Kansas City Chiefs: Five lessons learned from Week 10 against the Cardinals
Kansas City brought the heat
The Chiefs welcomed back Justin Houston to the defense with a big showing from the pass rush. According to Next Gen Stats, Josh Rosen was under pressure 54.5 percent of his dropbacks. 15 of those pressures came from Houston and Dee Ford alone. Kansas City made Rosen’s day miserable as he only averaged 3.4 yards per play on pass rushing snaps.
Everyone has been talking about the amazing season Ford is having. He had another monster of a day walking away with eight pressures, four hurries, three quarterback hits, and a sack on Sunday. While Houston didn’t come away with a sack, he managed to still get five pressures, three hurries and two QB hits to go along with his fourth-quarter interception that swung the momentum in the Chiefs’ favor.
Considering how well the pass rush has done this season, I thought it best to remind everyone that the Chiefs decided to separate their linebacking coaching making Mike Smith the outside linebackers coach. After the defense struggled the last two seasons to bring down the quarterback, Kansas City is tied for first place in sacks with 31 on the year. Even with Justin Houston missing some time this season, Smith has helped develop rookie Breeland Speaks who has looked better after getting more playing time in Houston’s absence.
We can’t give all of the credit to the outside pass rush, however. The interior defensive line has stepped up in a major way this season as well with Chris Jones and Allen Bailey. Jones has quietly had a tremendous season as he collected two sacks against Josh Rosen making it six straight games he’s collected a sack. Bailey got home as well on Sunday making his sack total on the season with five.
Arizona was already struggling at the guard position, but it got worse when one of their guards went down with an injury. Kansas City took advantage with their interior pressure. Defensive coordinator Bob Sutton kept Rosen guessing with blitz packages that include safety Ron Parker coming off the edge as well for his own sack.
The defense didn’t have to blitz often as they were getting pressure almost every play just sending four pass rushers. When they did send extra pressure, it was chaos for Rosen. I mentioned the play sending Ron Parker earlier, but there was another big play that caused Rosen to throw the ball away when he wasn’t expecting cornerback Kendall Fuller to blitz from the slot.
Justin Houston played more than I would have expected in his return from injury posting 49 snaps which were 67 percent of the defensive snaps. Kansas City needs Houston back and ready for the upcoming week as the Rams have one of the most explosive offenses in the NFL, and one of the best running backs as well coming out of the backfield.