Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs’ needs, The Mahomes Effect, Frank Clark, next Royals manager
The Chiefs are 4-0 with three wins over the AFC and three on the road. They have won their games by an average of more than 10 points against a group of teams that are otherwise 8-3-1.
They have done this without their best receiver, starting running back, and starting left tackle.
They have overwhelmed opponents with long passes and brilliant route combinations, held up better than expected (and even better than many believe) in the secondary, and just won on a last-minute drive capped with pure muscle — a straight ahead run through a middle linebacker, with a little help from the center.
And there are a dozen things they can clean up. That’s the good part, if you’re a Chiefs fan.
Here then, for the first time ever* we begin Kansas City’s favorite piece of weekly gimmick sports journalism with a list.
*I think, but really, have no way of knowing for sure so let’s just go with it.
A list? A list!
The 10 most important ways the Chiefs can improve between now and the (let’s just say it) AFC Championship game against the Patriots.
10. Special teams. They have not been good, and they have too many players whose primary responsibility is special teams to not be good. They’ve missed a field goal and extra point, their net punting is down, they fumbled a kickoff return and they’ve had too many penalties.
They need to be better. And they will be, which is why this is 10th on the list.
9. Better run blocking. At least at first glance this was an area of improvement against Detroit, which has a physical and talented front seven. This will also (presumably) improve when Eric Fisher can play again.
But there are too many snaps where the back has nowhere to go, and not enough of those snaps where you think, “Well, yeah, sure, anybody could’ve made eight yards there.”
8. Corners find the ball. Bashaud Breeland is not part of this criticism. But everyone else is. Their coverage is good enough — Pro Football Focus ranks them 13th, whatever that’s worth — but the playmaking isn’t.
They have three interceptions: Frank Clark off a deflected pass, Charvarius Ward took advantage of broken play, and Breeland boss’d Tyrel Williams on an end zone fade route. They do not have a pick from a defensive back beating his man for the ball downfield, which is the best way to give the opposition some hesitation about how they attack.
7. Continue to find mutual comfort between scheme and personnel. Measuring this will be difficult. We’ll know it’s happening when we see more clean blitzes like the one Tyrann Mathieu used on a third down sack in Detroit, when the Chiefs produce more pressure with stunts, and other subtleties.
6. Get healthy. This is probably too obvious, but still. Imagine how excited Chiefs fans would be if this was their team, and then they landed Tyreek Hill in a trade.
5. Tackle better. This is simple, and again perhaps subtle, but it’s the clearest way to prevent extra yards and give Mahomes more chances.
4. Frank Clark. We’ll talk more about him below, but there’s some untapped production there against both the run and pass.
3. Stop the run. Now we’re getting to the big ones. The Chiefs are giving up 5.9 yards per carry, significantly worse than anyone else. Kerryon Johnson had been averaging 2.6 yards per carry and had 125 against the Chiefs. This is a really bad weakness for a team with the Chiefs’ offense to have because it’s an invitation for a smart and capable team to go boa constrictor and move the ball while playing keep away from Mahomes.
2. Turnovers from the defense. They’ve actually been OK here. Their six takeaways put them in an eight-way tie for 11th, and only the Patriots and Bucs have more than eight. But this is the best way the defense can help the offense. Turn the opposition’s aggression against them.
We’ve seen this in the past, where teams with explosive offenses have gone all-in on creating turnovers and made otherwise unspectacular defenses dangerous.
1. Trade for a cornerback. You knew it was coming! The shallowest group on the roster will get some depth with Mo Claiborne off suspension this week. But they could still use another one, particularly (you probably knew this was coming, too) someone who can help create turnovers.
Jalen Ramsey is the name that will keep floating around, but there is so much posturing in that situation on all sides that I’m not sure what to make of it. I do believe this: cornerbacks will be available through trade, and the Chiefs should (and will) be in on them.
This week’s reading recommendation is Del Quentin Wilber on how a Texas Ranger got one of America’s worst serial killers to talk and the eating recommendation is the club sandwich at the Farmhouse.
Please give me a follow on Facebook and Twitter and as always, thanks for your help and thanks for reading.
Alex is over here asking me to link to the game column, because he’s a hero, and I don’t even have to mention that it’s a subscriber exclusive because so is this. We’re all in the trust nest*!
*Those of you here by working around the paywall get a side eye.
We probably answer some type of this question as many weeks as we don’t, but I’m putting it up top this week because the damnedest thing happened in Detroit.
I never thought the Chiefs would lose.
When Mahomes missed passes, I assumed he would start hitting them. When the offense went three-and-out, I assumed it would find its rhythm. When the Chiefs needed a 2-minute, come-from-behind touchdown drive I assumed that’s what would happen, even at fourth-and-8.
Logically, I understand the flaws here.
Mahomes guarantees nothing other than interest. He has no birthright to winning, and the teams he plays for still have to do the significant work required to win an NFL game.
But the point is that Mahomes has so consistently shown an ability to tilt the margins in his favor that he has trained a lot of us to expect it.
For so many years the Chiefs were the team that had to do everything right and then hope the star quarterback on the other side didn’t Superman the outcome at the end. We saw that script a lot.
But now we’re on the other side of it, and not just on the other side of it, but so firmly on the other side of it that it’s like, well, yeah, they’re down late in a place louder than a rock concert on a day they really haven’t played well but OF COURSE they’re going to win this with a touchdown.
I don’t know how to rank these types of things. With normal human quarterbacks, yes, absolutely. Let’s rank.
For instance, you will never convince me that Alex Smith’s comeback against the Chargers in the 2016 home opener — forever memorialized by my friend David Eulitt’s amazing photo — wasn’t Smith’s best moment with the Chiefs.
But, again. Smith is a human quarterback.
Mahomes is an alien, which makes these quantifications more difficult.
He’s 23 starts in now (including the postseason), and is his best the day he took a brutal pounding against the Ravens and still threw for 377 yards and converted a coldblooded fourth-and-9 and won in overtime?
Is it the day he ripped apart the Blitzburgh defense for 23 completions on 28 passes for six touchdowns and no interceptions, leaving an opposing linebacker verbally shaking his head about the naivety of thinking they could confuse a guy in his third start?
Is it the day he threw for 313 yards against the Jaguars, then the NFL’s best defense, leaving a trail of they-beat-us-like-we-stole-something quotes coming from (what was then) one of the NFL’s most confident locker rooms?
Is it either of the times he went for a total of 62 points in the second half against the greatest defensive mind in NFL history last year?
Is it the comeback on Monday night against a division rival, highlighted by a left-handed pass on third down, a win that left (again) one of the NFL’s most confident defenses throwing verbal rose petals at his cleats?
Or, like you say, is it the time he led a last-minute, come-from-behind touchdown drive against a previously unbeaten team on the road highlighted by him literally smiling in the huddle before a fourth-and-8 conversion?
We have not mentioned his magic trick touchdown pass against the 49ers, or the time he threw for 478 yards and six touchdowns in one of the league’s all-time best regular season games, or a playoff win, or at least once when he was chosen AFC offensive player of the week, or three other times the Chiefs scored 40 or more points.
Guys. We’ve just mentioned more than half of his NFL starts. By the definition of the term, some game we’ve referenced above is a below average start for him.
Ranking is senseless.
Also: Mahomes makes no sense.
I’m going to answer this two ways, and the first is obnoxious, but it’s the truth so: I really want to watch the film.
Because watching live it looked like Mahomes simply missed some potentially big gains that he usually hits. The ball was just a foot high, or long, and a play that could have gone for 30 yards was an incompletion.
So my instinct is that the Chiefs just missed on some plays, whether because of a ball that could’ve been better placed or a route that could’ve been better run.
But I’m also sitting here and thinking about how the former defensive coordinator of the Patriots just “held” Mahomes to the third-worst passer rating of his career despite missing his top two cornerbacks.
The most obvious thing the Lions did was harass Travis Kelce. They doubled him regularly, and not just doubled him but doubled him physically. They seemed to prioritize coverage over pressure, and normally I would assume that would mean Mahomes extending plays and going big down the field but for whatever reason* the Chiefs did not take advantage.
*Tyreek Hill’s return will make that strategy particularly dangerous.
So, again. I want to watch the film and get a better idea of how they did it.
But the other answer is a little more simple.
I think we’ve seen the blueprint already. The blueprint is, basically, some combination of attacking the Chiefs’ weaknesses: isolate their corners and take advantage of their tendency not to find the ball, go heavy on the run game because the Chiefs can’t stop it and it keeps Mahomes on the sideline, and do whatever you can to break up receivers’ timing and for goodness’ sake double Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce or maybe even both.
I know he took some criticism for it, but I’m also in on John Harbaugh’s strategy to be hyper-aggressive on fourth downs and even two-point conversions. I’d pooch every kickoff and sell out to try to strip.
A line from Harbaugh crystallizes the way the Chiefs should be attacked:
“It wasn’t a field position game,” he said. “It was a possession game.”
The Chiefs are — whether you look at traditional stats, advanced metrics, or even just watch the games — better defensively than a year ago.
They are not good, and are not even average. At least not yet. But they are improved.
Still, they can be had, and the combination of the offense’s absurd production mean that every decision should be made with the understanding that downsides of most risks are diminished and upsides are enhanced.
On fourth-and-3 at midfield, the upside of a punt that pins the Chiefs at the 5 might serve only to give random fantasy owners more points.
On fourth-and-3 at midfield, the downside of a turnover on downs might simply mean the Chiefs score in three plays instead of five, of that you get the ball back quicker.
Patrick Mahomes changes everything.
It’s both.
Maybe that’s the copout answer, but it’s true, and I can prove it:
IT’S THE PLAYERS: the cornerbacks are consistently in position downfield but do not locate the ball to defend the pass or potentially make an interception.
IT’S THE SCHEME: the majority of quarterback pressures have come from Chiefs defenders beating the guy in front of him. That’s how it was with Bob Sutton, too, but part of the allure of Spagnuolo was that he had a track record of “scheming” pressures with stunts up front.
IT’S THE PLAYERS: they’ve been pretty rotten against the run now for a while, with different coordinators, so who else are you going to blame?
IT’S THE SCHEME: the safeties have provided more support deep but they’ve still given up big plays because those guys have been forced to cover for too long.
Look, the defense is better. You can see that statistically (their rankings in traditional stats and metrics from Pro Football Focus and Football Outsiders are improved) and you can see it with your eyes (don’t go forgetting how helpless that group often was last year).
But they’re not nearly good enough, because everything about this season is a prelude to Week 14 in Foxborough and even that will be prelude to the AFC Championship game.
Right now, the Chiefs’ defense is not good enough for Tom Brady.
But with time — and, again, there are breadcrumbs along a potential path of improvement — this group can get there.
It’s too early to say with any certainty whether they’ll get there.
They need to tackle better, need to create more turnovers, need to create more pressure, and need to be better against the run ... and that just about covers every aspect of playing defense, doesn’t it?
But the thing they have going for them is the offense. The bar is lower, and the pressure on the opposition higher.
I just don’t think it’s realistic to expect them to be a finished product right now. The players need to become more comfortable with the scheme, and the coaches need to become more comfortable with the specific strengths and weaknesses of each player.
Sorry man. You’re going to have to wear that one.
This is the best Chiefs team in generations, I really do believe that, but they also lost to the Patriots twice last year. The Patriots are 4-0 and have given up a total of 27 points — the Chiefs have given up 26 or more three times already.
The Patriots are Super Bowl champions, with the best coach-quarterback combination that football has ever seen, and as much as we (justifiably) talk about how good the Chiefs’ offense is, the Patriots might be working on one of the best defenses in recent NFL history.
If the Chiefs and Patriots played this weekend, the Patriots would be favorites.
And they should be.
I’m sure your mother-in-law is a fine person. Compliment her daughter or something.
He hasn’t been as bad as many seem to believe, but he also hasn’t been what the Chiefs paid for.
Chris Jones has clearly been the alpha on the defensive line, and even if you give Clark some credit for free rushes against the quarterback you must recognize that Jones is the one making it work up front (when it works up front).
On the snaps that Clark doesn’t win I don’t see a heavy common thread.
There are times he’s doubled, but also snaps he’s one-on-one and uses an ineffective bull rush. There are times he sets an effective edge, or is close enough to the quarterback to force a decision, but also snaps he takes a speed rush that just isn’t speedy enough.
His highlight tape with the Seahawks is gruesome. He beats linemen every way they can be beaten. He spins, he speeds, he bulls. A couple times he sacked the quarterback by essentially throwing the tackle into his lap.
His best snaps in four games with the Chiefs seem to be with spin moves, and from what I can tell he spends a lot of the game setting that move up, then using it in key situations. We saw that last week on the third down sack, and he did it again in Detroit on the last possession. That shows an awareness, or what people often call football IQ.
One big difference I see from him here and Seattle: he was a monster with stunts and twists.
He was productive in every way with those. He could be the one setting up a teammate by crashing his lineman, or the one set up, finishing the ally-oop with a loop around the blockers and into the quarterback.
That’s been lacking, at least so far.
The pessimistic view: Clark was brought in at least in part because he’s effective with a specific strategy the new defensive coordinator is fond of and still hasn’t taken advantage.
The optimistic view: the players and coaches are still learning each other, so the wins will come.
The worst case scenario here is that Clark turns out to be a product of Seattle’s system, and the freedom there to attack the opposition’s weak link with limited double teams and gap responsibilities.
I’m not even close to getting there yet. He’s still a good player, and there are signs that the production will come.
But, yeah. The guy with a $63 million guarantee should have more highlights so far.
He really has been great. As good as he was last year, and maybe better.
Watch this sack again, where he stands up the left guard and then throws him to the side to open a rushing lane into Matthew Stafford’s chest.
But this other play is a better example of what you’re talking about. Jones again lines up over the left guard — Joe Dahl had a rough day — and pushes him straight back four yards into the Lions’ backfield.
That’s great, but in practice simply meant Kerryon Johnson had to take an extra step to turn the corner. The left tackle and tight end double Clark, opening a hole, and Johnson sprints through for a five-yard gain.
We don’t know specific assignments, so a lot of this is guesswork. But it looks like Johnson’s read is on Chiefs linebacker Darron Lee. Lee gets ahead of Johnson and goes wide — following the fullback — but Johnson cuts it upfield which gives the left tackle an angle to seal off Lee.
This is just one play, but a symbol of what you’re talking about here.
The Chiefs are faster at linebacker, but those plays still have to be executed with precision. If Lee is sealed off like that, then Hitchens or someone else needs to beat their men and make the play.
What you’re saying makes perfect sense. I get it. As long as Mahomes is healthy and Andy Reid is employed the Chiefs will score points. They need Tyreek Hill like I need another smoker*.
*Team Kamado Joe.
Corner is a bigger need (linebacker might be bigger than either, but that’s a different discussion) and Ramsey is essentially the cornerback version of Hill — young, superior talent, a potential game changer on every snap.
So, sure. Makes sense, and I’m willing to have my mind changed on this.
But I’d rather have Hill, and I’ll tell you why.
To me, Mahomes’ talent isn’t an excuse to cut corners on offense. It’s a demand to load that side of the ball with every advantage possible.
Hill is more valuable in Kansas City than he would be in other places because of Mahomes’ ridiculous arm talent.
This is not a joke: Mahomes is the Chiefs’ best defensive player, and the offense is the Chiefs’ best defense.
Hill makes everyone’s job easier. You think the Lions would be able to unapologetically double Kelce like they did if Hill is sprinting downfield? You think they’re as comfortable dropping seven or even eight into coverage if it means giving Mahomes extra time to set up the scramble-to-his-right Howitzer?
If you’re constantly flooding the other side with touchdowns, it makes your defense’s job so much easier. Their opponent is now pressured into tougher decisions, your defenders are freer to take chances and go for turnovers, and if the result is you get in one of those whoever-has-it-last-wins games, well, you’re in a good spot.
Again. I get the temptation, and maybe my mind can be changed on this.
But at least at the moment I’d be motivated to keep my strengths my strengths.
A.J. is a friend of the Minutes, and I think I know what he’s getting at here.
It’s not a comment that watching Mahomes and the offense is tedious, stressful, or nerve wracking.
It’s a comment that cheering for a favorite is a flip of fan emotion. From that perspective, well, yeah.
The 2014-15 Royals are never going to happen again — the 29-year drought, the comebacks, the simultaneous sense of destiny and underdog, and in 2015 the wire-to-wire best team in the league that could still honestly and genuinely attack like underdogs.
Of the many things that Patrick Mahomes changes, one is that you can never say that nobody believes in you, because you have the best player in the league playing the most important position.
From a player’s or coach’s perspective, of course that’s irrelevant. Who cares? Play the games. Fight like hell.
But from a fan’s perspective, sure. I don’t know if you can say the upside of winning is diminished — your team hasn’t even played in a Super Bowl in 50 years — but I can see how the downside of losing is amplified:
Only the Chiefs could keep Patrick Mahomes from the Super Bowl.
But, well, come on. You’re not trading.
You’ve tried it the other way, right?
This is a perfectly constructed question and cannot be improved upon.
Congratulations, sir.
But while I respect the joke and encourage you to use it, I disagree with the premise.
The NCAA is not messing around here. I have zero respect for the vast majority of the NCAA’s rules, and believe the bureaucracy to be dishonest, hypocritical, and shamelessly insincere in motivation.
I believe the case against KU to be done out of obligation (the FBI presented the case in court) and insecurity (the NCAA’s enforcement has taken some L’s and this is an easy win).
But I don’t believe they are here to bow to blue bloods anymore. Bill Self can get his amazing taunts in now, because soon enough he’s going to be coaching a team banned from the postseason or escaping for a job with the Hornets or something.
KU will fight this, and Self will too. Institution and coach are in lockstep here, and as much as I might agree with their general premise — if T.J. Gassnola is a booster then every program has shoe rep boosters — I’m not sure it matters with the way the NCAA is looking at this.
The lesson other schools will take from a heavy punishment for Kansas is not that shoe reps should be kept out of the business. It will be that Self and Adidas got sloppy. Self needs a burner phone, and to not leave a digital paper trail discussing recruits with a grammatically challenged bag man.
The lesson, more than anything else, will be that Nike is smarter about how it deals with recruits.
The NCAA may or may not be in denial about that, and either way it may or may not care.
If you’re beaten up over and over, you’ll take any wins you can get.
Mike Matheny is the most likely, and this is not a guess.
But some caveats exist:
▪ I can’t say for sure what effect John Sherman’s purchase will have on the process.
▪ I also can’t say for sure what effect the potential availability of recently fired managers like Clint Hurdle might have.
▪ Pedro Grifol and Dale Sveum will have interviews.
Joe Maddon has likely graduated from a job like the Royals, and it would certainly make sense for him to go back to the Angels. Hurdle obviously has a history with Kansas City, and in some ways could be a great fit. But I can’t speak to what kind of relationship he has with the front office, or how his priorities mesh, or even whether he wants another job right away. Brad Ausmus would fit the Royals profile, too.
If I was in charge, I’d want to know what kind of baseball future Grifol wants. Because he can do anything. I’d want to know if Maddon would be interested, and if so for how much. I’d want to know whether Hurdle wants a year off, and if not then what he thought of the organization and whether his priorities fit.
I’d also be curious about Raul Ibañez, though he has a good life and a big family.
But I also know that for as badly as it ended in St. Louis there are a lot of strong baseball people who think the world of Matheny as a leader and mind. They believe he can learn the right lessons from what went wrong with his first job and course correct in a way we’ve seen from other managers — not just Ned Yost but Bobby Cox and Joe Torre and others.
It’s been nearly dead for some time and, if we’re honest, has probably never had much life.
AEG was the white hat Kansas City needed, but it’s plainly obvious that the leadership there was never particularly motivated in an anchor tenant for the Sprint Center as anything other than eyewash to get the vote passed and the building opened.
By now, Las Vegas has established itself as a major league sports city and Seattle is widely recognized as next in line for the NBA.
Kansas City is a small market five hours away from an NBA small market, and four hours away from an NHL small market. The building would need hundreds of millions of dollars in renovations, and no local owner has expressed a desire to land a team.
That’s a lot of obstacles to clear.
But I’m not calling the dream completely dead because it does seem inevitable that the NBA will expand, and if the right grassroots interest (and wealth) could be cultivated we might have an interesting case.
That’s a long way off, though, and you’re smart to point out that a strong local candidate is now off the board.
If you’re willing to dream, here are two (very longshot) scenarios:
▪ Paul Edgerley, an owner with the Celtics and a friend of Sherman’s, is motivated by his buddy’s path and does something similar for an expansion or relocated NBA team.
▪ Clark Hunt decides that running the family business (and a growing responsibility within the NFL) isn’t enough, and that landing an NHL or NBA team in Kansas City would allow his legacy to stand on the same level as his father’s.
Neither one feels particularly likely and, if I’m honest, I’m only including the Hunt scenario for kicks. I don’t think he cares or thinks about “legacy” in that way, and believe he is fully engaged with the Chiefs and NFL — now more than ever. In a lot of ways, I think he’s hitting his stride as an owner and leader throughout the the league.
I don’t know Edgerley at all, so the first scenario is unapologetic speculation.
This is not speculation: Kansas City remains unlikely to land another major professional sports team.
Another wonderfully constructed question, and something about which 10,000 words could be written. But in the end I’m not sure it really matters.
Because Vermes’ two jobs are meant to be complementary, with the coach adjusting strategy to personnel* and the technical director knowing what the coach needs and why.
*This has been perhaps his best strength, actually, with the team evolving from pressing to possession to counter attack depending on the moment.
Sporting has been remarkably consistent, and nothing lasts forever, particularly in a small market on a relatively small budget.
So, in some ways, a year like this was inevitable and (I would argue, at least) the problems amplified by some truly rotten luck, from freak injuries to Daniel Salloi’s bizarre season.
But that doesn’t mean the results should be ignored, or excused away. The temptation could very well be to give the band one last tour, and see if such horrible luck one year can even out the next.
Sporting retains good players, and for a time — a long time ago by now, but still — was among MLS’ best teams in 2019.
If it was me, the head coach should be asking tougher questions of the technical manager than vice versa.
The championship core is aging and the problems exposed the lack of a next wave.
No matter what direction Vermes chooses — rebuild or win now — Sporting must find a way to complement the veterans with some youth.
Vermes the technical director has always been good at finding those pieces. That specific skill is needed now as much as ever.
An outdoor kitchen equipped with every tool the Peanut uses for its wings and 12 dozen birds to get me started. I’ll also require the recipe for their blue cheese, but I don’t need the recipe for the sauce because I already have it*.
*Flex.
Really, I could list a few more ideas but on the 0.00000000001 percent chance anyone would ever take this seriously I don’t want to dilute the pool of possibilities.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for technology. My dad fought in Vietnam. I have an app that can turn my AC or sprinkler on. Time moves forward, man.
This story was originally published October 1, 2019 at 5:00 AM.