Kareem Hunt bails out the Kansas City Chiefs offense

2 of 3

CARSON, CA – SEPTEMBER 24: Alex Smith /

Other than an absolutely beautiful touchdown pass to Tyreek Hill to start the game, Alex Smith and the passing game were largely ineffective. That is because the Chargers had a good game plan for the K.C. passing attack. The Chargers knew that they had the advantage on passing downs with their defensive line against K.C.’s offensive line. Both Joey Bosa and Melvin Ingram are incredibly talented and physically dominant pass rushers. They were giving the Chiefs offensive line fits all game. So on clear passing downs the Chargers would simply send their front four and drop everyone else back to the first down marker. They knew that the pass rush would get to Smith before his receivers could get past the players they dropped and if they dumped it off short then they would swarm to the ball carrier and force a punt.

There are only two ways for the Chiefs to beat that approach. The first is for the line to hold up long enough for receivers to break open beyond the first down marker. That simply wasn’t happening. There were times when receivers came open but by then Alex Smith had dropped his eyes and was running for his life. That meant that in order to force the Chargers to abandon that defensive game plan, they needed to not find themselves in third and long situations. When you have a running back that is as productive as Kareem Hunt that should help make that possible. The problem is that Kansas City simply didn’t use Hunt enough on early downs to make that happen.

I went back and looked through the game log from Sunday and looked at every single first down play that the Chiefs ran. Out of 23 first down plays, they only ran Kareem Hunt ten times and two of those were on the final drive of the game. So prior to their final drive of the game they only ran Hunt on first down on eight of 21 first down plays. That’s just bad play calling by Andy Reid. Reid has been masterful in designing plays and offensive game plans in the first two games of this season, but he dropped the ball in adapting to what the Chargers were doing on Sunday.

More from Arrowhead Addict

Unfortunately, Hunt’s lack of proper use wasn’t solely tied to first downs. I also looked at second down plays where it was 10 yards or less to get the first down. In my opinion, when you are struggling with third and long and your running back is consistently picking up yards, those are also plays where the Chiefs needed to utilize Hunt to put the passing game in a position to succeed. The Chiefs had 11 second down plays with 10 yards or less to go on Sunday and they only ran Kareem Hunt on four of them (and one of those was the final drive).

So if you combine first down plays and second and ten or less plays the Chiefs only used Kareem Hunt on 14 of 34 possible plays. That’s inexcusable when the passing game is struggling like it was. I get that you can’t always use Hunt. One, you’ll wear him down and two, they become too predictable and the defense will start to stack the box. (That’s when you take a shot over the top!) So no, the Chiefs shouldn’t have used Kareem Hunt on all 34 of those plays, but they sure should have used him on more than 14 of them.

You can bet that every team that K.C. faces from here on out that has a good defensive pass rush (Texans and Broncos come to mind) is going to look at how the Chargers defended the Chiefs on third and long and copy it until they can prove they can beat it. Kareem Hunt is going to have to be a major part of preventing that from happening. The Chiefs didn’t do that enough on Sunday but they were still good enough to win (in large part thanks to their ball hawking defense). They also need to dial up way more quick slants to Hill and Travis Kelce, but that’s another issue for another day. Let’s just hope they don’t wait until they lose a game to fix these offensive problems.

Finally, so we can end on a positive, let’s talk about just how good Kareem Hunt can be.

Home/Kansas City Chiefs News