Kansas City Chiefs: 5 Players To Watch Against The Pittsburgh Steelers

Dee Ford

One player that I have not been high on throughout his time in Kansas City is outside linebacker, Dee Ford. With that being said, I thought that Ford played possibly his best game in a Chiefs uniform against the Chargers last week. When I went back and watched the film, I charted Ford having one sack, three hits on Philip Rivers, and four pressures.

Rivers and the Chargers offense made it difficult to get ahold of the quarterback averaging getting rid of the ball in 2.56 seconds last Sunday. Just because the Chiefs were only able to bring him down once, doesn’t mean that the pass rushers weren’t productive. In fact, despite the box score stats that don’t show what a pass rusher is actually doing, most of the pass rushing weapons that Kansas City have were quite productive.

Defensive end Chris Jones charted out with six pressures, four hurries, and two hits on the quarterback. Justin Houston got close many times as well, but Rivers just got the ball off too quickly. Los Angeles’ offensive line was forced to hold on countless plays to keep Rivers clean which shows they are doing their jobs.

Last week, Ben Roethlisberger was under pressure the entire game. While the weather was bad, Cleveland’s pass rush was a significant factor in the horrible play from Big Ben last Sunday. If Kansas City can prove as consistent getting after Ben this week, it could be a good day for Bob Sutton’s defense. If Dee Ford can continue to look like he did in Week 1, I can only imagine what this pass rushing unit will look like going forward.

Justin Houston and Chris Jones were the sole pass rushing weapons last season. Not having that third pass rusher crippled the defense and forced Sutton into dropping more players back into coverage. He showed some creative blitz packages as well against the Chargers, so I will be looking for that to see if it continues against Pittsburgh.