The Brodie Croyle Era Begins in KC in Terrible Loss
You could see it coming all throughout the first half. Opportunity after opportunity blown. Pass after pass overthrown. The defense bending and bending, but not quite breaking.
And then everything broke.
What was an 8-6 lead at halftime suddenly, shockingly became a 20-8 deficit after just a minute and a half. Damon Huard, who was anointed the starting QB in order to avoid such mistakes, threw an interception that was immediately converted into a TD, and then somehow did not see Elvis Dumervil fly to his non-blind side and get the easy sack, causing a fumble and an easy defensive TD for Denver.
You knew the Brodie Croyle era was coming at halftime. Huard was sailing his throws, and when he wasn’t, he was usually getting sacked. If not for some clever Priest Holmes runs and some nice catches by Dwayne Bowe, the Chiefs could well have been down 6-2 at halftime.
So what was the verdict on Croyle? There was no doubt he has the arm to succeed, and his accuracy was mostly good. His touch passes needed work, but that is to be expected from a raw QB. Unfortunately, that touch is needed in the red zone, where Croyle visited twice but made nothing out of the opportunity.
Believe it or not, there are bigger concerns for the Chiefs. Right tackle today was a revolving door, with Chris Terry and Kyle Turley consistently getting beat or pummeled. On the other side of the ball, the safeties had what can only be described as an embarrassing game, missing tackles and getting beat on coverage.
Some things never change in the AFC West. The Chiefs always beat the Raiders by a nose, Ladanian Tomlinson always scores TDs against Denver, and the Chiefs always get burned by Denver’s tight ends. For years, Denver runs playactions and releases the tight ends, and for years the Kansas City safeties bite and allow the tight end to run right past them for an easy long pass. It happened several times again today, and the Chiefs looked helpless to stop it.
All of this negativity overshadows what was a pretty good game by Priest Holmes. The holes weren’t as big as he was used to seeing, but he attacked whatever holes there were quickly and didn’t allow the Broncos to tackle him behind the line. He also showed surprising speed to the outside. Although the numbers were not impressive, and they were against the worst run defense in the league, Holmes at least gave a reason to have some confidence in the running game again.
Of course, all this underscores the fact that the Chiefs have put their playoff situation in dire straits. Losing two winnable games at home puts them in a tougher spot than they should be. Will Brodie Croyle be the spark they need? With the problems at the offensive line and now in the secondary, it looks like he won’t be enough of a spark to salvage the season.
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6 Responses to “The Brodie Croyle Era Begins in KC in Terrible Loss”
November 11th, 2007 at 7:59 pm
I still think Huard gives KC a better chance to win now (if not hurt), but you have to wonder if this isn’t the time to look to the future. You can’t lose 2 games at home if you want to go to the playoffs.
Why is Craphoso Thorpe playing for the Colts tonight? He looks OK returning kicks, and our WR aren’t that great. Why did we cut him?
November 11th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
Big Lee, if I recall correctly, the Chiefs tired of Craphonso’s injury problems. He was a bit of a project to begin with, and I guess the Chiefs eventually considered him too much of a risk to keep anymore.
As for Huard, I was with you until the last couple of games. I don’t know if he’s wearing out from playing a lot more games than he’s used to, but you just can’t turn the ball over as much as he has.
November 11th, 2007 at 9:59 pm
Looking back on this season, I don’t know how anyone can say that Huard actually gave the Chiefs a better chance of winning than Croyle would have. He honestly did not play that well. He was mostly average with spurts of disaster.
Frankly, unless Croyle turns out to be Rex Grossmans younger brother, I don’t know how we can be much worse off switching to Croyle.
At least the bad decisions and interceptions Croyle will make will be experience learned towards the future instead of wasting time on a 34 year old lifetime backup who will be retiring in a few years anyway.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:24 pm
DJ, I think you’re generally right. I don’t think anyone expected Huard to be as careless with the ball, though, as he has been this year. If the Huard of last year showed up, the one who took no chances, but also never turned the ball over, things would be a lot different right now.
I understood the Chiefs’ standpoint for a while for only one reason. With this offensive line, it really might not have been the best situation to try Croyle out to see what he could do. After all, if he is running for his life on every play, then you really don’t find a whole lot about him. But with Huard playing as poorly as he has been now, there really is no choice but to go with Croyle.
November 11th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Thoughts:
1. The over-under on Croyle starting was 5 losses. We’re here fellas. Just enough to justify a move but far enough out to give the team a shot at proving they were better than we though. With 7 more games left, we can only lose two more to have the most remote shot at the playoffs. And those games include: Indy, San Diego, and the Broncos again. We also have to go up to Detroit who could easily beat this team. I think we’ll end up right at 8-8.
2. Huard did an ok job with what he had: a below average offensive live. BUT THEY AREN’T THAT BAD. He made them look worse by having zero spine, by playing like he was looking over his shoulder, by double-clutching the ball, by hesitating to throw when he had to, and most of all, by crumpling to the ground the majority of the time. Perhaps if we had got him in his younger years we could have turned him into a system quarterback, but he honestly plays exactly like he should: a perennial back up.
3. Holy crap, Croyle can has a freakin cannon for an arm. I saw laser-rockets on ropes that I haven’t seen all year. That was excellent to see. He plays like he is much bigger than he is. That’s good. We know he’s young, and we know the season is pretty much over. What we need to do now is to determine whether or not this is the guy that can lead us to the promised land. Early verdict: maybe, but not without a better line and a legitimate running game.
4. We have 11 picks next year guys, including the one that we get for the Michael Bennett trade. 5-6 of those better be offensive lineman. After that, we need another linebacker and two new corners. A fullback in a late late round would be quite valuable too.
5. I wouldn’t be surprised if we traded a few of those picks for some O-line guys and some extra line backers or corners.
Anyway, I’m glad this game happened. It had to. Something had to give, and it finally did. Our kid is starting, our main threat is out, and our D is extremely worn out. Now we have nothing to lose because we know we don’t have a shot.
Now we’re playing for next year.
November 12th, 2007 at 6:47 am
The thing I keep going back to is that Huard didn’t win the QB competition in preseason. When Huard did play in the preseason, he had even less success than Croyle did. Huard got the starting job by default because he played well last year.
Looking back, the problems Croyle had in the preseason games were indicative of the major problems this offense has this year, we just didn’t know what those problems were yet.
Since the Huard / Croyle debate is “hopefully” over now, lets break down what we liked and didnt like about Croyle:
Like
1. Awesome arm
2. Pocket Presence - He doesn’t seem to get rattled with defenders around him like Huard did.
3. Confidence - The kid believes in himself. He just has to convince his teammates to believe in him too and this will be a great leadership quality.
Concerns
1. He threw off his back foot ALOT. This is a technical problem that hopefully they can fix.
2. Bad decision making. Just needs experience to correct this. He made a few bad throws, but not as many as he did in preseason.
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