Chiefs’ Spencer Ware is the thunder to Charcandrick West’s lightning

By the time Charcandrick West returned to the locker room near the end of the Chiefs’ 33-3 rout over San Diego last November, the outcome of the game was not much in doubt.

Fellow running back Spencer Ware — who replaced West when he left the game in the third quarter because of a hamstring injury — was a big reason.

“When they took me in the locker room, they had the radio on so I could hear it on the radio,” West said. “And I heard he’d scored two touchdowns and I’m like ‘dang, (already)?’”

Yep. That game, the fourth of the Chiefs’ 11-game winning streak, was Ware’s breakout party. The 5-foot-10, 229-pounder — who had previously toiled away on the practice squad — sliced through the Chargers for 96 yards and two touchdowns on only 11 carries that day, all while displaying a unique level of decisiveness and power that separates him from the Chiefs’ other running backs.

“When he gets the ball and runs, I’m looking like bro, I know he’s about to hurt somebody,” West said. “It’s exciting to watch because you get Spencer anywhere, I feel like, within 10 yards of that goal line, he’s going to score. There’s no stopping him.”

   

 

To be fair, at 5 feet 10 and 205 pounds, West is not quite as big as Ware but he should not sell himself short. West, 25, led the Chiefs in rushing after Jamaal Charles was lost for the season last October, rushing 160 times for 634 yards and four touchdowns.

And while the 24-year-old Ware, who rushed 72 times for 403 yards and six touchdowns, actually boasted a higher yards-per-carry average than West (a remarkable 5.6 to 4.0) and received the overwhelming majority of the first-string work during organized team activities and training camp, it was West — who battled an elbow injury in camp — who leapfrogged Ware on the official depth chart released by the team earlier this week.

So with Chiefs coach Andy Reid saying it’s a “stretch” to expect Charles to play Sunday, it appears the Chiefs’ running game could again be a timeshare involving the two youngsters — “we’ll find a way to get it in their hands,” Reid said — which is just fine with a coaching staff that has customized the Chiefs’ offensive game plan to fit the downhill, one-cut running styles that is perhaps best epitomized by Ware.

“I see the same things (in him that) I see in Charcandrick, but Spencer’s a 220-pound guy who is built low to the ground, so there’s not a lot of surface to hit him on,” co-offensive coordinator Brad Childress said. “It’s all kind of knees and shoulders when he’s coming at you. He has great leg drive.”

So much so that both West and Childress have noticed that with Ware, perhaps more than any other back on the roster, defenders tend to make Deion Sanders-style “business decisions” when charged with tackling him.

“You’ve got to think about it — SportsCenter Not Top 10 is gonna to be on tonight, and I know they’re thinking ‘Man, I do not want to be on there getting run over by this young man,’” West said with a laugh.

Childress laughed as well, with a knowing nod.

“Oh yeah, I mean, you see guys — whether they decide to cut him or go low — I think you see that all the time,” Childress said. “Guys don’t want to take it on full tilt, especially if he’s put that on tape, which he has.”

But if that’s indeed the case, Ware swears he hasn’t noticed. He credits his running style to his mindset, which is simply based on delivering the blow instead of absorbing it.

“When we’re on the field, I feel like everybody’s out to take my head off,” Ware said. “It’s more so just protecting myself, really, at any given moment, because they’re gonna try to take shots on you.”

The two backs do have their differences, of course. West is generally regarded as the more natural receiver and better route runner of the two, though Ware — who caught his fair share of passes in camp — is no slouch there, either.

“I look at myself as an athlete,” said Ware, who caught six passes last season to West’s 20.

Yet the two stewards of the Chiefs’ running game (in Charles’ stead) also look at each other as friends. Both are former practice-squad players at the same position who were called on to help save the team last year following a miserable 1-5 start and an injury to their team’s best offensive player. There’s a shared camaraderie in that.

“We’re both young guys and for us to come in and have the little success we’re having right now, it’s pretty good,” West said. “We feed off each other. If I go out there and see him pounding, pounding, pounding and then they come in with me, it’s a switch up on the defense. Now I can go run routes. I feel like we complement each other. It’s crazy, the situation, how it all happened. 　

“I mean, we started the season on the practice squad. To be here now is crazy.”

That’s a reality that is not lost on either of them. On a recent day, West and Ware were talking about the unique way their contract situations played out this offseason, as each of them signed the exact same extensions on the same day. It was fitting, they realized.

“We feel like we made history with that already,” West said. “For us to do that together, man, was special.

“We’re just getting started, bro. We’re still young, and we’ve got a lot of football to learn, but we’ve got the best teacher in Coach (Eric) Bieniemy and the sky is the limit for us.”

This story was originally published September 8, 2016 at 7:29 PM with the headline "Chiefs’ Spencer Ware is the thunder to Charcandrick West’s lightning."