Kansas City Chiefs: 10 Likes and 10 Dislikes from Week 2 vs Oakland

10 Things I Disliked

1. Questionable Punt Returns

De’Anthony Thomas had me scratching my balding head on a couple of his punt returns. As in, why did he just field that? And both times the Chiefs ended up committing a penalty to push them further back into their own territory. Maybe it had Dave Toub re-thinking things, too, as Hardman ended up returning one punt. It wouldn’t surprise me to see more of Hardman over Thomas back there as the season progresses.

2. Double-Digit Penalties

Speaking of penalties, the Chiefs had 10 penalties for 114 yards. That’s double the amount of penalties and more than double the amount of penalty yards from Week One against the Jaguars. Hopefully both of those numbers take a dive against the Ravens.

3. Defense’s First Two Drives

https://twitter.com/PFF/status/1173334715639697414

The Chiefs were lucky to enter the second quarter only down 10 instead of 14. The Raiders missed a golden opportunity to score a touchdown on their first drive, instead settling for a Daniel Carlson field goal. Yes, the defense played well the rest of the game, but against a better team, such a hot start would make recovering that much more difficult.

4. Offense’s First Quarter

Did anyone else think the offense played timidly in the first quarter? It seemed that way to me. On the Chiefs only full drives in the that quarter, they had 11 plays, 31 yards of offense, and two punts. Mahomes’ completions went for eight yards, five yards, four yards, 11 yards, and a negative yard.

Suffice to say, it took a while for that dynamic offense to show up.

5. Rushing Defense

Rookie Josh Jacobs collected 99 yards for the Raiders while the team as a whole gained 129 yards on 19 carries, which is good for an average of 6.8 yards per rush. Thankfully, Oakland never found the end zone on the ground, and 51 of Jacobs’ yards came on a single play.

6. Running Back Production

The Chiefs, on the other hand, rushed the ball 22 times, gaining just 31 yards. That’s an average of 1.4 yards per rush. The longest run of the day for the Chiefs came when LeSean McCoy broke a six–six!–yard rush. The running backs didn’t do much in the receiving game, either, hauling in six catches on eight attempts for 48 yards.

7. Cam Erving’s Inconsistency

Always liked Erving, especially when he came out of FSU. Thought he’d be a star. He’s not, though: he’s a back-up, and it worries the hell out of me that he protected Mahomes’ blindside even for just a day. But he did well at that. This also goes to show that the team’s lack of production on the ground goes beyond McCoy and Damien Williams.

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8. Chippy Chiefs

For the second consecutive week, the Chiefs got a little chippy with the opposing team. I have two qualms with this: an important player could get tossed even if he didn’t instigate the melee, or an important play could get could hurt by, say, tossing a punch and connecting with an opposing player’s head that is protected by a helmet.

Fights in the NFL are stupid.

9. Too Many Tackles for Loss Allowed

Led by linebacker Tahir Whitehead, the Raiders collected 11 tackles for loss against the Chiefs. Whitehead had three while five others had at least one. The Chiefs sorely need to shore up the offensive line.

Hey, speaking of which:

10. Offensive Line Depth

After just one week, the Chiefs lack of offensive line depth is rearing its ugly head. Erving is not a left tackle. Unfortunately, this team has exactly zero quality back-up offensive tackles. If somebody else along the line goes down combined with Fisher missing any more amount of time, it’s going to be a problem, one that no ex-Raven can fix.