- 8 months ago
Seth and Sean dive into being weary of the Chiefs despite the Texans' winning streak and what DeMeco had to say about a particular questionable game management decision.
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00:00I'm trying to, boy, I'm trying not to get overly amped up about this Chiefs game this early in the
00:05week. We do five days of radio, typically, Sean. Yep. It was a five-day week this week, yes. Yeah,
00:11it's a five-day week. Just like Aaron Andrews would tell you, it's the toughest job in America.
00:18I had that for the petty cash for reasons just like that. She got taken out of context. She did
00:23get taken out of context. I apologize to Aaron Andrews and her plight. I am the first person to
00:33say, hey, don't look at the logo. Look at the team. You got to evaluate it. If I were to eat my own
00:42rations, I would say, well, look, Chiefs are a 500-football team. Ah! Screw that. Look at the
00:48logo. Look at that damn arrowhead. Look at the fact that you're playing in Kansas City. Look at the fact
00:52that Pat Mahomes is still doing crazy, crazy, unbelievable feats on the football field.
01:00And even the Chiefs aren't the same team as they've been at their peak. Man, on any given
01:05Sunday, I'm going to tell you, Sean, these plucky young upstarts, the Kansas City Chiefs,
01:11they might upset the Texans as they enter the game three and a half point favorites, yes.
01:16Yeah, three and a half point favorites. The Chiefs, that is, everybody. The Chiefs are favorites.
01:19Yeah, yeah. And look, a month ago, if someone had told you the Texans would be a three and
01:25a half point underdog, I would have signed up for that in a second when they were three
01:28and five. And the Chiefs weren't that great at the time either. And yet, at that time,
01:33they were still the favorites to come out of the AFC to go to the Super Bowl, even though
01:38they were four and four. Stop me if you've heard this story before. All of their six losses,
01:43the Chiefs are all by one score. Yeah. Stop me. One in six in one score games. Tell me
01:50if there's another team in the AFC who all of their losses are by one score. The Houston
01:56Texans. Yeah, yeah, the Houston Texans. I thought that's where you were going with it. But
02:01then, you know, it takes me about four days to upload all the commonly known stats and
02:07everything. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The one score game, I mean, last year we said it all season
02:11long with the Chiefs. Hell, it's got to fall apart at some point, right? They can't keep
02:16winning every single one score game. And yet they did over and over and over again. And
02:20even in their loss in the Super Bowl, not a one score margin, Sean. I don't remember the
02:26exact score, but I remember very clearly that it was not a one score margin. It was 40 to
02:30six at one point in the Super Bowl. And then they tacked, the Chiefs scored a couple of meaningless
02:34touchdowns. They almost had it. They could have just had a 34 point game, a 34 point play. You
02:38know, they would have brought it right back into a one score game. It would have been
02:40even again, man. Yeah. Yeah. It would have been even again. I'm excited for this game,
02:44man. I'm really excited. I'm excited about the stage that it's going to get. I know that
02:49primetime football by and large over the last year or so has not been the greatest thing
02:54for the Texans. Although maybe Thursday night football against the Buffalo Bills exercise
02:58some demons. The Texans defense is arguably the best unit of any offense, defense, or special
03:07teams in football right now. If you take every team's offense, every team's defense, and every
03:15team's special team. So we're talking about 96 different units. The Texans defense might
03:20be number one out of those 96 units, not just the best defense. They might be headed on the
03:25road.
03:25The best platoon. Best platoon in all of football might be the Texans. It's certainly in the
03:31conversation. And what I've been told, Seth, is that defense travels. That when you go on
03:37the road, defense don't know weather conditions. Defense don't know night or day. Defense don't
03:43know locale.
03:44I'll tell you what. The thing that would be really exciting is if this game were at home
03:48at NRG Stadium. I don't know, perhaps in the playoffs, maybe that's in the cards.
03:52But, I mean, Jawan Taylor, as we all know, is one of the most frequently penalized offensive
03:57tackles in football. The right tackle. False starts all over the wazoo, aligning too deep
04:02off the line of scrimmage, all of those things. You know who his protege is? Josh Simmons,
04:08the left tackle?
04:08Yeah.
04:09Who, despite missing five weeks due to personal reasons, which he didn't bother to disclose
04:15to the team when he just disappeared the day of a game, he's tied for seventh in the
04:21league in penalties. After missing a month?
04:23Yes! He's on a Laramie Tunsil-like pace.
04:27Oh my God.
04:27So, I mean, at NRG Stadium, that could be real fun. But both those guys are banged up, too.
04:33Yep.
04:33Both their starting tackles. I mean, at the end of the game last week, Josh Simmons was
04:36playing with three backup offensive linemen and managed to score four touchdowns.
04:41Yeah. So, like, this is, as it's been for Pat Mahomes for a while, it's a dicey situation
04:48for him behind that offensive line, but he figures out a way to make it go. But if this
04:52ends up, Sean, if this ends up being, if this could possibly be Will Anderson and Daniil
04:56Hunter versus a couple of backup offensive tackles, or at the very least, two starters
05:01who are injured.
05:01That would be sweet. I would love that. That would be a big deal. We saw what happened
05:08when Patrick Mahomes has some pressure on him at a really high rate. We saw that in
05:12the Super Bowl.
05:13That was the, last week was the second highest pressure rate he'd faced all season versus
05:18the Cowboys.
05:19And that's not a team that's, since trading Micah Parsons, not exactly a team that's known
05:24for its pass rush either.
05:25Except the defensive, Wim Williams, defensive tackles made it. You know, Jeff and Clowney
05:31got a sack in that game. I don't know if you were watching. I think he had two. Did
05:34he have two sacks?
05:35I think he had two in that game.
05:36Oh, I didn't catch the second one. Oh, wow. I think he had a multi-sack game.
05:39Good for Clowney.
05:40I know, man. I know. I like Clowney. I'm fine with that. And he's doing it over in the
05:45NFC. It's not bothering us at all. So, D'Amico yesterday, we'll talk to you about Chiefs
05:50both today and throughout the rest of the week. Huge game coming up. 7-20 kickoff.
05:55It's Sunday Night Football against the Kansas City Chiefs. You can catch it here on Sports
05:59Radio 610. D'Amico Ryans was asked yesterday, what was your biggest takeaway from the win
06:04over the Colts on Sunday?
06:07My biggest takeaway is always I'm excited that we got the win. But I think the biggest takeaway
06:14for me is we left so much out there, right? And there's still so many things where we
06:20can actually so many things we can do better. And I know it's tough to say that, but it
06:27is some small things, some things I know we can do better, things we've worked, things
06:32we can clean up technique-wise, fundamental-wise. I just feel like we still left a lot of plays
06:38out there. And that's my challenge to our guys. It's always how do you get better? You know,
06:42don't just rest on, oh, we won and be happy with winning. It's all about continue to learn
06:48in a win or a loss. What do you learn from it and how you keep pushing the envelope to
06:53get even better?
06:54I love that. I love that answer. Because D'Amico has at times, I think, been hesitant to go
07:00there publicly. He's critical of his team after a win. He's very much, hey, we got the win
07:07and we're happy. And they should be happy. They got a huge win in Indianapolis. But he
07:11was almost apologetic about bringing up the fact that there's things they need to clean
07:16up. I literally wrote it down. He goes, I know it's hard to say this, but there's some
07:19things we can clean up. And meanwhile, I'm jotting down red zone, penalties, special teams,
07:24all these things. D'Amico, it is okay to say that. Nobody's mad at you. And I don't think
07:31your players are mad at you for saying that.
07:33That's exactly what I had written down, too. Penalties and red zone were my first two
07:37notes. Especially the offense in the first half. That was pathetic. That was as bad as
07:43it was in the first three games where you just couldn't. You were killing drives with penalties
07:48on first down and stupid penalties at that. Alignment errors. CJ throwing two yards past
07:55the line of scrimmage. Those were really dumb penalties. So you got to clean that up. They
08:00did, to their credit, by the end of the game, by the second half. But the run game, too.
08:06I mean, this pains me to say this, but even Ed Ingram on that incredible block that he
08:11had where he pancaked that linebacker, don't stand there and admire your work. You could
08:16be working up to the safety on that. And that's one thing. The O-line, as much as they've improved,
08:20working up to the second level and staying attached and springing explosive runs, they've
08:25got to continue to get better at that. They've made great progress, but they're just not there
08:30yet. And then defensively, these explosive plays downfield. And this is in a week where
08:35you're facing a team with a great capacity for explosive plays. The Texans, they haven't
08:42allowed as many explosive plays on defense as they did last year. But amongst the better
08:47defenses in the league, they're one of the worst at allowing explosive plays. And some of
08:53these things where you've just got wide open spaces over the middle of the field, guys
08:57got to be dialed in a little bit tighter and not allow some of those easy yardage. Look,
09:03some of those incredible catches that they made, the Josh Downs, the Alec Pierce or whatever,
09:07those are great throws and great catches. It's the wide open receivers over the middle of the
09:11field that you got to take care of.
09:13Yeah, no question about that. It's interesting. If you're up early with us, check in on the
09:17text page, 735-724-610. D'Amico himself probably has some things he needs to look at internally
09:26with how he's managing games. And I think that's been the case all year. I don't think D'Amico's
09:30had a great year managing games, whether it's, you know, weird replay review requests or end
09:37of the, in this particular game, we got a text right here. Why didn't he take the field goal
09:40at the end of the game? And what were we doing at the end of the half, not getting into field
09:45goal range? That was the first thing D'Amico was asked about yesterday at his press conference
09:50was the decision to go for it on fourth down, just to reset. For those who don't recall,
09:5520 to 16, Texans are driving. It's about five minutes to go in the game. Woody Marks gets
10:01them to second and one with a nice nine yard run. They, on, on second and one, they run
10:05Woody Marks up the middle. It gets stuffed and then they go back to back. Cade Stover,
10:10Tush pushes a play that had worked twice already in the game on third down. It was third and
10:16one on the box score, but it was really third and about one and a half. Yeah. And they did
10:20get a push and got it to about a half a yard. And that played into D'Amico's decision to
10:25go for it on fourth down. Here was D'Amico Ryan's. And of course, as we all know, they
10:28got stopped on fourth down and they had to put it in the hands of their defense off the
10:32field at the end of the game. Here was D'Amico Ryan's on the decision to go for it on fourth
10:36down with about five minutes to go. Yeah. During that series, uh, we were driving the
10:40ball down, felt really good of how we were driving the ball. Honestly, on the first third
10:44down, I felt like we got it. I felt we had really good movement and I told the guys to
10:48do it again. Um, just being aggressive there. That's my call as the head coach. I'm aggressive.
10:54So, Hey, it didn't work. That's how that happens sometime, but it's not going to stop me from
10:59being aggressive. Okay. So did you, at the time, what were you thinking of the decision? Um, at the
11:05time I, I was okay with the decision. I will question in hindsight, the play call. I, and
11:13I said at the time in my head, um, as soon as I saw that it was going to be that Stover
11:18push again, I said, I committed to, I'm going to criticize this play decision, even if they
11:23make it because it's, it's too much of what we've seen where I feel like D'Amico wants
11:30to a, I, I, he believes that they're tougher than they are. And I do think he believes it.
11:36And this is sometimes where belief can get you in trouble. Belief has to be tempered somewhat
11:40by acknowledgement of reality and can't necessarily will your way to toughness. You can't will your
11:46way to being a more physically dominant team than you are. D'Amico cited, uh, was it? I don't
11:52know if I missed it in that one or if it's in the ensuing one where he says they've gotten
11:55good push on the, um, uh, on the play before he said it just there. Yeah. Yeah. Just there.
12:00Uh, I, I don't think they got great push on that one. I did. That didn't look to, that didn't look
12:04to me like the, uh, you know, the, the, the Eagles running that play. No, definitely didn't
12:09look like that. You know, and we go back to the Broncos game or various other times, the Seahawks
12:14where they just run it up the middle. And I think D'Amico just, uh, it's a, it's the old,
12:18somebody, one of our texters can tell us the old, uh, uh, biblical verse about the, you know,
12:23moving mountains with your belief. Yeah. Something. Hey, a lot of things in the Bible
12:29are metaphors, man. Um, they don't, you know, literal mountains. Yeah. Yeah. You don't have
12:35to take this stuff literally. The, uh, the, the analogy I always make when it's, when it's
12:39somebody who's clearly making decisions, looking at themselves and in D'Amico's case, he's looking
12:46at themselves as the team and he's seeing something that the rest of the world is not seeing Homer
12:52Simpson. Yeah. Homer Simpson, fat pear body, you know, pear shaped body looking in the mirror
12:58and basically seeing peak Schwarzenegger. Yeah. You know, when in reality it's Homer Simpson,
13:03when he, uh, it turned out that because of his incredibly small brain, he could take a punch
13:08really well. Yeah. That's I gotta watch more Simpsons. I haven't watched, when was the last
13:13time you sat down and watched a new Simpsons episode? It's been a long time. Yeah.
13:17It's still on Lisa killed it for me. I just can't every, it feels like every time I try to click
13:22on it, uh, a Lisa episode comes up. Oh, it's no good. It's like a mega episode on family guy.
13:28Yeah. I need a Homer or a Bart every single time. Hey, here's one more from D'Amico. What factors
13:32into a decision like going for it on a fourth down? I mean, there's always numbers analytics,
13:38but it's also a field. When I see our guys move the pile there on third and one, like they moved it.
13:44I feel like we could have did it again. And so, uh, I don't, I don't, uh, I'm not going back on that
13:52decision there. No, you can. Uh, the other thing too, is that, Hey, that plays worked for you already
13:58and you're not facing a bunch of idiots out there. It's like they've, you know, they've talked about
14:05it. They figured out exactly. They've seen, they've got the muscle memory of having failed a couple
14:09times. Um, and you're just, it's not the biggest myth about the tush push is that it's somehow just
14:15simple physics. And that's all it is. It's just like, Hey, we got a bunch of big guys and we're
14:21going to push those big guys over there. And that's all it takes. No, some teams are better
14:25at it than others. That's one of the arguments that the Eagles put out there for it. You know,
14:29that the Eagles and the bills and other teams were much better at it than, than every other team
14:34that tried it. It's not as simple as just, Hey, and this annoys me too. All right. It's been legal
14:40now for how many years? And now two months before it's probably banned forever. You decide, Whoa,
14:47Hey, look at this cool new thing. Yeah. Well, how, what would we be saying? What would we have
14:54been saying yesterday? If they, they, they, they Stover pushed it on third and one, they don't get it.
15:00You know, they move it up the move of the pile a little bit. They line up and they unveiled a
15:05wrinkle on fourth and one that ends up getting not just the first down, but maybe gets them
15:09down deep into the red zone or scores a touchdown. We would be saying that. Yeah. Yeah. Funny you
15:13should ask Sean, because in my little objectivity exercise, I did the exact same thing at that
15:18moment. Okay. The codicil to my, Hey, I'm going to criticize this of a tush push. And it's just a
15:24tush push. If they do something like Cade Stover pitches it out or something, or it moves out of the
15:30way and it's a direct snap or something like that. Sure. I was going to be cool with that. Yeah.
15:34If it, because Kaylee had shown some ingenuity and creativity down there in the red zone already
15:39with the Nico Collins and they'd executed it really well. Yep. If you, that's the thing. If
15:44you're going to introduce blunt force trauma, a new play, that's just blunt force trauma,
15:48have something to offset it. You know, that's just football one-on-one it's, it's not about the
15:55play calling and all of the exotic things in the grand scheme of things. It's, is this play
16:00building to something else or is this play complimented by something else? And no, they
16:06just said, Hey, it looks, Hey, it turns out we're big tough guys now. Right? Yep. It's like the kid
16:11that goes, it's like the kid that goes to karate class and thinks, cause he got a green belt or
16:15something. He's going to beat up the bully. It's cool. That's a great analogy. Meanwhile, as the
16:20bully is, is holding your head in the toilet, you're like, that's not karate. This is not
16:29acceptable. Um, so the, the other part of what D'Amico just said, where he's like, well,
16:35I'm aggressive. I'm aggressive. I'm aggressive. You weren't at the end of the half, you know,
16:40you were, there was a severe lacking in urgency. And I, I hope like there's one, there's one
16:45of two things that were going on at the end of the half when the Texans literally took 40
16:49seconds to run their second play of the drive fairly deep in their own territory. They started
16:55at their own 20. They threw an 11 yard pass to Dalton Schultz and the clock went from one 51
17:00down to a minute 10. And I don't have a problem with moving somewhat slowly on the first play
17:05because you are trying to get the clock down to a point where if, if, um, if Indianapolis
17:11gets the ball back, they don't have any time left. 40 seconds is too long. And certainly burning
17:15it to 50 seconds or so to move the ball a total of 25 yards is unacceptable. I, I hope that D'Amico
17:23saying that he's aggressive when in fact, at times he's very conservative, it would seem at the end
17:28of the half. I hope that's him just paying lip service. Cause if he wasn't conservative at the
17:33end of the half, that means he was incompetent at the end of the half. And I'd rather have him being
17:38conservative than being incompetent. You know, if he's, if, if he's saying I'm aggressive,
17:42aggressive, I'm aggressive. Well, man, that operation at the end of the half was anything
17:45but anything but aggressive. Yeah. That's, uh, I guess the, and in that answer, uh, he had
17:51another question when asked about the analytics for, no, that was the one about the analytics
17:55for it and all of that. Um, and you're going by feel, I guess that's the, that's the part
18:00that I a hundred percent agree with. I, it's gotta be a balance of analytics and feel and just
18:05knowing how the game is. The numbers don't always play out, you know, the way it looks on
18:11the field. And I just, I go back to, I was, I was not impressed with the push that they got on
18:15that first push on third down. It just, it was, it was okay. It wasn't atrocious. Maybe his standards
18:21are too low now because he's watched his team get destroyed in short yardage situations so much.
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