Last season the Kansas City Chiefs had an elite offense and a terrible defense. So how good does the defense need to be for the Chiefs to win it all this season?
The story of the 2019 offseason for the Kansas City Chiefs thus far has been the complete overhaul of their defense. Since the Chiefs lost in overtime to the New England Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, they’ve parted ways with pretty much their entire defensive coaching staff and several big names like Eric Berry, Justin Houston, and Dee Ford. They hired Steve Spagnuolo as Bob Sutton’s replacement at defensive coordinator and he quickly put together a defensive staff that is widely viewed as one of the best we have seen in Kansas City in quite some time.
The Chiefs then made a splash free agent signing in star safety Tyrann Mathieu. They also traded their first round pick to bring in a new premiere edge talent in Frank Clark, and dealt a future late round pick to the New York Jets for linebacker Darron Lee. They drafted a couple of exciting defensive talents in safety Juan Thornhill and defensive tackle Khalen Saunders and filled out the rest of their defensive roster with role players that look like good fits for Spagnuolo’s new defensive scheme.
While it was hard to see guys like Berry and Houston go, the defensive overhaul was much needed. The Chiefs may have had the best record in the AFC last season and been a coin flip or a Dee Ford offsides call away from reaching the Super Bowl, but they had one of the worst defenses in all the NFL. They ranked 24th in points allowed at 26.3 and an abysmal 31st in yards allowed with 405.5. The fact that the Chiefs defense will look completely different this coming season than it did in 2018 is a good thing. The question now: how good does the defense need to be in order to give the Chiefs a good shot at winning the Super Bowl?
Before we answer that question I should clarify that I am working under the assumption that the Chiefs will again have one of the best offenses in the NFL. Just last week I wrote that history says that Patrick Mahomes will likely see his numbers come down after such a historic season last year. However, even if the Chiefs were to average 30 less yards and 5 less points per game this coming season, they would still likely be comfortably in the top five in the NFL in both categories. That’s how phenomenal they were last year when they led the league in both yards (425.6) and points (35.3) per game. Even with a slight regression in offensive numbers, they should still be one of the best offenses in all the NFL and there certainly isn’t a law that says that can’t find a way to be even better than last season (even if history isn’t on their side).
If the Chiefs are going to continue to be an elite offense, then just how good does their defense need to be in order to give them a shot at winning the Super Bowl this coming season? You often hear Chiefs fans say, “We just need the defense to be average or middle of the road,” but is there any validity to that? Much like I did last week, I thought I’d look at recent history to see what examples I could find. I looked back over the last 20 years of Super Bowl winners and looked at where they ranked both offensively and defensively in their Super Bowl winning seasons.
Before we look specifically at a few teams that the Chiefs could use as a realistic template to follow, let’s look at the averages. Over the past 20 seasons the Super Bowl winning teams had defenses with the following averages.
Yards allowed per game: 308.8 (avg NFL ranking 10th)
Points allowed per game: 17.5 (avg NFL ranking 7th)
The Chiefs, at least using last year’s numbers, are a long way off from the average Super Bowl winning defense over the past 20 years. They would basically need to allow 100 less yards and 9 less points per game to get to those marks. That’s asking a ton for the first year of a brand new defense (both schematically and personnel wise).
However, there is good news for Chiefs fans because they are working with an offense that is much better than the average Super Bowl winner. Without going into all the offensive numbers and rankings, I’ll just point out that the average Super Bowl winning offense over the past 20 seasons scored 25.5 points per game in their Super Bowl winning seasons. The Chiefs offense last year scored almost 10 points more per game than those teams.
Are there teams that the Chiefs could look to as a model of how to win with an elite offense and let’s just say a less than elite defense?
Let’s see what history has to say.