Good Defense Effort Ends in Ashes
From Arrowhead Stadium
The life of any cornerback on any level of football is a penthouse/outhouse existence. His location at either destination can change in a single play.
Just ask Pat Surtain. The veteran cornerback learned that again on Sunday against the San Diego Chargers.
Surtain went from making the interception that set up what looked like the winning points for the Chiefs, to making the coverage mistake that set up the winning points for the Chargers.
It was a perfect microcosm for the Chiefs defensive effort against San Diego. For the better part of three quarters they played defense good enough to win most games.
Then for five minutes they allowed a pair of touchdowns and saw the chance for victory disappear in the chilly wind that engulfed Arrowhead on this Sunday afternoon.
Not that Surtain was ready to claim that ticket to the outhouse. The play in question came after the Chargers were able to recover an on-side kick that gave them the ball at their own 39-yard line. They were down by five points with 71 seconds to play.
They got 42 of those yards on the first play, as Philip Rivers found WR Vincent Jackson open on his left side. There’s no way that Jackson should have been that open and that deep.
The Chiefs were playing a quarters coverage. To understand Just look at the field in the secondary and divided it into four quadrants. The corners are responsible for the outside fourths and the two safeties responsible for the middle half of the field. The idea is simply this: a corner or safety does not allow a receiver to get behind him. Everything must be kept in front of him.
San Diego put Jackson and tight end Antonio Gates on the left side of their formation. Jackson went deep while Gates went on a shorter route. Instead of going deep with Jackson, Surtain hesitated and was going to go at Gates. That mistake left Jackson wide open. Safety Jarrad Page got over to make the tackle as he caught the ball, but the 42-yard completion set up the touchdown throw that came three plays later. That 10-yard play from Rivers to Jackson again proved to be the winning points.
“We were in quarters coverage, four across deep,” Herm Edwards said of the long completion. “That shouldn’t happen.”
After the game, Page was unwilling to throw Surtain under the bus.
“He caught the ball and we shouldn’t have let him catch the ball there,” said Page, who was pressed by the media to explain what went wrong. “We’ll figure it out when we look at the film.”
For his part, Surtain did not act like a man who thought he made a mistake.
“It was a good route against the coverage, you’ve got to give them credit for that,” Surtain said. “Rivers through one of his balloon balls and it came down in his hands.”
Who was responsible for Jackson?
“There’s no blame game,” said Surtain. “It was a good play on their part. I’m not pointing any fingers.”
Not even if they are at himself?
“I think I could have been back there a little bit deeper,” Surtain said. “If I wasn’t back there where I was, Gates would have been wide open. Even with that said, they had the ball at the 20 and they had to come up with a touchdown and we couldn’t get that stopped.”
Surtain is correct on that point. The long pass made things easier for the Chargers, but it did not explain all the defensive problems the Chiefs had in the final five minutes.
Up to that point, the Chiefs defense had kept the San Diego offense under wraps. Before they took over with four minutes, 55 seconds to play, the Chargers had scored one touchdown, produced 244 offensive yards, turned the ball over three times and been sacked three times.
Yes sacked. After being shutout for four straight games, the Chiefs actually increased their pitiful sack total for the year by 50 percent. DE Tamba Hali had two sacks and DE Jason Babin had his first sack with the Chiefs.
Hali was very active, forcing fumbles on both of his sacks. He recovered one and the Chargers retained the other one.
“The coaches cussed us out during the week about not getting the quarterback down and not having that mindset of getting the sack,” said Hali. “That motivated us. We just couldn’t make the plays on either side of the ball when we needed them.”
That would have been especially helpful there late in the fourth quarter, but the Chiefs were unable to get pressure on Rivers rushing four guys.
“That’s when we have to make a play,” said Page. “You make plays when it’s time to make plays and with the game on the line, that’s the time. We didn’t get that done.”
You’re being a little tough on Surtain Bob. Yes, he blew his assignment, but he wasn’t the guy who got burned for the TD, that honor goes to Page. Surtain handed our offense it’s only score of the 2nd half when he picked off a pass and ran it back to the San Diego 5. Don’t try to blame him entirely for this, this was a team effort. Poor offense in the 2nd half AGAIN, poor 4th quarter by the defense AGAIN, poor special teams all around AGAIN.
Herm isn’t teaching these guys jack**** when it comes to finishing games. The only thing Herm is teaching them is how to make EXCUSES for why they don’t. Pathetic.
You need to play the game until the final gun. This team has not put together 4 full quarters all season, why, I do not know. You cannot blame any one player, the whole (hole) team is incomplete. Enough said about the team.
Does it seem to anyone else, does herm look out of his element? He is a good talker but where is the delivery? Some say oh look at the great future but they are buying into something with no basis in what has been put on the field for the last two years. I am not sure we are being fair to herm, maybe he is doing all he can with a team of stiffs. I do not know but it seems other teams do not ALL go through the growing pain clark and herm have inflicted on us.
It will be interesting to see what Clark Hunt does at the end of the season. Time to make a statement, dont reward failure!
Dont give Clark Hunt anymore of your money!
Contact them before they steal $25 million taxpayer money!
Send them a message online here before it is too late:
http://www.mdfb.org/About%20Us/SendUsAMessage.aspx
Phone: 573/751-8479
E-mail: mdfb@ded.mo.gov
The biggest difference was in Rivers making the plays when they needed them. And their receivers were open and made the catches except for a few that were uncatchable. Plus LT made some runs in the 2nd half for good yardage in critical situations. We continue to miss opportunities in the second half and allow the other team to hang in there and not put the game away. At the end of the game the announcer’s made the point that the young Chief’s players are from mostly good teams and have salted the game away by the 4th quarter. so they are unable to play to the highest level in these close games. Interesting thought?
Keep up the great work Coach Edwards. ALL of KC is behind you and we know that you will lead us back to glory very soon now.
AND NOW, Clark Hunt has RE-affirmed Herm’s The Man!
I cannot believe I sat out in the cold for the entire game and froze my butt off for that nonsense!
This team needs to learn a Killer Instinct and keep the petal down for the entire game! We should have been slamming their face in the door the entire second half…
@findthedr,
Hey, thanks for supplying the link for me to tell the mdfb to give Hunt and the Chiefs the $25 million!
Give Gunther credit the defense kept us in the game and played its best game all season. Somebody told Tamba he was an 1st round draft pick and he played like it yesterday. The offensive play-calling blew it for us yesterday. Chan has done alot to improve this offense even with havign to make up an offense on the fly with a 3rd string quarterback,but yesterday he called some very idiotic plays in the wrong situation to call those kind of plays. I’m not going to comment further on that you guys can read how I felt about the play-calling on Bob title about the offense. But the spread doesn’t work for 4 quarters. Keep it as part of our offense but not the main offense.
I was shocked, did anybody see how empty the stands were for this game?
Most important, did Clark see how empty they were?
They were very empty, but those of us that were there were full of passion and as loud as we could be.
The temps by the end of the game were about a -3 wind chill… It is hard to attract people to come out in that for a team that is not going to the playoffs…
I agree with what you said earlier Ed. I didn’t understand that while the Chiefs were in the red zone they didn’t go for the first down instead a fade to the endzone and then they missed the field goal. There were too many points left on the field.
Second, I return to what I’ve been calling for – Hire Bill Cowher! He knows how to build a long standing playoff contending team. With the raw, young, talented players that we currently have; he could add a few more from the draft and free-agency and help put us back into the playoffs NEXT year. I truly believe this.
Herm & Carl, looking forward to your return in 2009. Keep up the great work boys!
It was a really heartbreaking loss. I was mortified when Dwayne Bowe couldn’t reel in that onside kick.
I disagree with everyone who says Coach Edwards should’ve gone for it on the two 4th and shorts. He was up by two scores (and to that point, the defense had played very well).
Connor Barth can’t “take anything for granted”. That’s nonsense, and the kind of thing that can show him right out of town.
I was deeply impressed with Brandon Flowers yet again, and think this may have been Tamba Hali’s re-coming-out party. It looks like he’s finally getting healthy again.
Comical was that Philip Rivers chased down Pat Surtain on his interception return. How does a QB with reconstructed knees catch a CB? Ha ha.
Larry Johnson was underutilized again, and this is a danger with the spread offense. We couldn’t run enough clock.
Tyler Thigpen was fine until the fourth quarter. What was he thinking running there at the end???
Young team. Lots of promise. Give them time.
“Tyler Thigpen was fine until the fourth quarter. What was he thinking running there at the end???” Why wouldn’t your QB coach (Dick Curl) have gone over those things prior to taking the field? Especially with QB who is prone to run? Par for the course. How is he suppose to learn from this guy?
I disagree that LJ was underutilized. When he did carry the ball, he didn’t seem to run very hard. He went down way too easy on several carries.
As far as the crowd…I was surprised by how many WERE there. It was interesting to see how many left in the third quarter though. Very cold and the writing was already on the wall. I would expect even fewer next week.
Keep up the unproductive work Coach Edwards. ALL of KC is sick of you and we know that you will make excuses and lead us back to 2 and 14 very soon now.
AND NOW, Clark Hunt has RE-affirmed Herm’s The Man On The Hot Seat!