How the Kansas City Chiefs choked away a Super Bowl
The Defensive Front Didn’t Dominate
The Cincinnati Bengals gave up 9 sacks last week. NINE. Their offensive line isn’t good…at all. The Chiefs did bring some pressure throughout the game, but they just couldn’t get Joe Burrow on the ground, especially when it mattered most. Melvin Ingram got one sack and that was it. If the Chiefs had an equally bad defensive front that might be acceptable, but the Chiefs invested FAR too much on their front four to get that outcome against that offensive line in that big of a game.
Let’s just take a second to remember what the Chiefs have up front. Starting defensive end Frank Clark had the highest cap hit of any defensive player this season at $25.8 million. The HIGHEST cap hit of all the defenders in the NFL and he didn’t have any sacks against a horrible line with the Super Bowl on the line.
Chris Jones has the fourth biggest total dollar contract of any interior defensive lineman in the NFL and is often described as second only to Aaron Donald in terms of impact defensive tackles. He had no sacks against a horrible offensive line that allowed Jeffery Simmons to have 7 tackles and 3 sacks just last week.
Jarran Reed was supposed to be KC’s biggest impact free agent signing this past offseason. His $5.5 million, one-year deal wasn’t a huge one, but they brought him in to help get pressure up the middle. You would think if Jones wasn’t able to get any sacks that maybe it was because they focused so much on him that maybe Reed could get home. Nope, zero sacks for him as well.
The one sack KC did get was from their one trade deadline move, Melvin Ingram. So they gave up a late-round draft pick for Ingram and he did really help KC this year, but if he’s good and the other three guys I just mentioned are all being paid to be good, how is that the total output in this game?
Overall, I’m not that upset with the defense in this game. They gave up 24 points in regulation to a team with a great young quarterback and as good of skill players as any team in the league. We could nitpick a few specific plays. We could have the Dan Sorensen conversation for the 10,000th time. But at the end of the day, the defense was okay overall. The only thing that I find completely unacceptable was the lack of finishing from what was supposed to be the strength of our defense going against the huge weakness of their offense.
While these first two points are key reasons K.C. choked away that game, neither of them was as frustrating as my final complaint.