The Kansas City Chiefs And Unconventional Ways To Score

The Kansas City Chiefs have benefited this year from quite a few unconventional ways of scoring.

In Week 1, it was Dexter McCluster's 96-yard kick return. In Week 2, it was Brandon Flowers' interception return. In Week 3, it was a 45-yard double-reverse, flea-flicker that netted six points.

Clearly the Chiefs feel that they need some of these things to consistently compete. Chiefs head coach Todd Haley talked this week about "holding his breath" on some of the gadget-type plays they run.

"There are definitely high risk-reward plays that are called that make for some heavy breathing or lack of breathing while the play is going on. That is part of football and that is no different than feeling like we have a chance on a blitz. It is a risk-reward if you want to bring extra guys, you know you are putting yourself at a disadvantage somewhere. When we are calling blitzes we hold our breath on certain blitzes and when we call certain plays, we are holding our breath and on special teams when you are going to double handle the ball or onside kick, for those again it is risk-reward."

It's a calculated risk by the Chiefs and it's not just drawn up and thrown out there without any thinking.

For example, on the flea-flicker, the Chiefs ran that same formation and handed off to McCluster a couple of times before Matt Cassel hopped in on the reverse.

I imagine the Chiefs will continue to need things like kick returns, interception returns and gadget plays to win some games. With a couple of returners like McCluster and Javier Arenas, along with a corner like Flowers, I also imagine they'll get more unconventional scores than the average team.