Except who right now would be better with the personnel that the defense has? Until KC can get pressure consistently with people on the line not named Jones it won’t matter. It would be a new scheme with similar results. That is unless anyone can show a good to great defense that was so without pressuring the QB.
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True, but they still allowed a 16 play 76 yd clock-eating TD drive at the worst possible time. There was even a holding penalty and they still allowed Ryan's corpse to pick up the 20 yds.

This defense may (hopefully) be good enough to win a SB with our offense, but let's face it...it's been disappointing. Still holding out hope that it'll improve before the biggest games.
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For starters, I'm assuming they're going to do what they can to upgrade the pass rush in the offseason. We know that Clark isn't likely to be back, and hopefully they'll find a replacement who is more productive. I would assume they'll add at least one more too (unless they re-sign Dunlap). And hopefully Karlaftis makes a jump in year two.

But I also think it's silly to say that no one could have better results with this personnel. We've seen Denver have pretty consistent results despite a bunch of injuries to their top players and trading Chubb away. Do you really think all those JAGs they've been putting out there lately are far superior to KC's?
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DEN's defense hasn't really been that good, ftr.

Case in point, they let a Sam Darnold-led CAR team score 23 on them, amass 349 yds, 8.6 yds/passing att, the Panthers only offensive weapon, DJ Moore went off for 103 yds and a TD, Sam Darnold a 104 p-rtg, and zero sacks.

Never mind what they allowed KC to do before the INT fest happened.
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Those teams tackle. Forget about the DL, or secondary, THOSE. TEAMS. TACKLE.

Spags has never had a good tackling team in KC.

Some of you definitely benefit from texting and typing on this board, because some of the posters wouldn't be able to talk with Spags dick in their mouth.

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THIS IS FN STUPID BECAUSE SPAGS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE CHIEFS BEING IN THE AFC CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES.

MAHOMES IS RESPONSIBLE FOR TAKING US TO THOSE CHAMPIONSHIP GAMES.

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Barring his voluntary retirement or his untimely death, Spags will be here until Reid retires, because Reid can't make coaching changes.

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Andy is not going to fire Spags unless it's Sutton-level bad.

In addition to edge we really need a veteran corner.
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Or, your new DC hires competent coaches for the secondary and safeties, and then the new DC coaches and emphasizes tackling.



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With respect, I disagree about a CB. We have Sneed, who is pretty good, and it looks like McDuffie is going to be a solid CB for years to come. And this is just my humble opinion, but I think both Jaylen and Joshua are going to turn out just fine. Maybe not legit starters, but solid subs at the very least.

We need a ball-hawking, hard hitting SS like the 49ers' Hufanga.
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Let's be fair here. If we're going to judge a unit by its worst day, then we'd have to say that KC's D is terrible. I don't think that Carolina game is quite as bad as you're making it out to be either. They allowed 5.4 yds per play and 1.9 points per possession. Even if it's a weak offense, that's nothing to be that embarrassed about.

Denver's held 9 of 13 teams under 20 pts. Despite having an offense that consistently goes three and out.

Can you imagine the point total if KC's O was going three and out all day in Cincinnati? They'd have hung 50.

I do think Denver's defense has been a little overrated, but the impressive thing to me is that, despite losing their best edge rushers and having a lot of key injuries throughout the year, their results stayed roughly the same. That tells me they have a solid coordinator who knows how to maximize their ability.
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Fair points.

Though using CAR as an example (didn't know that was their worst game, just picked that one because I knew that they were not very good on offense), and cherry-picking certain stats is just standard CP procedure. Just going with the flow, as it were.

Anyway, I could point out that the Chiefs defense overall played more than well enough to dominate DEN kn every key statistical area, except for scoring efficiency, which would be the Chiefs worst day in that regard, so should also be thrown out.

Further, I'll point out that DEN's defense as a whole has been together longer and has more veterans, and leave it at that for now.

My other point would be that DEN has played a slate of pretty pedestrian opponents this season for the most part.

But as i said during the GDT, there are obvious issues with the KC defense, and in spite of their overall dominance in that game, the unit is still underperforming, particularly on DL and at S. However, the fact that there are a lot of rookies that are obviously still in the developmental stages of their careers, as well as new faces that are still learning their roles, gives me hope that they will continue to progress and improve down the stretch.

And maybe if DEN had just gotten more BJs they would've beaten CAR?:-)
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I will say that Denver’s defense has been solid this year, but they aren’t what they were after trading Chubb. Still need a pass rush which I think we both agree on.
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The Cincinnati game set off the alarm for me. There were warning signs before, but the dam broke that day. 3.85 points per drive blows away the 07 Patriots, and they blow away everybody else. Imagine if Boyd doesn't drop a wide open TD lob. And if Dunlap isn't left unblocked on that 4th down play. Then we're talking 5.4 points per drive. And on the drive that led to their only punt, what if that OPI isn't called? They had just made a big play and were driving again. Do we have any confidence that drive wouldn't have ended with a score?

As bad as it were, it could've easily been an all-time horrific defensive performance.

I'm not too down on the defense overall, and the young players still have some time to improve before the biggest games. What annoys me is people suggesting that this defense is much better than last year's. I don't see how anybody can say that. Sure, it's easy to point to doofuses like Sorenson and Niemann, but their snap counts went way down in the 2nd half of the season.

In Nov and Dec last year, the defense allowed UNDER 13 ppg. And they played some good offenses in that stretch. Not only that, but KC's offense wasn't exactly humming during a lot of that stretch, so they weren't keeping the defense off the field.

For a bit, everybody thought the defense was great. The nat'l media was even calling it dominant and claiming they were carrying the offense. But everybody turned on them quickly after they gave up 31 in Cincinnati and of course the famous 4th quarter vs Buffalo (even though losing Mathieu had a lot to do with that).

Where was all this "that's what happens vs good offenses" talk then? All I heard all offseason was that our defense sucked ass. Weird double standard.

If at any point this season, this defense allowed under 13 ppg for two full months, I'd be ecstatic.
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There's something to the "elite offenses and bad defenses" talk. When the offense was struggling and going slowly, the defense was playing better. I don't understand why, or what was happening, but they did.

This year, the offense has just put the defense in some bad spots, specifically lately.
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