Chiefs Film Room: Donald Stephenson

Usually when a team is heading into the first game of the season, most coaches want to eliminate all distractions and have their players focused on the opener. In this regard, Andy Reid is not like most coaches. On the Monday of Week 1 Reid stepped up to the podium and dropped something of a bombshell on Chiefs Nation: Donald Stephenson was named the starting left tackle for the foreseeable future. As if there wasn’t enough question marks surrounding this group already…

More from Arrowhead Addict

Well last Sunday was our first chance to get a look at our newly-minted left tackle in regular season action, and I must admit, Stephenson definitely showed that Reid is a man who kind of knows what is he doing (as if we ever doubted you, Big Red). After reviewing Stephenson’s performance against the Texans – focusing slightly more on the offense’s dominant first-half rather than their vanilla second-half – here are the observations I came away with:

His first step off the line in pass-protection is incredibly quick and consistently enabled him to cut off the pass-rusher’s angle while staying in good position to maintain the block. Another thing this allowed him to do was get his hands on the rusher early and not allow his man to build up any power or momentum.

Nobody is going to confuse his strength with that of someone like Tyron Smith’s. In the run game, he rarely seemed to get a solid push and drive his man back. More often than not, he would get locked in a battle that would basically begin and end at the line-of-scrimmage.

As evidenced by the first point, the guy is an above-average athlete in terms of quickness and agility, so one would think he would thrive in space. As I’m sure you now expect, that just didn’t seem to be the case. There were only a few plays where he was in the open field, but in each one of them he looked hesitant and unsure of himself.

The best way to sum up his performance in Week 1: he’s not flashy but he gets the job done.

As the article title suggests, this is the Chiefs film room, so let’s get to some film.

In the image above, Stephenson is left one-on-one against Jadeveon Clowney and the ball has just been snapped. Clowney began the play lined up pretty far outside of Stephenson, presumably to give himself more room to build up speed and get around Stephenson with the speed rush.

With just one quick kick-step off the line, Stephenson has closed the distance between Clowney and himself, not allowing the rusher to build up nearly enough speed to pose any threat to Smith. This is something that happened time and time again on pass plays, especially against Clowney. No matter how far outside Clowney was lined up, Stephenson’s ability to quickly get off the line of scrimmage and cut down the rusher’s angle pretty much negated the Texans’ sophomore from making any impact on the game.

While Stephenson’s strength wasn’t much of an issue in pass protection, it was slightly concerning in the run game. Above, we see Stephenson beginning to engage with the Texans’ defensive lineman right at the line of scrimmage before the ball has been handed off.

When Jamaal Charles gets the ball and is approaching the hole (or the supposed-to-be-hole), we see Stephenson hasn’t managed to clear the lineman out. In fact, Stephenson’s man played it perfectly: he didn’t give up any ground, remained square to the ball carrier, and disengaged as soon as Jamaal hit the hole to make the tackle for a minimal gain.

Now, I’m fully aware that the Chiefs line as a whole was subpar in the run game (Chiefs running backs only managed a paltry 3.3 YPC), but when solely focusing on Stephenson, his lack of push in this area was quite noticeable at times.

Let’s look at a play where Stephenson finds himself in space. Knile Davis managed to get to the second level on this handoff and Stephenson did a great job of getting there with him. Judging by the picture above, it seems logical that Stephenson would at least attempt to get in front of the Texans defensive back, right?

Ehh, not so much. But surely he chose not to block that Texans player since he had a cleaner shot at the safety coming to help. Oh man, that safety better have buckled his chinstrap…

C’mon Donald, hit somebody!

Whenever Stephenson found himself in space with a chance to make an impact block, the results were similar to what we just saw – hesitation and a general sense of uncertainness. I’m confident Stephenson will improve upon this area of his game as the season progresses and he gets more comfortable in this situations, but nonetheless, it will be something I’ll keep an eye on given the offense Reid employs.

For those wondering why I didn’t highlight more positive Stephenson plays, it goes back to my fourth takeaway from watching the game: it may not be flashy, but the guy gets the job done. There were no big pancake blocks, or stonewalling of pass rushers on his way to giving up zero sacks and a +1.6 grade from PFF (a grade I completely agree with). And you know what? I’m perfectly okay with that, and you should be too!

So after one game, admittedly a small sample size, Reid’s decision is looking like a good one. I am cautiously optimistic that after Thursday’s game against the Denver Broncos, Stephenson will prove left tackle is no longer a question mark for the Chiefs in 2015.

Home/Kansas City Chiefs News