has four of those. He needs help and his teammates aren’t giving him any.
He didn’t get any help on Monday morning as the defence gave up 35 of the Falcons’ 48 points, along with 256 passing yards and 138 rushing yards. The tackling by all defenders was poor, and there were multiple blown coverages by the secondary.
On the offensive side of the ball the Texans have been an absolute mess. The quarterback circus seems to continue every week and O’Brien can’t seem to pick the best of a bad bunch. Hoyer and Mallett are both backup quarterbacks; neither should be starting in the NFL right now. But that’s all the Texans have and they need to choose a quarterback and stick with him instead of switching almost every week.
But the starter, whoever that may be, needs support. He needs a running game to take pressure off him and a group of wide receivers. At the moment he is throwing passes to Cecil Shorts, Nate Washington, C.J. Fiedorowicz and DeAndre Hopkins. Hopkins is the favoured target and definitely showing talent in his third year in the league. He has over 400 receiving yards and is on track for a 1600-yard season, but may of these yards have come in the multiple minutes of garbage time his team has played over the past month. Nevertheless, he has shown real improvement each year, and that is exactly what teams want from their draft picks.
In terms of a rushing attack, if you take out last week’s big game from Alfred Blue, it has been virtually non-existent. Arian Foster’s return from offseason groin surgery was meant to fuel the Houston ground game but it was not to be. Eight carries for 10 yards is not what the coaching staff were looking for and Mallett and Hoyer will continue to struggle if the ground game can’t get going. It’s hard when you fall behind by considerable margins early in the match and you virtually can’t run the ball for the entire second half, but they need to get it going early to stay in the match.
The Texans were expected to regress this season and after four games they definitely have. However they play in the worst division in football. They’ve played two 4-0 teams already and haven’t yet had one division match-up. If they can stay in the hunt for the playoffs and the Colts continue to struggle, the final three rounds of the season could determine the Texans’ season.
Houston finishes with three matches against divisional rivals and while it is unlikely that they will claim the AFC South title with victories in these three games, stranger things have happened.
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