Chiefs Film Room: The Chiefs must keep Sean Smith

Back in March 2014, John Dorsey watched as five quality Kansas City Chiefs free agents inked lucrative deals with other NFL teams, leaving gaping roster holes in their wake.

Fast forward to today, and John Dorsey finds himself in a similar situation – ten players who saw a significant number of snaps this season are set to hit the market come March, and $30 million can only go so far in retaining them. Safe to say that a few good players have played their last downs as a Chief.

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While it’s almost unanimously agreed upon that Eric Berry and Derrick Johnson should be brought back, Sean Smith stands as one of the more divisive names on the list of ten. This confounds me. In three seasons here, Smith has done nothing but prove he is one of the most integral parts of this dominant defensive unit.

Without Sean Smith, Bob Sutton’s man-coverage oriented defense would have a glaring hole for teams to pick on. Lucky for us, we were given a harrowing glimpse of exactly that early on in the season.

Fleming 1 /

I hate to reopen the Week 2 wound, but it’s a play like this that illustrates exactly how valuable Sean Smith is to the team. Fleming is lined up one-on-one against Sanders at the top of the screen and gets smoked for the game-winning touchdown. Now, the the problem I have here is not solely based on the fact Sanders easily gets open on this post route, it’s the fact Fleming got beat on that exact same route literally two plays earlier.

Fleming 2 /

And that was Andre Caldwell! That would’ve been an easy touchdown had it not been for a pretty awful drop.

But it wasn’t only Fleming who proved the Chiefs’ options for replacing Sean Smith are more than limited. Marcus Cooper got his shot the following week against the Packers, and the results were far too similar.

Cooper 1 /

Sure, it wasn’t a completion, but that’s solely because DeVante Adams regressed an unfathomable amount this season to the point where his ball skills were equivalent to that of Donnie Avery. Cooper was easily beaten on this play, and continued to get beaten throughout the game.

There are two takeaways from these three clips:

Not a single cornerback on this roster showed he is capable of replacing Sean Smith on a consistent week-to-week basis (and no, Peters doesn’t count since he’s starting on the other side, obviously).

Bob Sutton is going to be Bob Sutton. He went into both games knowing full well the opposition would be targeting Fleming/Cooper, yet he refused to adapt his scheme and provide safety help over the top. The Chiefs ask a tremendous amount of their corners; there’s not a plethora of guys who can thrive in a system like this.

Before anyone says anything, I have not forgotten about Phillip Gaines. Some believe that he can step into the starter role should Smith depart for greener pastures, and I don’t necessarily disagree (although health is a major concern there). However, something made abundantly clear in the Chiefs playoff loss to the Patriots was the importance of the slot cornerback.

The Chiefs continuously rolled out either Ron Parker or Tyvon Branch to match up one-on-one in the slot against Edelman. The results were predictably disastrous (second corner from the bottom):

Branch On Edelman /

On the other hand, Gaines showed tremendous potential as a slot corner at the start of the 2015 season. Prior to blowing his knee out, he was doing a fantastic job of containing Randall Cobb in Week 3:

Gaines on Cobb /

Gaines’ combination of quickness, speed, and length makes him an absolute matchup nightmare in the slot. Considering the Chiefs primarily utilized three cornerback formations all the way through to the playoffs – Ron Parker was basically a full-time cornerback – Gaines would not be underutilized if he went forward in that role.

I dare say he has the potential to make a Chris Harris-esque impact as a slot corner for this defense, so why force a move? (Plus, we were completely robbed of seeing the havoc caused by a secondary consisting of: Smith, Peters, Gaines, Berry, and Parker. Not cool, football gods. Not cool.)

There’s a window of opportunity here to field one of the most daunting secondaries in the league. Gaines and Peters are on team-friendly rookie contracts for the next few seasons, so paying Smith like a number one corner during this timeframe is not a notion that should merely be scoffed at.

Simply put, John Dorsey needs to find a way to keep Sean Smith in a Chiefs uniform for the next few seasons. It does not matter whether it be through the franchise tag – currently slated to be around $14.5 million for 2016 – or a multi-year deal. What matters is that the Chiefs have a legitimate shutdown corner in Sean Smith, something two-thirds of the league cannot say, and it would be counter-intuitive to just let him walk out of the door.

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