An Article I wrote for my last semester class about the Chiefs.
Just thought I would share this from what I wrote last spring.
Paul “Bear” Bryant once said, “Offense sells tickets, but defense wins championships”. So during 2003, the Chiefs had the number one offense, and theoretically if Bryant is correct, the Chiefs would have not won a championship. Now a new era is upon the Chiefs, they have a new GM, and new coaches. Along with the new staff comes a new view on how the team should be run. During the 90’s the Chiefs had one of the best defenses in the league, but they had one of the worst offenses in the league as well. Then starting in the late 90’s to presently, the Chiefs have had one of the top offenses in the league, but then one of the worst defenses in the league. In fact, they Chiefs were so bad in the 2008 season that they set a new record for the lowest sacks in NFL history, a record that had stood for well over 30 years. So the real question is, should the Chiefs work on their defense and try to have a balanced team?
Making a Championship defense out of the Red and Gold
Looking back at the past Super Bowl winners and losers, most of the time the winners had the better defense. There are odd times when a team can have an average defense and still advance deep into the playoffs, win the conference championship, and win the Super Bowl. Some great examples would be the 2001 New England Patriots and the 2006 Indianapolis Colts. Both the Patriots and Colts defenses had an average ranked defense of 22nd overall in the league. In an article by Thomas George of the NFL website, he emphasis’s that the more balanced team is more likely to win. This means it’s a combination of a great defense and great offense. You can’t simply have the number one offense and play a shootout game; it’s been done and it doesn’t work. Further more in George’s article, he averaged the past 20 year Super Bowl champions over all defensive ranking; they average out to be ranked 6th overall.
In 2003, the Chiefs went 13-3. They had the number one ranked offense in the league and 32nd ranked defense. Their offense was so good that Priest Holmes set a new record of 27 rushing touchdowns in a single season. They had made it to the AFC Divisional Playoff game. According to Wikipedia on the 2003 Chiefs season, “It was the first punt-less game in NFL Playoff history; it was a shootout. The final score was 38-31. That’s how the Chiefs won most of their games that season. Normally, teams don’t get far winning shootout games, yet another reason why a real defense is need.
The 2008 season for the Chiefs was the most brutal. They went 2-14, and the main reason: their defense. Bob Gretz wrote an article on the 2008 defensive rankings for the entire NFL. The Chiefs ranked 30th surprisingly, followed by Denver and Detroit. So not only were the Chiefs ranked second to last in the league, they set a new NFL record for the lowest amount of sack in one season, which was 10! That’s not even one sack per game. Eleven games were only lost by 10 points or less. They also had the lead in most of those games. On part two of the defensive rankings by Bob Gretz, it says that the Chiefs were the WORST on a third down. My conclusion is, if they could have held the other team on third down two more times during the game, most of those games could have been won. The bright side, though, is that the Chiefs were 10th overall in the league for turnovers. I guess it wasn’t good enough, though. Now, I guess we can’t all blame the team for all the losses. The coaches have to take some heat as well. Especially Herm Edwards: He wanted to make the team young. Nearly all of the defensive players were rookies. While a young team is good, it needs a mix of veterans to teach the rookies.
Now a new era has started. In December of 2008, Carl Peterson “resigned”. So that led to a search for a new GM. After the season was over, Clark (Hunt) set out on a mission to find a GM to replace King Carl. After many interviews with several candidates, on January 13th 2009 Scott Pioli was hired. In ten days after taking his spot within the organization, it was decided that the Chiefs should move in a different direction than Edwards was taking them, and he was fired. Thus began the building of a football team, a quest to bring real Chiefs football back to Kansas City. Again, Clark and this time Scott set out to find a new head coach. On February 6th, Hunt and Pioli decided on Arizona’s offensive coordinator, Todd Haley. So far, it seems that Pioli and Haley have focused on the defensive side already.
It’s that time of year where there are a million NFL mock drafts. Most of the mock drafts say the same thing for a few weeks, and then they change. Earlier this year, many mock drafts placed the Chiefs picking up a QB; Matt Stafford or Mark Sanchez. On feburary 2009, the Chiefs traded their second round pick (35th overall) for QB Matt Cassel and LB Mike Vrabel. After that, a lot of mock drafts changed. According to My NFL Draft, they think the Chiefs will select Aaron Curry, LB from Wake Forest. He is arguably the best players in the draft. An ESPN draft analyst Todd McShay says Curry is, “The safest pick in the draft”.
There is evidence already that the Chiefs are taking a defensive stand. First they have cut a few defensive players to clear up cap room: Patrick Surtain, Donnie Edwards, and Pat Thomas. Secondly they added a few free agent veterans to the team. Along with the Matt Cassel trade, they picked up Mike Vrabel, then they picked up free agent linebacker Zach Thomas. Finally, there has been a few rumors floating around. One of those is signing defensive end Jason Taylor, and according to his Wikipedia page, he is Zach Thomas’ brother-in-law. The other rumor is the Chiefs would try and possibly trade one of their picks to get defensive end Julius Peppers. I really don’t see the Chiefs trading away another draft pick to get Peppers, seeing how they already don’t have a second round pick. That is a lot of moves for any team to do with in two months.
While Super Bowl champs normally have tough defenses, sometimes teams will stray from the normal trend. Statistically great defenses go further, but this proves that statistics don’t mean everything. If the Chiefs want to increase the odds of winning even a playoff game, they are going to have to stack in the right defensive players. The Chiefs have already started it, though, adding the two veteran linebackers Vrabel and Thomas. I guess the real question is, since they have started building a championship defense, can they finish?
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Originally Posted by Chiefster
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