Fox Sports Live is holding a roundtable discussion for all 32 teams in the NFL and they definitely didn’t hold anything back when talking about the Kansas City Chiefs. Jay Glazer, Donovan McNabb, Randy Moss, and Brian Urlacher discuss the Chiefs lack of off-season moves along with looking at the challenges facing the team heading into the 2014 season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMzgz032kzM
video courtesy: Fox Sports
Donovan McNabb: Before we start going after their offense and how bad they’re going to be… (laughter)
This panel echoes what we here at the Great American Sports Network have been saying all off-season about the lack of quality free agent signings with a much tougher road lurking ahead. Alex Smith is a smart, careful, game manager quarterback and that’s just not good enough unless you put him with the Seahawks defense or the 2002 Buccaneers or 2000 Ravens defenses. Alex will have his chance to prove us all wrong this year if he can perform even better than he did last season against a much higher level of competition. The offensive line is going to take awhile to gel and even if they do come together quickly; is there enough talent in that group to keep Alex’s jersey clean? Can Dwayne Bowe recreate his 2010 season where he caught 72 passes for 1,162 yards and 15 touchdowns from another average quarterback in Matt Cassel? The offense could easily struggle this year with no help at wide receiver and a young offensive line going against some of the NFL’s best defenses.
The defense which started off fast last year by carrying a lackluster offense to a 9-0 start will be called upon once again to start fast with the likes of the Broncos, 49ers, and Patriots in the first 5 weeks of the season. The Chiefs benched corner Marcus Cooper at the end of the season after getting torched against more potent offenses (Denver, San Diego, Indianapolis) than they had seen through the first 9 weeks. Pro Bowl corner Brandon Flowers was released as a salary cap casualty to give the Chiefs more cap flexibility and John Dorsey is known to like taller corners while Flowers stands at 5’9. The Chiefs will be depending on the development of corners Marcus Cooper, Ron Parker. and rookie Phillip Gaines because if they don’t make some big strides this could be a long season for the Chiefs and their fans. Chiefs corner Sean Smith is the only proven veteran of the bunch and as Randy Moss stated during the roundtable, wide receivers aren’t afraid of Eric Berry because he’s more of a box safety spending his time scaring running backs and tight ends. This roundtable seems to have hit the nail on the head and we here at the Great American Sports Network couldn’t agree more with their assessment that not only will the offense take a step back, but the entire team will struggle to reach the same success they had in 2013.
As a die hard Chiefs fan, a lot of what they said isn’t really fair. The WR corps is definitely the worst group on the team, and the concern at CB is warranted as well, but I’m tired of people acting like the losses of Tyson Jackson, Brandon “False Start” Albert, and quick but not fast Dexter McCluster is going to be detrimental to the team. I think the team will take a step back in wins due to SoS, but they’ll be a better team overall.