Dee Ford admits he hit a brick wall in production in 2016

Dee Ford spoke to the media yesterday and explained he’s doing everything he can to avoid the “brick wall” he ended up hitting last year.

At one point, near the midseason of 2016, Dee Ford looked like the next great pass rusher for the Kansas City Chiefs. From Art Still to Mike Bell, Derrick Thomas to Neil Smith, Eric Hicks to Jared Allen and Tamba Hali and Justin Houston, Ford could be next in a nice long line of productive sack artists in Kansas City. Then almost as quickly as he ascended the sack rankings, he fell off without a single sack to his name in the entire second half of the season.

Ford ended up with 10 total sacks in 2016, accumulating that total in nine games. When speaking with the media on Wednesday, Ford says he wasn’t quite healthy and explained he’s doing all he can to not hit another “brick wall” in 2017.

"It was inconsistency. There were high points and there were low points. The ultimate point was that I wasn’t healthy. That’s the ultimate goal heading into this year—to be more consistent. You’re going to tweak and get better at things as you go, but the ultimate goal is to be healthy so you can execute those things.More from Arrowhead AddictFormer Chiefs cornerback in legal trouble in Las VegasChiefs Kingdom: Get ready to break contract newsChiefs news: Travis Kelce wants to host fan ‘chug-off’ in GermanyPodcast: Breaking down the Chiefs biggest roster battlesKC Chiefs send Dave Merritt to NFL coaching accelerator“You look back at this time last year and what you were doing and you tweak your plan so you don’t run into those brick walls. I’ve answered that question as far as ‘What do you do to be more consistent?’ and I found that out.”"

Much of the speculation around Ford’s loss of production was assumed to be switching sides once Justin Houston returned from injury to force Ford to change his angle and approach to the passer. However, Ford insists that’s not true at all, saying he can “rush from both sides.”

Despite the drop in production, Ford’s overall trajectory is still trending upward, a player who had 1.5 sacks his rookie season, 4 his sophomore year and now 10 last season. It will be interesting to see if Ford can put together another double-digit sack season.