Chiefs’ defense steps up, while Cowboys’ offense sputters | You Pod to Win the Game
Yahoo Sports’ Charles Robinson and Frank Schwab discuss Kansas City’s 19-9 victory over Dallas. Is the Chiefs’ defense for real? What about their offense? Are they back to being a favorite in the AFC? Is it time to worry about the Cowboys’ offense? Or will they get back to their winning ways once they get healthy? Hear the full conversation on the You Pod to Win the Game podcast. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you listen.
Video Transcript
FRANK SCHWAB: If you would've told me the Kansas City Chiefs were going to score 19 points. I said, OK, well the Chiefs are another loss. But they give up 9. The Kansas City Chiefs win 19-9. And one of the weirder games of the day, just because of that because the Chiefs won, because you know, not that shocking that the Chiefs would win, but for them to all of a sudden, they held the Cowboys out of the end zone here.
And I know Cooper was out with the COVID stuff, and then Lamb suffers a concussion at the end of the first half. But still, to hold the Cowboys out of the end zone, I mean, what do we take away from this? I mean, are the Chiefs back? Are they all of a sudden like the 2000 Ravens? We're just going to have defense dominated, and just score enough points to win? What's going on with this Chiefs team?
CHARLES ROBINSON: I think defensively, I underrated their ability to get better.
FRANK SCHWAB: Me too.
CHARLES ROBINSON: But I will give myself this, I have said now going back for a month that at least one part of how you can get that defense better is to move Chris Jones back to where he was a dominant player inside. And they did that. And you saw in this game how absolutely disruptive he was inside. Now, they also went and made a trade deadline acquisition in Melvin Ingram that allowed them then to take a guy they needed on the outside, to move him inside.
So you have to give the front office some credit there. They did get healthier. Frank Clark, I said I didn't think he had anything left. I would think I was wrong. So some of the health resolved itself defensively, so I do think that's where the Chiefs got better.
Offensively, I still don't think they're there yet. I don't think they gave Dallas their best game. And I don't want to take anything away from Chiefs fans, but the Dallas team you beat, I think this was a game where the Chiefs didn't give Dallas their best offensive game, not even close, not even remotely close. But you still won, and you won with a defense that played really well, exceedingly well.
But Dallas, Tyron Smith, OK, if you look at this team when he is not on the field for them, it really significantly depletes them. When you look at Ezekiel Elliott, if he's banged up, that hurts this team. CeeDee Lamb, concussion, hurts this team. Amari Cooper not being out there hurts this team. Randy Gregory not being on the field defensively hurts this team. You're still without DeMarcus Lawrence. So there's a lot of, still, pieces there that are really weighing on the Dallas Cowboys.
But I will say this, offensively, and I want to bring this up to you, in the red zone Andy Reid calls Travis Kelce in shotgun read option, scores a touchdown, and then basically option play for Mahomes, in which he pitches it to Clyde Edwards-Helaire and he scores a touchdown. Now Frank, I thought they only had, like, three plays on offense. I thought the Chiefs were like a three play offensive team. This looks like Andy Reid still has the ability to go into his book and pull out some creative plays to help them win.
FRANK SCHWAB: Yeah, mad genius. Right? They get in the red zone, and he's got a whole encyclopedia next to him. Oh, yeah, page 246, let's go with the Travis Kelce triple option play. I mean, it's crazy.
And you know what, all that stuff looks cool, it looks great when you're winning, right? I mean, they were doing some of that stuff earlier in the year, and it wasn't working, and you're like, what are the Chiefs doing around here.
And all the no look passes for Mahomes don't look as good. It's just, it's all about, hey, are you getting wins, and they did today, and that's great. I will push back a little bit on the Cowboys being shorthanded. I get they were. But this is still a team that shouldn't be held out of the end zone. They still have dudes.
CHARLES ROBINSON: No. Yeah.
FRANK SCHWAB: And I get what you're saying. I get what you're saying. It's just, I don't know really if this is just one of those Cowboys games where you say, well, whatever, you were down a bunch of guys. But this is the second time in three games that they basically got shut out of the end zone.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Part of the worry here is Dak didn't play well. He threw some bad balls. And I think the defense influenced him into that. But I also think the Chiefs really did, look, they benefited from Aaron Rodgers, and the unvaccinated crap, and COVID. They benefited now from Amari Cooper, who reportedly is unvaccinated and got COVID.
And so that's two of the last four games where they've had key guys not there and that aided them. So I'm the Chiefs, I'm sitting there going, hey, man whatever, good. Like, cool, let's go into our bye, let's get guys healthy, let's start to iron out maybe some of the other things that we need to work on here.
And oh, by the way, you just watched Buffalo [BLEEP] the bed. You just sat there, and you watched the Chargers get as close as you can before Mike Williams tapped on the door, and room service, or Maid service came in and changed the sheets at the last minute. So you can completely just crap everywhere. OK?
FRANK SCHWAB: That's colorful, right there. I appreciate that.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Oh, by the way, the Ravens, who Lamar Jackson is like the most sick quarterback. I mean, this guy's always-- like something's always going on with Lamar.
FRANK SCHWAB: He needs some vitamin C or something, man.
CHARLES ROBINSON: Yeah, seriously, dude, build up your immunity to something. I mean, like, always something going on Lamar Jackson. They almost lose to the Bears. It took the Bears completely falling apart defensively. If I'm the Chiefs, I'm sitting there going, I don't know, man, the rest of the AFC looked-- maybe I guess we just worry about the Colts now. I mean, like--
FRANK SCHWAB: [INAUDIBLE] all of a sudden.
CHARLES ROBINSON: What happened all of a sudden? Everything has just been so chaotic that now we have to consider how we feel about the Colts, and maybe Buffalo being pretenders, and you can't trust the Chargers. And jeez, in the middle of all of it, the Chiefs went from being that team where we're like, man, I don't know, to now we're like, I don't know, maybe I do.