While the Kansas City Chiefs have a big game against the Oakland Raiders coming up this week, they should have spent the bye week fixing themselves.
The Kansas City Chiefs entered their bye week still in control of the AFC West, trying to get back to being considered a Super Bowl contender in the AFC. After a win against the Los Angeles Chargers last Monday, they now have an important match up with the Oakland Raiders coming up this Sunday.
Chiefs head coach Andy Reid is well known for his success coming off of the bye week. Given extra time to scout his opponent and prepare his teams typically do very well coming off the bye. Most years I’m excited about the idea of Reid having extra time to prepare during the bye week, but this year I hope that he spent that extra time looking at his own roster.
Just last week I wrote that the Chiefs needed to have a “must win mindset” in their games against both the Chargers and Raiders. I still stand by that. The Chiefs absolutely need to win this game with the Raiders if they want to keep control of the division and turn their sights on positioning themselves for a run in the playoffs. Yes, the Raiders embarrassed themselves against the New York Jets on Sunday, but that just means that beating the Raiders will essentially wrap the division for the Chiefs. They’d have a two game lead over Oakland plus the tiebreaker with four weeks to go. A loss, on the other hand, would make things a dead heat heading into the home stretch. So this is still a huge game. The thing is, I don’t think the Chiefs need some kind of top secret elaborate game plan to beat the Raiders. They just need to stop beating themselves.
If you look at the Chiefs four losses this season, you can break them into one game where they played pretty well despite not having Patrick Mahomes, but Aaron Rodgers made enough special plays to beat them and then three games where the Chiefs lost not because of what the other team did, but because K.C. simply didn’t execute with any kind of consistency. That is what is so frustrating about the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs.
So yes, the Chiefs want to make sure they are prepared for a huge game against the Raiders, but the Chiefs should be thinking about the bigger picture They certainly don’t want to look past the Raiders, but their primary focus needs to be on figuring out how to consistently fire on all cylinders. If they can do that, not only will they be able to beat the Raiders, but they can absolutely still make a Super Bowl run despite their mid-season struggles. That should be their goal.
A Raiders-centered focus during the bye week could get the Chiefs a win in a huge game this week, but if they then go right back to playing like they did in their losses to the Indianapolis Colts, Houston Texans, and Tennessee Titans, what does it matter if they win the division? Will anybody feel like this year was a success if they win the AFC West but are instantly bounced in a game where the Chiefs clearly didn’t play their best? I know I won’t.
After the loss to the Titans, I wrote that the Chiefs were their own worst enemy and I still firmly believe that. The only consistent thing about the 2019 Kansas City Chiefs is that they have been painfully inconsistent week to week. The Chiefs should be focused on getting themselves right in all three phases of the game. That’s how they can both beat the Raiders and get their season as a whole back on track.
Special Teams
On special teams they have to put some work into the return game.
While K.C.’s coverage units have been strong on returns, their own return game simply hasn’t been up to the standard that they have set in Dave Toub‘s tenure with the team. They rarely break long returns. They field kicks that they shouldn’t. They get stupid penalties that usually don’t even have an effect on the return. It’s been terrible.
The Chiefs used to get an extra boost from special teams play, but this season they typically find themselves on the short end of the field position battle because of mistakes (often mental) on special teams. That is something that needs to be fixed for the home stretch of the season.
The Defense
On defense, the work to be done is all about consistency. The defense has overall been improved from last season. The Chiefs are giving up three less points per game, 30 less total yards, 5% fewer third down conversions, and are now in the top ten in the NFL in completion percentage allowed.
While they aren’t quite on the same sack rate as last season, the difference is marginal. Last season they were tied for the league lead in sacks at a rate of 3.25 sacks per game. This season they are currently 6th in the NFL with a rate of 2.91 sacks per game. The only place they are worse off really is rushing yards allowed where they dropped from 132.1 per game last season to 143.1 this season. The yards per carry allowed has stayed pretty consistently bad at 5.0 YPC last year and 5.1 YPC allowed this year.
The problem is the defense has been so inconsistent. One week they are holding Dalvin Cook to 21 carries for 71 yards and no touchdowns and then the very next week letting Derrick Henry run all over them with 23 carries for 188 yards and two touchdowns. So what was the difference? Did Tennessee exploit some weakness that Minnesota missed? If so, then work on that weakness. Did the Chiefs just do a better job of filling gaps and making fundamentally sound tackles against Minnesota? If so, then put an extra focus on that during the bye week. Study what worked and what didn’t. Don’t just hope it will get better.
The Offense
The consistency problem goes for the offense as well. Last season the Chiefs scored 30 points or more in 14 games including the playoffs and were never held under 26 points all season long. This season they have only scored over 30 points in 5 of their 11 games and have already been held under 26 points four times. We’ve seen glimpses of that high-scoring offense at times, but it just hasn’t been the same. Obviously, injuries have played a major role this season, but it would be a cop out to say that is the sole problem with consistency on offense.
This is where Andy Reid needs to take a real look in the mirror before the home stretch. Why was our offense consistently creative and focused on getting the ball into the playmakers’ hands while Patrick Mahomes was out with a knee injury? With a lead in the second half against the Chargers, why did the Chiefs get so predictable and safe that they almost let the Chargers come back and steal that game? Where were those creative play designs when the team was scoring 13 points against the Colts? Where was the offensive guru when the Titans were staging a come back in a game where we were clearly the better team?
Andy Reid has to own that. He has to look at what kind of plays have caused this offense to stall when they had been clicking and what kind of plays have jumpstarted the offense. Then he needs to keep that in mind the next time a game gets close.
Those are the kinds of things that, if fixed, will allow this team to get itself back into the conversation of franchises that have a real shot at winning the Super Bowl. Beating the Raiders is important, but it’s the next step, not the only one. The Raiders showed that they have their own problems in that brutal loss to the Jets. The Chiefs need to make sure they win this game, but the key to doing that is getting themselves to simply produce in all three phases on a consistent basis. Game planning for your opponent will always be important, but this season the Chiefs biggest roadblock has been their own mistakes, not their opponents.
Here’s to hoping that the Chiefs spent some time trying to correct that during the bye week.