Anemic, Tired Chiefs Defense Is Hurting

From Charlotte, North Carolina

The Carolina Panthers starting tackles were both inactive for Sunday’s game against the Chiefs. After effects of a concussion claimed LT Jordan Gross and a sprained ankle forced rookie RT Jeff Otah to the sidelines.

Their replacements were Frank Omiyale and Jeremy Bridges. It was Omiyale’s first NFL start replacing Gross. Bridges had not started or played a game at tackle in two seasons.

It seemed a perfect time for the anemic Chiefs pass rush to enjoy putting some pressure on the quarterback.

But it tells you something about what kind of day Gunther Cunningham’s unit had when the Panthers ran 70 plays on offense and the Chiefs defense touched starting quarterback Jake Delhomme one time. Twenty-two pass plays and they touched him one time.

And as a perfect capsule of the Chiefs performance, the one time they did touch Delhomme, DE Turk McBride was flagged for roughing the passer.

Oh, and Delhomme’s pass to RB DeAngelo Williams went for a 25-yard touchdown when nobody covered the receiver coming out of the backfield.

Carolina’s 34-0 victory decimated a Chiefs defense that was coming off its best performance of the season last Sunday against Denver. This was not a repeat.

“I’m shocked,” said LB Derrick Johnson, last week’s AFC Defensive Player of the Week. He had nine tackles against Carolina on Sunday. “I didn’t expect this. I didn’t think we would come back and play a game as bad as this.”

They did. They guy who killed them was Williams. He scored three times and on two of those he was not touched by the Chiefs defense. There was the 25-yard catch against the blitz and his first TD was up the middle and not a single Kansas City defender was able to lay a hand on him during his 10-yard scoring run.

The other guy who hurt them was Delhomme, who hit 14 of 22 passes for 236 yards and a pair of touchdowns. He finished with a 111.2 passer rating.

And then there was WR Steve Smith with six catches for 96 yards and WR Mushin Muhammad with three catches for 71 yards and a 47-yard TD. Stewart the rookie running back ran for 72 yards on 19 carries.

This was a bad defensive performance. They gave up fewer yards than they did last week, when Denver picked up 446 yards. Carolina only had 441.

But they found the end zone over and over again, scoring four times with three from Williams and another from Muhammad.

This was DeAngelo Williams running through them. Williams is a fine third-year back out of the University of Memphis, but he’s never ran for more than 717 yards in his first two seasons and last year he had five total touchdowns. Coming into the game he had seven career TDs. Coming into the game, there was talk that Williams was going to lose his starting job to Stewart.

Sunday against the Chiefs, he looked like a Pro Bowler with his 123 yards rushing and 25 yards receiving. That’s 148 yards in total offense on 21 touches or 7.1 yards every time he touched the ball. Doubt he’ll lose his starting job next week.

Big plays again did in the Chiefs defense, as they gave up plays for 47, 38, 32, 25, 24 and 20 yards. Three of those were scoring plays.

They did get a couple turnovers, as FS Jarrad Page intercepted a Delhomme pass for Smith in the end zone and DT Glenn Dorsey hit Stewart and knocked the ball out of his arms, where it was recovered by DT Tank Tyler.

When the game was all over, the Chiefs defense was exhausted, as they had played for 38 minutes, 54 seconds.

They were exhausted and embarrassed.

“We can sit around and moan and groan about what happened,” said DE Tamba Hali. “But that’s not going to do any good. We’ve got to go back and do whatever is necessary to get this fixed.”