Kansas City Chiefs Facts And Cracks

FACT THREE: Andy Reid is only as good as his defensive coordinator. FACT.

When Reid is paired with a top notch defensive coordinator

he’s one of the best head coaches in the league.

Over a ten year span, from 1999, the first year Andy Reid became the head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, through 2008, his average record each year was 11-5. Those are the same years that defensive wizard Jimmy Johnson was with Reid.

With different defensive coordinators, from 2009 through 2012, Reid was one game over 500.

Let’s hope Defensive Coordinator Bob Sutton can keep the scheme consistently aggressive.

CRACK THREE: The biggest reason the Chiefs faded in the last half of 2013 was because of breakdowns in the defensive backfield.

FALSE.

The biggest breakdown last year was along the defensive front.

While I don’t disagree that Kendrick Lewis and Dunta Robinson didn’t belong on anyone’s field, coverage would not have been such a big problem if Justin Houston and Tamba Hali had been at full strength all season long. It’s the chicken and the egg debate. However, in this case Hali and Houston are the right answer. And… adding Dee Ford will help.

John Dorsey and Andy Reid did the right thing by drafting Dee Ford first in the draft.

Last season, with outside linebackers Justin Houston and Tamba Hali major chunks of the season unavailable because of injuries the Chiefs have now hedged their bets and should come a lot closer to guaranteeing their ability to get after the QB in 2014. Some will argue that Lewis and Robinson were so bad that it didn’t matter who was rushing the passer?

There’s some reason that Brandon Flowers had his worst year. Plus, Sean Smith wasn’t the player he started out the season showing us. Do you see a pattern here. Covering good receivers for 3 to 4 seconds when you’re playing the kind of press coverage that Bob Sutton is requesting his DBs to play is a universe of difference from the 5 to 7 seconds of coverage they had to play after Houston and Hali went down.