National Football League

Chiefs face make or break in Oakland

Published Jun. 30, 2017 6:28 p.m. ET

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Oct 2, 2016; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid looks on during the second half at Heinz Field. The Steelers won the game, 43-14. Mandatory Credit: Jason Bridge-USA TODAY Sports

First things first – this is not 2015. Four games under .500 isn’t going to cut it this year, and there are a lot of reasons why. The upcoming schedule is more daunting, the team is missing some of the pieces that made it so great last year, and they haven’t shown an ability to be consistently decent at even one thing – let alone good at a few.

And yes, I can math real good – I realize losing this week doesn’t put the Chiefs four games under .500. But as I previously mentioned, there are a lot of problems plaguing this team. The one that has me most concerned, though? Somebody broke Andy Reid.

Reid is an offensive genius. That’s more than just a clichéd, time-filler comment used by analysts around the league – it’s an objective fact. But there’s always an inevitable drawback to mad genius. Occasionally, you get a lot more “mad” and a lot less “genius.” To articulate this point, I’m going borrow from some Christopher Nolan films.

Doug Pederson had success against the Steelers, and Andy Reid… um… didn’t. But Pederson merely adopted the screen – Andy Reid was born in it. Heck, it was even so much a screen as it was a screen within a screen. 1st and 10? Screen. 2nd and long? Screen. 3rd and anything? Screen. The dog ate some chocolate? Screen.

It was like Reid forgot that it was legal to throw the ball vertically. And that’s really weird, considering they did so on the first two plays, and were wildly successful doing so. After those two plays, the “genius” seemed to be all dried up – and we were left with an over-sized dose of “mad.” There were a couple of layers to the madness, too.

Oct 2, 2016; Pittsburgh, PA, USA; Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Alex Smith (11) looks to pass against the Pittsburgh Steelers during the second quarter at Heinz Field. Mandatory Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

The first was that vertical passes were wildly successful, and horizontal passes were exactly the opposite – that’s the obvious part of all this. The second is more frustrating – this team (at least the passing offense part of it) is built to win with medium-deep passes. Sure, Alex Smith’s arm isn’t the strongest – but he can throw it 15-30 yards without many issues. And the Chiefs weapons (Maclin, Conley, Kelce, etc) are much, much better suited to those kinds of passes than they are to catching the ball in the flat.

It defied all logic to keep going to the screens, and Reid did it anyway. Frustratingly enough, that’s probably why he kept doing it. Reid loves to find unique ways to move the football and score points. Sometimes he gets inside of his own head too much, and the result is a series of play calls whose only redeeming factor is unexpectedness. Nevermind that it means… oh, I don’t know… Smith rolling to his off-hand side for a 3rd and short pass.

I’m a glass half-full kind of a guy, though, and I think Reid can get back on track. In order to do so, however, he needs to fix a couple of things. I mentioned some of them above, and some are more of an issue of planning against whatever team they happen to playing that week. This week, it’s more important than ever to get that second part corrected – Reid absolutely must gameplan very, very well for the Raiders.

That’s not just because the Raiders are good (they are), or even just because of the massive difference between 3-2 and 2-3. A loss puts the Chiefs 2.5 games behind the Raiders, approximately a third of the way through the season. They also have a tough schedule ahead and only one remaining game against the Raiders to make up that divisional deficit. There would also be no possibility of winning the head-to-head tiebreaker if both teams finish with the same record.

Oct 9, 2016; Oakland, CA, USA; Oakland Raiders quarterback Derek Carr (4) prepares to throw a pass against the San Diego Chargers in the first quarter at Oakland Coliseum. Mandatory Credit: Cary Edmondson-USA TODAY Sports

In other words, a loss effectively means that even if we assume the Chiefs win on the Raiders Bye week, they’ll need to be three games better than the Raiders over a 10-game stretch. Losing this week means that if the Raiders go 5-5 in their last 10 games, the Chiefs would likely have to go at least 8-2 over the same period of time in order to have a decent shot at the playoffs. It is imperative that the Chiefs win this week. Period. How do they do that?

As I’ve said repeatedly, it starts with the offensive playcalling. Specifically? Way fewer screens, way more medium-deep passes, and way, way more runs (like, way more). Reid is going to have Jamaal Charles back at (supposedly) 100 percent this week. He’s already had Spencer Ware. His defense is best when they’re not constantly on the field. This means run early, and run often. It also means taking some shots down the field and, as strange as this may sound, placing some priority behind scoring points, and running plays on the right side of midfield.

They also need to use their defensive pieces more wisely, but a lot of the problems there are due to having so much youth on that side of the ball – they simply don’t know exactly what they have there, yet. As weird as it seems, I’m really not that worried about the defense. A young unit without their best player struggled on the road against a Hall of Fame quarterback. Imagine that.

Regardless of whether or not you agree with all of that, the bottom line is this – the Chiefs absolutely must win on Sunday if they want to make the playoffs. This game is make-or-break.