We have our fifth and final installment in the Arrowhead Pride and Football Outsiders Q&A. We're dong this to celebrate the release of the Football Outsiders Almanac, which first came onto my radar when they were like the only ones to predict before the 2010 season that the Chiefs would win the AFC West (and also predicted Tamba Hali and Jamaal Charles would blow up, which they did).
The previous four questions are here:
And the final question: Where can the Chiefs expect Stanford Routt to be better than Brandon Carr?
From Vince Verhei of Football Outsiders:
That, frankly, is a damn good question. Carr was one of the league's steadiest and most reliable players over the past three or four seasons, not an elite corner but certainly a good one. (He actually had better coverage numbers than Brandon Flowers last year, though that was clearly an anomaly.) Routt's career, meanwhile, makes no sense. He only saw significant playing time once in his first five seasons, and in that one year he was awful. Now he's started regularly for two years in a row, and been very good, even better than Carr, a top-20 corner overall. So if he can maintain that level, the Chiefs will have actually upgraded here. And if he can't, and returns to his old level, then it's going to be a long season at Arrowhead.