‘He plays angry.’ How Melvin Ingram has helped turn around Kansas City Chiefs’ defense
At the onset of a defensive turnaround, Chiefs coordinator Steve Spagnuolo attempted to explain how it all came to be. This is a few weeks ago now, when he mentioned the midseason acquisition of edge rusher Melvin Ingram as sort of a headline.
Three weeks later, that’s still a point he wants to make. There’s a certain demeanor to the way Ingram plays, Spagnuolo said, and perhaps just one snap can illustrate his point. It came in Week 10, when the Chiefs were in Las Vegas to play the same Raiders team that will be making the return trip to Kansas City on Sunday.
Tight end Daniel Helm has the unpleasant assignment of blocking Ingram one-on-one, and Ingram drove him backward three yards before tossing him aside with one arm. Almost simultaneously, Ingram purposefully banged into ball carrier Kenyan Drake, blowing up the entire play.
“He’s playing angry,” Spagnuolo said. “I say that to him all the time — you play angry. I love it You’ve got everybody else getting angry too.”
The Chiefs traded a sixth-round pick to Pittsburgh last month in hopes Ingram would infuse physicality to a struggling pass rush. A swap between two teams in the playoff picture doesn’t typically lead to immediate impact, but Ingram’s provided exactly that, even if it’s not come in his defining statistic — he’s been credited with only half a sack in his four games in Kansas City.
Asked what he has brought to the Chiefs, Ingram responded, “Just being me.”
But later told of how Spagnuolo described it — the anger, specifically — Ingram replied nonchalantly, “It’s an angry game. It’s a physical game. It’s a legal way to be violent.”
Let’s take the opening drive of last Sunday’s game against Denver as an example. On a second-and-1 snap, Ingram forced his way into the backfield to tackle Javonte Williams for a loss. One snap later, he and linebacker Willie Gay met at the quarterback for a 7-yard sack.
Three-and-out. Just two minutes off the clock.
Tone set.
“He’s had a couple plays where he just knocks people around,” Spagnuolo said. “I think that’s contagious and that helps us. There are times — it’s not just about sacks — that if he’s demanding double team or he’s driving somebody into the quarterback and the quarterback’s gotta move his feet and then he falls into somebody else.
“Those kinds of things are what we’re getting. It’s helping.”
Ingram’s arrival has provided the precise physicality that drew the Chiefs to him in the offseason, when the two sides were unable to reach a deal. Months later, his long-awaited arrival has coincided with an about-face in production from the Chiefs’ pass rush. Beforehand, the Chiefs had 11 sacks in 8 games (1.38 per game), the second fewest in the NFL.
In the four games after the trade, the Chiefs have nine sacks (2.25 per game).
“It’s been amazing here from Day One,” Ingram said. “They embraced me with open arms. They let me just come in and be me.”
This story was originally published December 9, 2021 at 1:22 PM.