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Oh, No! The Chiefs Lose to the Browns! Run For the Hills!

Oh no! The Chiefs lost to the Browns! Their offense was stagnant! Brodie Croyle and Damon Huard looked like garbage! Run for the Hills! Godzilla!!!!! Godzilla!!!!!

Relax. It’ll be okay.

I think as a service to fans everywhere, the NFL should be barred from broadcasting the first preseason game for any team. It’s amazing what conclusions people can draw from what is practically a practice game.

For those of you calling the Chiefs out for their primitive playcalling (that refers to fans and… ahem… ex-quarterbacks for the Cleveland Browns), STOP IT! I hear it every year. The fact is, most coaches run vanilla offenses in the preseason. Strangely, to go against Herm Edwards’ famous quote, you don’t always play to win a preseason game. You play to evaluate players. Let me ask you this: if the Chiefs ran a halfback pass trick play on the very first offensive drive and scored a touchdown, what good would that do? Running a trick play to score a touchdown in a preseason game is like sending your high school son to beat up a 6-year-old paperboy. All the Chiefs would prove is that their coaches can out-think the Browns’ vanilla defense. Whoop-dee-doo! And in exchange, you take valuable reps away from Brodie Croyle and an offensive line that could benefit from every single rep they can possibly take. I doubt that either had a comprehensive gameplan for how they were going to win last night’s football game. I mean, how can you? Do you really think Herm Edwards was gameplanning for Ken Dorsey’s tendencies? Do you really think Romeo Crennel was racking his brain over how his third string defense was going to stop Casey Printers? Of course not. If they’re not worried about it, why are we?

It’s foolish to judge a team’s direction based on the first preseason game. You can, however, begin to draw some short-term conclusions. Here are mine:

• I repeat: Brodie Croyle should not start until the third or fourth game of the season. Croyle looked awesome, I thought. But he still makes rookie mistakes. If Chiefs’ fans can pledge to me that they won’t scream or boo whenever he makes a rookie mistake, then go for it. But my guess is, when the regular season rolls around, Chiefs’ fans wont’ be as forgiving.
• There’s a popular expression in Philly that “2/3 of the world is covered by water; the rest is covered by Brian Dawkins.” Mr. Dawkins, I believe that Jarrad Page is going to give you a pretty big fight for that large territory. Page was all over the place against Cleveland. Let’s hope that Bernard Pollard follows suit–his debut as a starter was pretty uneventful.
• I know Ean Randolph doesn’t give us flashbacks of Dante Hall, but I really enjoyed watching this kid out there. He looked like a polished veteran, returning punts for positive yardage when there was absolutely zero help from his special teams unit. Those were punts where Dante would run backward. Randolph proved what can be done when you run forward. The kid looks confident back there. I have no problem saving a roster spot for him to be a return specialist.
• It was interesting to me that Will Poole was all over the place on special teams and that William Kershaw got so much time at linebacker. I think the Chiefs are especially high on these guys because of their ability to play special teams. I’m glad that the Chiefs are making such an underrated aspect of the game a top priority.
• Report Card on Will Svitek: Good news–he won’t get the quarterback killed. He blew a few blocks, but was mostly pretty solid. His run blocking needs some work, but he proved that he has some promise. That’s a great thing. As I’ll point out later in the week, I would love to see Svitek emerge as the tackle of the future. He’s got a lot of work to do and maybe his potential will never be realized, but I thought it was a pretty promising debut performance on his part.
• Michael Bennett was outstanding, but I sure hope nobody thinks he is on the same level as Larry Johnson. On the flip-side, Kolby Smith needs quite a bit of work. But again, no reason to panic; no reason to rush to judgment.
• Casey Printers looks better. Not awesome, but better.

Let me stress this again: relax. Take a deep breath. Take your dog to the park. Share a beverage or two. There’s no reason to get so worked up about a game that was played for developmental purposes. It’ll be okay.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 12:17 pm and is filed under NFL Preseason, Roster/Personnel, Random Observations, Analysis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.