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Originally Posted by Discuss Thrower
FWIW, not that I'm counting on anyone here to give me 'credit' for this, the game solely wasn't lost solely because of Alex.
The offense as a whole was awful. Strategically that falls a lot on the front office and Reid; the former because the best offensive skill players Dorsey/Veach/whomever have managed to find via the draft have been a physical specimen but headcase tight end, a fast as **** gadget player and the running back diamond in the rough rookie; the latter because for all of his acclaimed genius as a playcaller, he hasn't managed to make chicken salad from the chicken you-know-what personnel the front office has provided. Wilson, Conley, Harris or whoever you wanna throw at me are pretty much the definition of JAG replacement-level players anywhere else in the league.
Who the **** ever is calling the defensive shots for Pitt figured it out today: in shut down the running game and make Alex beat you.
Now, the narratives in play here are going to provide the litany of reasons why Alex didn't beat the Steelers this afternoon: injuries, offensive line, shitty receivers, dropped passes and defense.
Injuries are what they are: hopefully you have the coaching staff that can mask deficiencies.
Offensive lines are what they are, and clearly the Chiefs' O-line has been degraded by injury so the aforementioned obviously applies, but a failure in this facet of the game can be attributed to coaching. Further, the proliferation of spread offenses have degraded across the board so it's pretty fair to say that almost every team in the NFL has a shit line. Again, that comes back to coaching.
The state of the Chiefs receiving corps is mostly on the FO and coaching staff but amplified by what Smith brings to any team with his style of play. This has been rehashed constantly here and I won't bother with regurgitating it here.
Dropped passes, which obviously is a product of a largely shit receiving corps, are attributable to the guys being targeted by throws but at the end of the day have a bit of 'luck' applied to them as well as pass placement by the QB. You come to your own conclusions as to what with wrong with that today.
As for the defense... I really don't know what else to say beyond to looking at the box score and seeing that they kept the Steelers under the league average so far this season as well as the average for the last few years. Pitt got a touchdown off of a fluke play in the second half and were contained to a touchdown and a field goal. IMHO that's pretty remarkable considering the offense had a net total of six yards in that same span.
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I think the early offensive play calling was due to injuries. I think they were in a tentative mode. They weren't sure what to expect with such an inexperienced WR corp and instead of just running the playbook like they have been, I think they went into the old Chiefs shell. They didn't help themselves at all and I blame a lot of that on the coaching. They played not to lose the game early and it showed.
As far as the defense, they got worked over. They couldn't get off the field. They couldn't generate good field position and and they allowed the Steelers to control the game offensively even if they didn't score. In other words, they didn't do an injured offense any favors by generating shorter fields or getting the Steelers off the field in timely fashion. We saw it with the very first drive. Bell ran all over us today.