Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Dee Ford and Marcus Peters Must Step Up Now (Or, You Know, Sunday)

Wednesday seems like a good day to dim the optimism gleamed from last week’s impressive comeback win by your Kansas City Chiefs. We all got two full days of appreciating that never-before-seen style of win. Now it’s time to remember how dreadful KC looked before the last ten minutes of regulation. How did they dig themselves such a deep hole, and how much fear should that instill in Chiefs fans?

Before Keenan Allen tore his right ACL, he caught six passes for 63 yards. Allen’s injury came on the play following the first half’s two-minute warning, meaning he was on pace to catch more than 10 passes for well over 100 yards. Reigning Defensive Rookie of the Year Marcus Peters consistently got burnt by Allen, and worries about replacing Sean Smith in the secondary seemed well-founded as KC fell to a 24-3 deficit with less than 25 minutes left on the clock.

KC’s defense did buckle down eventually, allowing just 6 points in the second half and forcing punts down the stretch when it mattered most. However, fear still looms large after needing such a brilliant comeback to beat an objectively lesser football team. The Chiefs need to consistently pressure the quarterback and provide tighter coverage in the secondary in order to win against teams better than the Chargers.

I honestly can’t tell you if it’s defensive coordinator Bob Sutton or the talent on the field who deserves the lion’s share of the blame for so many ineffective plays from defensive ends/outside linebackers, but that cannot happen when KC meets up with stronger teams. This is all at-a-glance analysis (still looking for a way to watch prior games without shelling out a Benjamin for NFL Game Pass), but I would wager that Dee Ford was a non-factor far more often than the average Chiefs fan would’ve predicted – and the average Chiefs fan was decidedly not in love with Ford’s production prior to this season.

Analysts claimed that the secondary was KC’s biggest potential weakness heading into Week 1, but I figured this had to do with whoever would go on to replace Sean Smith. It turns out that Marcus Peters earned his fair share of skeptics Sunday afternoon, too. Peters and Dee Ford aren’t alone when it comes to deserving blame for that disappointing start – a struggling defensive line also allowed 155 total rushing yards – but they are the guys KC most desperately needs right now.


Sam Mellinger’s list of super-talented wide receivers that KC will see this year is disturbingly long. Adam Schefter’s latest report on Justin Houston has him returning to the Chiefs in November. Week 9 will reportedly be the earliest game in which he may play. That means we need Ford to help apply pressure while Peters covers TY Hilton, Antonio Brown, Brandon Marshall and DeAndre Hopkins. The Chiefs should be favorites in either two or three of those four games, but this season could all come down to how well this struggling duo fares before Houston’s return.

Feel free to loudly disagree with me on Twitter @DLaC67 or on my Facebook page.

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