Kansas City Chiefs: Will Bob Sutton Continue Creativity In Week 2

Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Bob Sutton was creative during the win against the Los Angeles Chargers. Will he continue that in Week 2?

The Kansas City Chiefs pulled off a beautiful upset over their divisional foe, the Los Angeles Chargers. Almost everyone in the national media predicted the Chargers to win this game, and eventually the AFC West. However, it would seem that head coach Andy Reid and defensive coordinator Bob Sutton still have the Chargers number making it nine straight wins against Los Angeles.

While the offense was a thing of beauty, the defensive side of the ball had some creativity behind it too. Sutton was retained following the loss in the playoffs with a clear message from Kansas City’s front office that they believed it was a personnel problem and not a scheme problem. GM Brett Veach spent the offseason overhauling the defensive side of the ball to get bigger and nastier up front.

Los Angeles was the first time we got to see the entire group play together. Whether it be injuries or not being on the roster all preseason, many of the players on defense hadn’t worked with one another before. This led to communication errors, especially in the secondary last Sunday. Even though there were flaws on the defensive side of the ball, there was one thing that stood out.

When it comes to Bob Sutton, most of the frustration comes from his bend but don’t break defensive mindset. It also comes from the fact that the Chiefs defense has been one of the most predictable ones in the league for a couple of years now. The lack of creativity especially last season was allowing offenses to dictate how the defense played.

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That was not the case in the Week 1 game against the Chargers. Sutton got creative in Los Angeles whether that be lining up players in different spots on a consistent basis, blitz schemes, and spending almost the entire game in press man coverage. It wasn’t as noticeable during the broadcast, but when I went back and watched the All 22, it was clear that he was getting creative to slow down Philip Rivers.

Some of the frustration that I’ve come across in my conversations with you guys is the inability to bring down Philip Rivers more than the one time. The Chargers were able to get the ball out of Rivers hands quickly running mostly quick shallow routes against Kansas City. Making it hard for the Chiefs pass rush to get home, they still made some pressure during the Week 1 matchup.

It’s hard to understand what a defensive front does when just looking at the box score. When I went back and watched the film, defensive end Chris Jones had a monster of a game. Countless times he forced the opposing offensive linemen to hold him to keep him from ultimately getting to Philip Rivers. I charted him coming away with six pressures, four hurries, and two quarterback hits.

Justin Houston, while having a quiet game, also saw plenty of holds during the matchup as well. One player that I’m very excited about was Tanoh Kpassagnon who was only out there for eight pass rushing snaps on Sunday was forcing the left tackle to practically choke hold him to keep him away from the quarterback. I think that Kpassagnon looked great in this game.

Bob Sutton did a good job moving the front alignment around. The defensive ends lined up on some plays outside of the outside linebackers. In fact, Dee Ford‘s sack came when he was lined up over the guard. We even saw rookie defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi lined up in a wide nine.

Sutton moved the defensive line and linebackers around for the entire game forcing Rivers to account for every player before the snap. This kept Rivers from being able to run a fast-paced offense most of the day. Sutton also had the cornerbacks playing press man coverage on just about every snap that I watched.

Going into Pittsburgh, it will be interesting to see if Sutton continues to be creative against the Steelers. While there are still communication errors and missed tackles to clean up, overall I thought the defense looked good. Also remembering that most of the Steelers offensive stats were padded in the fourth quarter when Kansas City played prevent defense.

They will have an even bigger test going into Pittsburgh. Sutton has done a good job of keeping the Steelers under 20 points the last couple of showings. The only reason Antonio Brown has even gone over 100 yards in the previous matchup was a pass that hit off Phillip Gaines’ facemask and landed right into Brown’s arms.

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Ben Roethlisberger was under a great deal of pressure against Cleveland which is something that I’m hoping Kansas City can replicate. As the defense gets healthy, plays together, and cleans up those errors, I already see an improvement from this defense from not only the preseason but last year.

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