What Herm & Chan Are Telling Us
by Direckshun on May 27, 2008 7:36 PM CDT
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PrintHerm Edwards and new offensive coordinator Chan Gailey both spoke with the media Tuesday, as the Chiefs came off a four-day weekend to begin their second week of OTAs.
Herm's Q&A is here, and Chan's is here.
What are we beginning to learn about this new Chiefs team through these interviews?
Well besides awesome, information-bursting answers like these...
Q: What is it about Brodie that has you sold?
GAILEY: “He has ability. He works at it and he’s smart. And good.”
...very, very little. Few subjects were candidly discussed other than the basic difference between young guys and old guys in training camp.
So it's our obligation as the Red & Gold Die-Hards to read between these lines. I ask that you help me figure out what exactly Herm and Chan are implying.
Here's a few things I'm picking up on, add on if you can think of anything:
1. Nobody seems to agree what exactly happened to LJ's foot:
EDWARDS: When he got hurt he didn’t even get tackled really. He just twisted his foot.
GAILEY: We’re not pushing too much, too fast. Those toes are dangerous things so you have to be smart about that. We’re going to go slow with it. But he’s been great so far.
Q: What were your concerns with a guy coming off of a broken foot?
So we have a broken foot that's been twisted with a toe thing somewhere.
2. We should not expect this to be the Steelers' circus offense from the Gailey years.
Chan and Herm clearly believe the answer to fixing this offense lies not through the trickery that was a hallmark of Gailey's Steeler offense that won a Super Bowl, but through simply acquiring better players. Gailey used the word "magic" about forty-three times to underline the point that there's no wand to wave here... you just hope Croyle's the guy and surround him with the right pieces.
Even as Gailey tries to deny this offense a label, he and Herm both agree this is a smashmouth offense. They also seem to be indicating things will remain simple for the youngins. Be nervous if you were highly critical of Solari's two-page playbook. This offense will not be fixed overnight. It's probably not even going to be fixed in 2008. It will take some time -- much like it took Herm time to retool this defense.
3. This year's OTAs are incredibly boring so far.
We have a bunch of young guys in there, including 13 draft picks. That's going to make for one of the most captivating preseasons we've had in an incredibly long time, but it's apparently making for some horrendously dull OTAs.
First off, the Chiefs are running very basic drills, very basic offensive and defensive sets right now to teach the young guys the ABCs. Secondly, we have an entirely new OC this year, so the offense is spending the entire OTA period just picking up the different pieces of his playbook.
That's all I got for now. What're you guys sensing from these interviews?
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I am not so much worried about what is being said,
but, as you wrote, this pre-season will be the most intently scrutinized in my life. With a majority of our team being new, I will be over-analyzing these trial games. These pre-season games will have nearly the same importance as a regular season game, since they will actually determine the players in a regular season game.
And I will use a lot of hyphens.
Gailey's Offense isn't predictable
Direckshun, don’t make the mistake of confusing a run-heavy offense with a predictable one. Remember, Vermeil ran the ball as often if not more-so than Solari did. Also, don’t mistake trickery with deceptive playcalling. As long as you do a good job of mixing up your pass/runs, your blocking schemes, and the direction you target, you can definitely deceive defenses. It just so happens that Solari was predictable on 2 of those 3 dimensions: defenses knew exactly when we were going to run the ball and in which direction.
I’ve seen enough from Gailey’s offseason moves to believe he has some wrinkles up his sleeve. His stockpiling of fullbacks and tight ends indicates to me that he wants to keep extra blockers there, probably to assist with pass protection. More importantly, those are guys who are not liabilities in the passing game while serving as tremendous assets in the run game. Previously, when we put Jason Dunn in the lineup, you knew we were going to run the ball. Now, with Cottam, you don’t know if the Chiefs will run or pass. But when they run the ball… you now have a tight end, not a WR, doing the blocking for you.
So don’t be too concerned. I agree the playcalling might be slightly more conservative to begin the season, only to ease the transition into youth. But Gailey’s offense is certainly going to be 100 times more unpredictable than Solari’s, and that alone should boost our offensive ranking about 10 spots… at least.
LJs injury
KC Star in a recent article had this bit:
All Johnson could do was watch while he rested and iced an injured foot that, for weeks, had no diagnosis. Johnson said he traveled to North Carolina to be examined by a specialist, who found that a toe bone in Johnson’s right foot was cracked. Even when it felt better and Johnson could walk on the foot without pain, running was a different challenge.That’s what he learned Dec. 19, when he tried to return to practice. He could walk. He could even run — for two or three yards, before his foot started throbbing again. He had told teammates he would return before the end of the season. But on that Wednesday, six weeks after he hurt the foot in a loss against the Green Bay Packers, Johnson was helped to the locker room, and his season was finished.
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