Training Camp Practice #18 Report

(THE CHIEFS HAVE CHANGED THE START TIME OF MONDAY’S SECOND PRACTICE. IT WILL BEGIN AT 4:30 P.M. THE MONDAY MORNING PRACTICE IS INSIDE AND NOT OPEN TO THE PUBLIC.)

From St. Joseph, Missouri

The Chiefs were back to work on Sunday afternoon and despite their loss in the pre-season opener in Atlanta, that didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the red and gold fans.

A crowd of over 3,600 was on the campus of Missouri Western State University to watch the two-hour session in full pads. It was a hot Sunday, but nowhere near the temperatures that dominated the first two weeks of camp.

What that big crowd saw was a team that kept hearing their head coach yelling about tempo. Todd Haley thinks his team was caught off-guard by the high tempo that the Atlanta Falcons displayed on Friday night. He doesn’t want that to happen again.

So Haley and the staff went on and on about speeding things up, going faster. Offensive coordinator Charlie Weis entertained the crowd with his banter as the offensive skill position players ran through a tackling machine. There was no mercy in his heckling of players that ran with their head down or did not protect the football.

There were some injuries that came out of the 20-10 loss, but nothing appeared to be serious. Remember, the Chiefs do not talk about injuries during the pre-season. They don’t even acknowledge that anything has happened.

Here’s the injury situation and a couple changes to the starting units that we observed in Sunday’s work:

– An assortment of bumps and bruises came from last Friday night’s game. Missing the Sunday practice were G Jon Asamoah and T Barry Richardson, with FS Jon McGraw and QB Brodie Croyle limited in their work. They joined previously injured players G Darryl Harris, TE Jake O’Connell and TE Tony Moeaki in the rehab area.

– Croyle worked in the QB individual drills in Sunday’s practice, but was pulled out of all other participation. He had a bandage wrapped around his right arm, right at the elbow. It did not seem to bother him throwing the ball, but he was kept out of the team-work portion of practice.

– McGraw participated in the individual defensive back drills, but did not work at all in any of the team portions of the practice and went to the rehab area to ride the stationary bike.

– Right now the Chiefs are running low on offensive linemen for this time of the year. Only 11 were able to practice on Sunday, with three players out due to injury. It would not be a surprise to see the team make a roster move early this week to get another blocking body in house.

– Whether they have meaning or not, there were a couple changes in the starting groups in Sunday’s practice. On offense, Casey Wiegmann was working with the first team at center, with Rudy Niswanger drawing second-team duty.

– In the defensive starting 11, Jovan Belcher and Derrick Thomas were at ILB and Kendrick Lewis was filling the spot at FS where McGraw normally plays.

– The second offensive line looked like this with the injuries: LT Tyler Eastman, LB Ikechuku Ndukwe, C Niswanger, RG Dan Santucci and RT Colin Brown. Rookie C/G Lemuel Jeanpierre worked in with that group at center and right guard.

– Before Croyle was pulled from practice, he hooked up with WR Jeremy Horne on a long pass that was the same play they ran to start the third quarter in Atlanta. On that first throw on Friday night, Croyle threw badly out of bounds. On Sunday, it was perfect throw and Horne easily hauled it in.

– In a goal line drill, QB Matt Cassel connected with WR/RB Dexter McCluster at the back corner of the end zone for a touchdown. It was the perfect throw and a very good catch. On the next snap they ran the same play, just flipping where McCluster lined up from one side to the other. That pass fell incomplete as the defense jammed McCluster.

– Defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel on his group’s performance in Atlanta: “There were some good things, but there were a lot of things we have to continue to work on. If we can make some progress in those areas, we’ll be just fine. More than anything we need consistency.”

– OLB Mike Vrabel’s on defensive play in the preseason opener: “The first series wasn’t what we were looking for, but we were able to get a stop and gave up only the field goal. From there, we did OK. We had things we needed to correct and we did that.”

__ WR Dwayne Bowe did not catch a pass against Atlanta, but he was a popular target on Sunday for Cassel. The pair hooked up twice for touchdowns in the practice. Bowe also had a catch knocked out of his hands for a fumble by CB Brandon Carr.