All week long we’ve been looking at what’s wrong with the Kansas City Chiefs. It’s Alex Smith and the passing game! The offensive line isn’t playing well enough! The game has passed Andy Reid by!
Everyone has an explanation why but it feels like most people are guessing. Even the supposed experts who know more than I are just throwing out cliches (“You gotta run the ball to win in this league!”) without any real explanation of what’s wrong.
This quote from Mitch Schwartz (via this piece from ESPN) after last week’s game is a good explanation of what’s actually happening.
"We've played some teams that show a very low percentage of Cover 2 in their other games and then they've popped to that against us," Chiefs right tackle Mitchell Schwartz said. "We have Cover 2 beaters, but conversely, if they're in Cover 2, that should open up our run game. So we need to run the ball better somehow."
Hey, an answer that’s not a cliche! Is this the one thing that’s dooming their offense right now? No, probably not. Travis Kelce mentioned beating cover 2 once last week and we all clung onto that as the problem.
Schwartz said here the Chiefs have cover 2 beaters. They can beat it. Why aren’t they? That’s what I don’t get. Is it just a matter of them playing better? Is it that easy?
It’s surely a number of different issues (yes, including the quarterback and the coach) but Mitch’s quote is interesting. That’s not all their problems and we’re all grasping trying to figure out what’s going on here but I appreciate a more specific and non-cliche response like this. That’s something I’ll be watching for next week against the Jets.
Our own Kent Swanson tracks some of the coverages the Chiefs face so we’ll have some data on this soon enough!