Sturm: Kiffin Report: Week 2 - Kansas City Chiefs - Mixed Results

[WoodysGirl]

A look at the defense in Week 2 finds a mixed bag of results. On one hand, they limited yardage and damaging drives to a minimum. They found 4 sacks and did a nice job of keeping the running game from causing issues most of the day despite playing a team with a running reputation. But, on the other hand, they caused 0 takeaways - Remember, since 2010, the Cowboys are 0-11 when getting no takeaways on the road - and most discouragingly, were absolutely demoralized with Kansas City taking the ball with 3:50 left and all 3 Dallas timeouts and running the ball down the throat of Dallas with almost no difficulty whatsoever.

The 4-minute drill is something that is not often discussed by football fans, but teams put a fair amount of emphasis on it because it can and does win games. The 4-minute drill is the ability for a team to kill off the final 4 minutes by running the ball and moving the chains twice (assuming the opponent has its full allotment of timeouts. It is ideally done without ever throwing a pass and therefore not risking a stop of the clock.

So, to see the Cowboys, down 17-16, pin the Chiefs in deep - only to basically never touch the ball again is very disappointing and a big reason why nobody should be saying that "the defense did its part." They almost did. But, they sure didn't close the deal.

Here are the details of that final drive:

Read alot more: http://sturminator.blogspot.com/2013/09/kiffin-report-week-2-kansas-city-chiefs.html

 

[Future]

Thats a pretty awesome breakdown.

That 16 yard run in the .gif there is really concerning. Everybody on the entire defense got blown up. Carter was too slow to see the play and get there, then he got blocked way too easily, Hatcher got pushed back, and Lee tripped over Carter...

 

[Staubacher]

Thats a pretty awesome breakdown.

That 16 yard run in the .gif there is really concerning. Everybody on the entire defense got blown up. Carter was too slow to see the play and get there, then he got blocked way too easily, Hatcher got pushed back, and Lee tripped over Carter...

Ware was held badly and obviously by Fasano on that play. Should have been first and 20 back at the 16. Different ballgame

 

[Rockport]

The last drive by the Chiefs was a killer. There's a lot of blame to go around for losing this game. Not just one player, the offense or the defense. The NFL is the ultimate team sport. The sum of all parts must play well for the team to win.

 

[Future]

Ware was held badly and obviously by Fasano on that play. Should have been first and 20 back at the 16. Different ballgame

Eh, yea I guess.

I can't justify saying that the Claiborne PI shouldn't have been called if I think that should have been though. They were right not to call it there, imo...but if they are going to call Claiborne's a penalty, that flag should be thrown.

 

[fanfromvirginia]

Ware was held badly and obviously by Fasano on that play. Should have been first and 20 back at the 16. Different ballgame

At this point, the coaching staff needs to gameplan around the likelihood that Ware is going to be held on occasion, or often, without flags being thrown.

 

[Idgit]

Those Total Blitz % charts are a bit useless--or I'm not reading them correctly? If they aren't weighted for the frequency of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd downs, what good does it do to tell us about the distribution of blitzes? Ie, we're blitzing ~2.5x as often on third downs, but only 25% of the overall blitzes are happening on third downs because there are fewer of them overall. What am I missing about what that's supposed to tell us? Or is it purely nice-to-have info that doesn't really tell us anything?

 

[dueyhemlock]

Ware was held badly and obviously by Fasano on that play. Should have been first and 20 back at the 16. Different ballgame

Ware was hooked big time on that run. His body got spun completely around trying to free himself. He was at the end of the line, very visible.

If the refs decided at that point to let them play instead of influencing the outcome of the game, then they should have not called that very questionable PI on Claiborne. That Ware hold was way more blatant / obvious penalty.