Kansas City Chiefs Rewatch: 2009 week nine vs Jaguars
After a bye in week eight, the Kansas City Chiefs hoped to start anew from week nine on. They’d try to get the ball rolling against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
While we’re all staying in our homes and flattening the curve, I’ve taken the time to rewatch a game from the 2009 Kansas City Chiefs season. While NFL Game Pass hasn’t had every game available (I was unable to watch week five against the Cowboys or week six against the Redskins), most have been accessible.
With the Chiefs having a bye in week eight, the next game on the list was week nine against Jacksonville, who still had a lot to play for despite sitting at 3-4. They were in a much better spot than the Chiefs were, who were sitting at 1-6 at this point in the season.
How would they fare against the 3-4 Jags?
Chiefs Rewatch: Week 7 vs Chargers. light. Must Read
WEEK 9 VS JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS: NOVEMBER 8TH, 2009
The Chiefs offense got off to a good start in this one. Their uptempo offense got them down the field and the end result was a Ryan Succop field goal to give the Chiefs a rare lead.
An interesting stat mentioned on the broadcast was that Matt Cassel was fourth in the league in rushing yards by a quarterback, which sounds impressive, but a lot of the time, Cassel had to take off due to the protection breaking down and him trying to extend the play. So, the poor play wasn’t all on Cassel.
Another intriguing stat was that the Chiefs were dead last in third down conversions and it wasn’t shocking when watching this 2009 offense play. An example of this was when Derrick Johnson forced a fumble (Reminder – He was demoted before the season) and the Chiefs recovered on the Jags 20-yard line.
After getting to the Jags eight-yard line, the Chiefs could not put the ball in the end zone and had to settle for another Succop field goal. A touchdown at that time would have been huge for this rebuilding team, but they couldn’t get the job done.
A big issue for the Chiefs offense was their run game was anemic. The broadcast noted at one point that the last time the Chiefs had scored a rushing touchdown was on December 21st, 2008 against the Dolphins. It had been over ten months since Kansas City found the end zone and with Larry Johnson suspended, this game wasn’t looking like a good opportunity to end that ugly streak.
When looking at the final score of this match-up, one might have thought “Wow, the Chiefs made a game of it!”, but that score was not a good indicator of what the game looked like. It was 24-6 in favor of the Jaguars with 4:26 remaining in the ball game.
The 2009 offense tended to figure things out when the game was essentially over and we saw another case of that in week nine. The Chiefs ran a nice six-play drive that resulted in a touchdown and Succop recovering his own onside kick gave KC another chance to put up points and make a game of this.
On their next possession, Kansas City ran nine plays and found the end zone again. With the two-point conversion, suddenly the score looked much closer, as it was only a three-point game. Unfortunately, the Chiefs couldn’t recover the second onside kick and the game was over.
The Chiefs fell to 1-7 in Todd Haley’s first year while the Jags jumped back to .500 at 4-4.
REMEMBER THAT GUY?
- With Larry Johnson suspended, that opened things up for Kolby Smith to get some carries.
- Corey Mays saved a potential Jags touchdown by pushing the player out of bounds. His name was said a lot during these games, but that wasn’t always a good thing.
- Maurice Jones-Drew and Mike Sims-Walker combined for 281 yards and before the Chiefs got their garbage time points, had more than KC’s total offense.
- The Chiefs signed Chris Chambers the week heading into this game and he grabbed both of Cassel’s touchdown passes – One for 54 yards and another for five yards.
If NFL games in 2009 were decided by fourth quarter efforts, then the Chiefs might have been Super Bowl champs that season. That’s not how things go though, and despite the last few minutes of giving it their all, it wasn’t enough here.
I will say that those two drives were impressive from this rebuilding team and showed that Haley and his team were trending in the right direction.
Next. Mock Draft 4.0: Chiefs Address Offense. dark