During the down period of the NFL calendar before training camp, there isn’t usually a lot of news to discuss (unless of course your team cuts their number one receiver or fires their General Manager, but who would do that this time of year?). Instead of breaking news ,we’re left to sift through predictions and speculations about the coming season. This week there was a tweet from Rotoworld’s Evan Silva that sent many Chiefs fans into a frenzy. Here’s the actual tweet:
This tweet has a couple of fair points. The Chiefs have had some turmoil this offseason with the firing of John Dorsey which has been discussed a LOT already here on this site. The Chiefs also have a difficult schedule. Not mentioned in the tweet is the fact that the Chiefs are trying to win through consistency and internal development, which is a nice way of saying they didn’t really add much to the roster this offseason.
For all of those reasons I don’t have a problem with someone predicting a regression for the Chiefs this season. It doesn’t actually take much for a team to go from 12 wins to 8 wins the next season. A key player gets hurt or has a down season, a few breaks go the other team’s way, etc. We see it every year, that is why there is continually new teams in the playoffs every season.
As far as the rest of the tweet goes, I could spend a significant amount of time explaining why I don’t think we’ll see a quarterback change this season. The Chiefs are playing to win THIS year and Smith knows the team, the offense, and has led them to the playoffs in three of his four seasons in K.C. You add that to the fact that they want to take their time and make sure Patrick Mahomes develops correctly, and I think it would take a long-term injury to Smith to get Mahomes on the field. I’d even go so far as to say that if Smith has to miss a series or just one game, it could even be Tyler Bray that plays over Mahomes since he knows the system and would keep them from rushing Mahomes. That having been said, that’s not the topic I really want to discuss today.
“Bottom-5 offensive talent”
That one really got me. I’ll admit it. I turned into “angry internet fanboy” for a little while after I read that. Once I calmed down a little, I wanted to rationally look at this take and see if it had any validity. Silva has a history of not being a big believer in the Chiefs, especially Alex Smith. However, if we’re being honest, we Chiefs fans have been incredibly frustrated by K.C.’s offense on more than one occasion. The Chiefs lost a home playoff game where the other team never scored a touchdown and then they cut their number one wide receiver and their only real offensive addition was a third round rookie running back.
So let’s take a few minutes and rationally look at whether or not this claim has any validity.
Before I get into some offensive numbers, I want to point out that technically Silva said K.C. had bottom five offensive talent not a bottom five offense. It’s possible that Silva believes that Andy Reid is getting better production out of K.C.’s players than most other coaches would—meaning that KC’s offensive success is predicated on Reid’s system, not the talent of their players. I would counter that argument with Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. Those two were two of the most talented play makers in the AFC last year. Regardless, its impossible to come to a definitive conclusion on how talented a player is, it’s subjective. All we can look at is the production.
I kept things pretty simple for this. I looked at five key areas for an offense.
Points per game
Yards per game
Yards per play
3rd down conversion %
Turnovers
Here’s what the Chiefs averaged in those areas last season and their NFL rank.
Points per game: 24.3 (13th)
Yards per game: 343.0 (20th)
Yards per play: 5.5 (16th)
Third down %: 38% (18th)
Turnovers: 17 (8th)
Was the Chiefs offense great last season? No. Were they one of the worst in the NFL? No. The average NFL ranking in those five areas was 15th. That’s about as middle of the road as you can get. I simply don’t see any way you could say that last season the Chiefs had bottom five talent on offense. Their production was clearly better than far too many other teams. I was going to point out five teams that were clearly worse on offense last season but there were so many to choose from that I upped it to ten. The chart below shows the Chiefs stats and rankings in the five areas I just mentioned,f along with those of 10 other teams that were indisputably less productive last season.
If you look at those numbers, I just don’t think you can make an argument for the Chiefs being a bottom 10 offense last season. Some of you may be thinking, “Yes, they scored 24.3 points per game last year, but how much of that was defensive or special teams touchdowns?”. Well, if you take out the five defensive touchdowns and three special teams scores, the Chiefs offense still averaged 20.8 points per game which was still more than any of the ten teams listed. (It’s actually tied with Denver, but since Denver had four defensive touchdowns then KC’s offense still averaged more points.) So last season K.C. was NOT a bottom ten offense, let alone a bottom five one.
Finally, did K.C. lose enough this offseason to warrant a big drop in production in 2017?
Since the tweet that spurred this entire post was looking at the coming season, not assessing the 2016 season, just pointing out last season’s statistics isn’t quite enough. To truly answer the question of if the 2017 Chiefs have “bottom five” talent we need to look at what they’ve lost from last season. In that regard the Chiefs definitely did lose two big names in Jamaal Charles and Jeremy Maclin.
If you just asked the question “Could losing Jamaal Charles and Jeremy Maclin drop a middle of the road offense to one of the worst in the league?” it might be easy to answer yes. However, that middle of the road offense last season simply didn’t rely heavily on production from those two big names.
- Jamaal Charles: 12 carries for 40 yards and a touchdown
- Jeremy Maclin: 44 receptions for 536 yards and two touchdowns
You simply can’t argue that K.C.’s rushing attack will be worse this season than it was last season because of the loss of Charles. He was a non-factor. In fact, the addition of third round pick Kareem Hunt actually means that the running game is more likely to see a boost than a drop off since they return all their leading rushers (and their offensive line) and added a new weapon in Hunt.
That just leaves the loss of Maclin to warrant a prediction of a middle-of-the-pack offense falling all the way to the bottom of the NFL. While I agree that the Chiefs were better with Maclin than they are now without him, I simply can’t fathom his loss will hurt the Chiefs offensive production THAT much. Yes, with Maclin gone the Chiefs will have defenses paying more attention to Kelce and Hill, but that was already happening by the end of last season when they had clearly passed Maclin in the offensive pecking order. Yes, Maclin had a 1,000 yard season in 2015, but the Chiefs overall offensive production didn’t change much at all in 2016 when Maclin had a down year.
Here are the Chiefs rankings in those same five areas for 2015 (productive 1,000-yard Maclin) and 2016 (knicked up/less productive Maclin):
2015: PPG 25.3 (9th), YPG 331.7 (27th), YPP 5.5 (12th), 3D% 38% (19th), TO 15 (2nd)
2016: PPG 24.3 (13th), YPG 343.0 (20th), YPP 5.5 (16th), 3D% 38% (18th) TO 17 (8th)
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The downgrade in production from 2015 to 2016 from Jeremy Maclin simply didn’t derail the overall production of the offense. In fact, I would argue that had the running game been as productive in 2016 as it was in 2015, the offense would have significantly outperformed the 2015 unit despite Maclin’s down year. Bottom line, will the Chiefs miss Jeremy Maclin? Yes. Will the loss be significant enough that the overall offensive production will drop drastically? I don’t believe so.
Therefore, if Kansas City was about the 15th best offense in the NFL last season the only way they would be a bottom five offense in 2017 would be if SIX of the 10 offenses that I showed were CLEARLY less productive than the Chiefs last season made significant enough improvements to jump K.C. Without going team by team, I’ll just say I can’t see that happening. MAYBE a couple of them rebound from down seasons last year but not SIX of them.
The Chiefs aren’t a bottom five offense from a production or talent standpoint. They would need to drop about seven spots to even crack the bottom 10. Could that happen this season? Sure, anything is possible. Obviously as a Chiefs fan I’m hoping it doesn’t happen. In fact, my hope is that Smith steps up knowing he is playing like its a contract year and the run game has a bounce back from a down 2016 and the offense actually IMPROVES from last season.
So what do you think Chiefs fans? We all recognize that the offense has been an issue at times but would you rank them at or near the bottom of the league? Do you think the loss of Jeremy Maclin will result in a drop in overall production this season? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.
As always thanks for reading and GO CHIEFS!