Chiefs vs. Texans: Tyrann Mathieu’s greatness and other lessons learned in Week 6

The secondary is better than advertised

Through Week 5, the Kansas City Chiefs had forced 4 turnovers in the red zone—two interceptions and two fumbles, one of which was returned for a touchdown. After Week 6, you add an interception in the end zone to end a long Texans drive, and another one in the end zone off a deep pass. Kansas City’s secondary is proving to be a problem for teams deep in Chiefs’ territory.

This is the same secondary that is supposedly so bad that the Chiefs need to trade away multiple first round picks to pick up a potential locker room cancer. The Chiefs corners have kept teams out of the end zone more often than they have let offenses in. As a matter of fact, Kansas City’s secondary has been coming up big, making tackles that limit runners who have broken past the porous linemen and linebackers to the next level.

Houston found themselves in scoring position quite a few times, but Kansas City’s secondary came up big and forced either a turnover or field goal (one of which was missed) 4 times—just as often as Houston was able to punch it in. Even then, of those touchdowns, only one came off of a pass, the rest were ran through the line or run past the linebackers by Deshaun Watson.

Is this secondary perfect? No. The lack of discipline leads to defensive holding penalties so often it is almost funny, and corners play so conservatively on receivers that they give up short passes all the time and are not in position to grab passes that should be picked off. But the secondary is the healthiest unit on the field, and when they are performing well, offenses are going to continue having a hard time scoring against the Chiefs.