Game Thread: Week 18- Kansas City Chiefs @ Denver Broncos

[Fountain City Blues]

Just curious and this game has a built in asterisk obviously, but when was the last time the Chiefs were shutout?

Week 15, 2012. They started Brady Quinn against the Oakland Raiders. Lost 15-0.

 

[Draft Crazy]

if Denver didn’t make it i wanted Bengals in.
how much of the failure of the seaon is on Zac Taylor? The Broncos OT game should have never went to OT had Taylor kicked FGs. Was he making these type of decisions all season?

i think the KC game was nullified by the Dallas game. and don’t go sub .500 in September losing to Jacoby Brisette at home

Same. I wish we could put the Bengals over the Steelers.

 

[CrashDavisSports]

I would also argue though the Bengals got gifted a couple of wins as well. Cowboys game with that weird punt situation for example. Heck the Broncos game where they chose not to go for 2 when they had all the momentum in their direction. So it was one of those up and down seasons for the Bengals that I'm sure many will be asking the question what the heck happened. MVP type season for Burrow, maybe best WR in football, offense putting up huge stats, but just shows how important committing to improving the defense is a must. Only 1 team of the top-10 scoring defenses missed the playoffs this year and that was #9 Miami. 14 of the top-19 made the playoffs. Bengals need to show they are committed to improving that defense. I think they relied on their DC to cover up the lack of talent. They have not drafted well on that side of the ball and seem to refuse to pay many of the players who do show some actual talent.

I agree with most that. The part I don't agree with was Anarumo covering up the lack of talent. I think at times he did, but most the time he put the defense in bad positions with the personnel he had. Also, we have talent on defense, but it certainly doesn't help when you lose your two best CB's at the beginning of the season, and your two free agent safeties wind up being old or terrible. That secondary was terrible. We didn't have enough quality depth to overcome the injuries in the secondary, all t he injuries on the Dline all year and the loss of our star LB in Wilson for the year.

You are right, the talent wasn't there, even with all t he starters healthy, but losing all t he top end players hurt even more, just like a lot of teams go through during the season. Detroit went through the same thing, but they had enough quality depth to withstand, we didn't.

 

[SpringStein]

I agree with most that. The part I don't agree with was Anarumo covering up the lack of talent. I think at times he did, but most the time he put the defense in bad positions with the personnel he had. Also, we have talent on defense, but it certainly doesn't help when you lose your two best CB's at the beginning of the season, and your two free agent safeties wind up being old or terrible. That secondary was terrible. We didn't have enough quality depth to overcome the injuries in the secondary, all t he injuries on the Dline all year and the loss of our star LB in Wilson for the year.

You are right, the talent wasn't there, even with all t he starters healthy, but losing all t he top end players hurt even more, just like a lot of teams go through during the season. Detroit went through the same thing, but they had enough quality depth to withstand, we didn't.

Speaking of injuries, we came out pretty clean this year. Our hindrance was $90 MM in dead cap space. That was an NFL record and forced us to be dependent on “kids”. That ended up being a good thing, especially long term.

 

[cdumler7]

I agree with most that. The part I don't agree with was Anarumo covering up the lack of talent. I think at times he did, but most the time he put the defense in bad positions with the personnel he had. Also, we have talent on defense, but it certainly doesn't help when you lose your two best CB's at the beginning of the season, and your two free agent safeties wind up being old or terrible. That secondary was terrible. We didn't have enough quality depth to overcome the injuries in the secondary, all t he injuries on the Dline all year and the loss of our star LB in Wilson for the year.

You are right, the talent wasn't there, even with all t he starters healthy, but losing all t he top end players hurt even more, just like a lot of teams go through during the season. Detroit went through the same thing, but they had enough quality depth to withstand, we didn't.

And I can get on board with that. I just know it wasn't that long ago your DC was being talked about as a top-5 DC. Now maybe the talent was covering up some of his issues as that does happen a lot in this league. Just amazing to see how quickly things can change from a guy being recognized as a hero to a zero. Heck we had the opposite here where 5 weeks in last year most were hoping Vance Joseph would be fired and now he is interviewing for HC jobs around the league because of what he did with this unit this season.

 

[cdumler7]

Speaking of injuries, we came out pretty clean this year. Our hindrance was $90 MM in dead cap space. That was an NFL record and forced us to be dependent on “kids”. That ended up being a good thing, especially long term.

I was just talking to someone about this the other day. Imagine if we had that $90 million to help build into this roster. You add say a Saquan Barkley to our RB room, Patrick Queen to our LB core, Jonnu Smith to the TE room, Wilkins for the DL and that still only takes you up to $58 million if we are going by the average per year of their contracts.

 

[LGM]

I was just talking to someone about this the other day. Imagine if we had that $90 million to help build into this roster. You add say a Saquan Barkley to our RB room, Patrick Queen to our LB core, Jonnu Smith to the TE room, Wilkins for the DL and that still only takes you up to $58 million if we are going by the average per year of their contracts.

The fact that we re-signed our core guys long term despite that 90 million hit is incredibly impressive too. That money when available again will continue to help us lock up guys like Bonitto, Moss, Mims and others. Crazy good front office we have.

 

[cdumler7]

The fact that we re-signed our core guys long term despite that 90 million hit is incredibly impressive too. That money when available again will continue to help us lock up guys like Bonitto, Moss, Mims and others. Crazy good front office we have.

For sure. And we now get to finally reap the rewards of having a QB on a rookie contract. Allows you to keep a lot of crazy talent and bring in others. The only thing I have not liked about some of the contracts we have done is all the void years they have added to them to help lower the cap hits over the next couple of seasons. Means some decent dead money coming down the path here in about 3-4 years, but hey if you see this as a great window of success while Nix is on this rookie contract then go for it.

 

[CrashDavisSports]

And I can get on board with that. I just know it wasn't that long ago your DC was being talked about as a top-5 DC. Now maybe the talent was covering up some of his issues as that does happen a lot in this league. Just amazing to see how quickly things can change from a guy being recognized as a hero to a zero. Heck we had the opposite here where 5 weeks in last year most were hoping Vance Joseph would be fired and now he is interviewing for HC jobs around the league because of what he did with this unit this season.

Well, he was being talked about that, and the deficiencies on defense were hidden because we were lucking into a lot of timely turnovers that we have not produced the last two years. This defense is not much worse than those defenses minus the fact we didn't stay healthy this year and those years we did, and we are not getting the timely turnovers that changed games into our favor. Those two things were extra bad this year. If you look at the numbers outside of scoring, you will see they were not much better in those days versus now other than we were getting lucky more frequently with turnovers.

 

[CrashDavisSports]

The fact that we re-signed our core guys long term despite that 90 million hit is incredibly impressive too. That money when available again will continue to help us lock up guys like Bonitto, Moss, Mims and others. Crazy good front office we have.

Minus the whole Russell Wilson trade to begin with. haha Just saying. All front offices have good and bad moments just like players.

 

[cdumler7]

Well, he was being talked about that, and the deficiencies on defense were hidden because we were lucking into a lot of timely turnovers that we have not produced the last two years. This defense is not much worse than those defenses minus the fact we didn't stay healthy this year and those years we did, and we are not getting the timely turnovers that changed games into our favor. Those two things were extra bad this year. If you look at the numbers outside of scoring, you will see they were not much better in those days versus now other than we were getting lucky more frequently with turnovers.

I got yah. I haven't watched a ton of Bengals football until this year leading up to our game against them. You are right turnovers are one of those tricky stats that can make a team look better than they really are. Broncos had that last year during their 5-game win streak where they were getting turnovers at a pace that was unsustainable. When the turnovers washed up the losses came back.

 

[cdumler7]

Minus the whole Russell Wilson trade to begin with. haha Just saying. All front offices have good and bad moments just like players.

We don't count anything before Sean Payton walked in the door. That was a different George Paton making the decisions. I do think Payton helps balance out Paton a lot and vice versa. They have a good working relationship it seems at this point.

You are right though that Wilson deal will go down as one of the worst in NFL history. I can only imagine where this organization would be right now with all that money back and those draft picks giving us some much needed depth that we are lacking.

 

[CrashDavisSports]

We don't count anything before Sean Payton walked in the door. That was a different George Paton making the decisions. I do think Payton helps balance out Paton a lot and vice versa. They have a good working relationship it seems at this point.

You are right though that Wilson deal will go down as one of the worst in NFL history. I can only imagine where this organization would be right now with all that money back and those draft picks giving us some much needed depth that we are lacking.

It all works out for a reason. If not for that ass whooping from the front office, you might not have wound up with a chance for Bo Nix.

 

[cdumler7]

It all works out for a reason. If not for that ass whooping from the front office, you might not have wound up with a chance for Bo Nix.

Oh for sure. I'm happy with where the team is at now. Interested to see what they do once they do not have that $90 million anchor holding them back as well though. I do worry that part of why we had so much success this offseason is because they had to make smart cost controlled decisions and if they are allowed to spend whatever they want we could see a lot of overpriced players coming in that never live up to their contract. This year we got very fortunate that players like Brandon Jones, John Franklin-Myers (not a FA but cheap trade), and Malcom Roach have played way beyond their contracts. Seems like the teams that do more second and third wave FA signings have a lot more success seeing those players have success.

 

[CrashDavisSports]

Oh for sure. I'm happy with where the team is at now. Interested to see what they do once they do not have that $90 million anchor holding them back as well though. I do worry that part of why we had so much success this offseason is because they had to make smart cost controlled decisions and if they are allowed to spend whatever they want we could see a lot of overpriced players coming in that never live up to their contract. This year we got very fortunate that players like Brandon Jones, John Franklin-Myers (not a FA but cheap trade), and Malcom Roach have played way beyond their contracts. Seems like the teams that do more second and third wave FA signings have a lot more success seeing those players have success.

You also build a team of guys that have something to prove and they are younger and able to build rapport with other teammates around their age with the same goals that allows them to build a cohesiveness. Sometimes these big FA contracts come in, overshadow all the young guys and don't help them, and they detract from the camaraderie or the team. See Russell Wilson.

Sometimes what happened to the Broncos is a necessary evil to make the front office see there is another way to build a team without maxing out the cap with overpriced stars all over the roster.