Kansas City Chiefs: Offensive Line Costs Team Again

The KC Chiefs dropped to 1-5 yesterday, and the offensive front once again showed its true colors.

Another opportunity to win a game in the fourth quarter, and another loss for the Kansas City Chiefs and an offensive line that hasn’t found an identity.

This one’s not all on the offensive line. The Chiefs out-gained the Vikings, they won the turnover battle and they allowed only two sacks on quarterback Alex Smith.

Sill, this 2015 Chiefs offensive line again proved itself as one of this team’s fatal flaw. They’re young (for the most part), inexperienced and they’ve played together for five games. And it shows.

It’s not so much that the individual parts are bad, it’s that the collective performance just isn’t good enough over a 60-minute NFL game. The mistakes continue to pile up, the communication seems get lost at times and every drive it feels like there’s a new issue.

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Whether or not this offensive line is physically capable of playing great football remains to be seen. It might just be that the talent isn’t there. But what they continue to prove is that they’re not mentally there yet either. Ben Grubbs, Mitch Morse and Donald Stephenson each committed holding penalties yesterday, and each of those drives ended in a punt.

On a Chiefs 4th-and-1 deep inside Vikings territory, Stephenson whiffed a Sharrif Floyd assignment and running back Charcandrick West was brought down – “brought down” – in the backfield. Later, as the Chiefs were driving down just six in the fourth quarter, Stephenson unintentionally knocked the ball from West’s arms, and Kansas City turned the ball over.

While the West fumble falls entirely on West, it just felt like a microcosm of this offensive line and this Chiefs offense. Pure dysfunction. The Chiefs want to run a west coast offense and run between the tackles, but they simply don’t have the unit up front to be effective.

Entering Week 5, Pro Football Focus ranked the Chiefs offensive line was ranked number 10 overall in the NFL, according to ArrowheadPride.com. Eric Fisher got a positive grade:

"“PFF apparently agrees that Fisher has been playing well in his two games this year: “Whisper it quietly, but Eric Fisher (+4.2) has played really well since returning to right tackle.”"

Seems like an unlikely grade for this group, especially during these last three games, but the Chiefs must address the offensive line issues if they’re going to get things turned around.

There’s plenty of blame to go around. The offensive line is not solely responsible for five losses. There’s a coaching staff involved, a quarterback involved and the rest of the offense that are involved. But it’s definitely one of this team’s glaring issues.

Next: KC Chiefs: The Future Of Jamaal Charles

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