Breaking Down the Chiefs and Chargers Tape - O-Line

The Kansas City Chiefs went to San Diego last Sunday and out came an egg, opps.  Even good teams have a difficult time overcoming as many turnovers as the Chiefs had against the Chargers:  Interceptions, fumbles, bad snaps, dropped balls, pretend passes.

So how did the offensive line perform against San Diego?  Last week, against the Steelers, the o-line had their work cut out for them trying to hold the Pittsburgh defense at bay.  So did the offensive line improve from last week despite the loss?  Once again this post will attempt to evaluate each offensive lineman on each offensive play for the first three quarters of the game.  There is no place to hide when you are on film.

Observations after reviewing the film:

1. The offensive lineman are starting to develop an natural pocket with natural escape paths for Cassel. This is something that I have not noticed over the past 5 games.  I think this is significant.
2. Cottom was used more in this game.  He lined up in the backfield a couple of times.
3. The Chiefs are running the ball wide more.  Naturally we might think about Charles, but, this might play into the o-line favor as well with them 'shield' blocking better than 'drive' blocking.
4. The last two games Waters has been getting beat to his inside a few times.  Is he lossing a step?  Is he wearing down?
5. Pope made one play where he sealed the end man on the line of scrimmage then at the last moment picked up a linebacker on the second level who was going to make the play...playside.
6. Niswanger doubled a lot in pass protection.
7. O'Callaghan seemed to lose more hand battles against the Chargers.  He would go to punch on his pass drop and the defender would seem to be able to sweep the hands more than previous games.
8. Two bad snaps by Niswanger.  Did not have a place to put those in the grades.
9. Because the Chiefs are 'reach' blocking more (and not drive blocking) I did not have many RB Doubles.  So I left that slot black.

Here are the grades from first three quarters against the San Diego Chargers :

As a group the Chiefs o-line did better than the previous 5 weeks.  Individually nobody received a 90% grade in run blocking and pass blocking...so no individual lineman made the top grade this week.

TOP GRADE		TOP GRADE
	Pic Source Pic Source

For those of you that would like to see grades from previous games to track progress just check out the links below.

Link to Steelers grades here.

Link to Raiders grades here.

Link to Jaguars grades here.

Link to Chargers grades here.

Here's how the grading works:

• Each offensive lineman was given a "+" for doing their job or a "-" for failing to do their job on each play.
• These pluses and minuses were grouped into the type of block they were asked to do, e.g., a run block solo (RB Solo), a run block double team (RB Double), or a pass block solo (PB Solo), etc.
• A "D", for "driven", was assigned every time a player was manhandled during a pass or run play.
• The quality of the lineman's play is represented as a percentage above.  The higher the percentage the better the lineman did.
• I tried to be very strict...I think Haley would want it that way.
• One important note, some plays were unclear as to who exactly did not do their job, e.g., a defensive tackle going unblocked at the line of scrimmage.  Was it the centers fault?  The guards fault?  In these cases it was clear that a mistake was made and the player that looked to be most at fault was assigned the blame.