SB Nation User Blog: JHWK

Chiefs sign Bears' Safety Mike Brown

JHWK — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:35:56 -0000

Chiefs sign Bears' Safety Mike Brown

Doesn't seem like a great addition to the roster to me because he hasn't been healthy in years but who knows, I didn't even know we were showing interest in him so this signing caught me completely off guard.

Setting the Story Straight on Larry Johnson, Part 2

JHWK — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 00:40:25 -0000

From the FanPosts. -Chris

As promised, this is the sequel to Part 1 and will hopefully shine a little more light on the future of Larry Johnson and the Chiefs. I'm going to be considering just how much LJ can blame our O-line the last few years, what other backs have been able to do behind statistically-worse trenches as well as try to answer some of the questions presented in the Comments from Part 1. If you missed Part 1, go read it first, some key terms that I'll be using here are explained there and none of this post will make sense without at least partially grasping DYAR, DVOA, etc... There are several new terms as well that are related to the evaluation of the offensive line so it's important that you take a few minutes to make sure you've got it all straight before reading further if you want to avoid being epically confused.

First thing's first: terminology. In the process of evaluating an offensive line's performance is an awkward job, one made even more complicated when trying to massage extra information about what went on in the backfield and how much of a RB's success (or failure) can be attributed to his line and how much to the RB's ability.

In order to do so we've got to create some new stat categories that can give us a more accurate means of assessing the responsibility (in terms of blocking) for each of the 5-7 linemen leading the way on a rush. Things like pulls and WR-blocks are particularly troublesome for our stats but the following terms should help this all make much more sense.

Adjusted Line Yards - All numbers in the ALY category have been normalized so that all Adjusted Line Yards per carry is equal to the average YPC for RBs during the current or most recent season. That puts the "base" or "default" at 4.08 ALY, remember this number!

All other categories are unadjusted. They do, however, still need to be explained because they're not completely conventional statistics either:

RB Yards: literally, what it sounds like; easiest one of the four to remember... because it's nothing but yards from scrimmage for all RBs on the roster (doesn't include WR's or QB's, not even if you're Michael Vick).

Power Success: Percentage of runs on third or fourth down, two yards or less to go, that achieved a first down or touchdown. Also includes runs on first-and-goal or second-and-goal from the two-yard line or closer. This is the only statistic on this page that includes quarterbacks.

10+ yard carries: Percentage of a team's rushing yards more than 10 yards past the line of scrimmage. Represents yardage not reflected in Adjusted Line Yards.

Stuffed: Percentage of runs that result in (on first down) zero or negative gain or (on second through fourth down) less than one-fourth the yards needed for another first down. Since being stuffed is bad, teams are ranked from stuffed least often (#1) to most often (#32).

Alright, now that that's all out of the way, we can get on to the interesting bits. We'll start with ALY and work our way across the chart below.

	TEAM	Adj. Line Yards	RB Yards	Power Success	Power Rank	10+ Yards	10+ Rank	Stuffed	Stuffed Rank
1	DEN	4.92	4.96	70%	11	17%	17	17%	1
2	NE	4.81	4.60	72%	9	16%	24	21%	5
25	PIT	3.99	3.79	64%	19	15%	28	25%	21
26	KC	3.99	4.46	58%	28	25%	3	24%	18
28	STL	3.87	3.99	66%	16	16%	22	26%	29
30	ARI	3.81	3.60	58%	29	15%	25	20%	3
	League Average	(4.08)	4.25	67%	x	19%	x	24%	x

I included the teams I did for a specific reason. Both Arizona and Pittsburgh made it to the Super Bowl despite numbers on par, if not worse than, KC's for 2008. St. Louis made the list because their 2008 campaign was similarly disastrous in a lot of ways to the one we all witnessed last year from the Chiefs despite having a dominant, game-changing RB in Steven Jackson. The Donkeys and the Pats (neither of those teams could have anything to do with us could they?) are mentioned to show where the top of the league was this year and put it all into a little better perspective.

In 2008, KC rolled out an ALY of 3.99 yards per carry. What that means is that compared to the league average RB ypc, our offensive line was generally responsible for making 3.99 yards of that happen. We could expect this number to rise drastically in the presence of a bulldozer like The Bus or LenDale White who can expect to see fewer carries that make it 10 or more yards beyond the line of scrimmage (LOS) but are able to more consistently hammer out short yardage (this typically only holds true when said Bus is the workhorse, getting 20+ carries a game every week).

Moving on, we'll skip over RB Yards because they're largely irrelevant until we look at comparing LT, LJ, Jackson, Charles, Smith, Parker, and Moore later on. For now we'll move straight on to Power Success (PS). If you remember the explanation of PS from earlier, you'll recognize that when trying, from less than 2 yards out, to keep a drive going or score, we've only got a 58% chance of converting. For comparison, in 2006 we posted a whopping 74%, good for 2nd in the league (and also the last time Larry was a legitimate top 40 RB in regards to his overall value to the team).

In 08 the Chiefs somehow managed to be the 3rd most likely team to bust off a run of 10 or more yards. That means that of every 100 rushes, regardless of the back carrying it, ~25 of them will break for a double-digit gain. What this does is skew things like YPC, and yards from scrimmage but helps clarify the ALY. It sounds great to say that 25% of our carries this year ended up going for more than 10 years... right up until you pair that with a 24% Stuff rate. By being 18th in the league (lower numbers are better in this category for offense) here we managed to negate the benefit we should get from LJ's predictability.

Why? Because what the 10+ tells us, when paired with our 3.99 ALY, is that what production we did get on the ground last year, a lot of it was due to our backs being able to get into space and turn on the burners. Larry's inability to catch/block actually hurts us more than I previously thought by convincing DC's they can shove 7, 8, and 9 men down in the box whenever he's in the game. What that does is mean that every rush by #27 is essentially all-or-nothing.

The way we can see that from these numbers is by looking at our ALY in the context of that 4.08 number we talked about earlier. The fact that there is a -0.9 (the negative part is important) difference shows us that our RBs deserve just over half the credit for their performances last year, the rest was dependent on the blocking of our line. An easier way to remember this is that higher ALY's mean more Line responsibility than RB and vice versa, the smaller the difference between base (4.08) and your ALY, the more evenly distributed the responsibility for rush yards/TDs. Now, factor in that 25% of our carries were 10+ yards, for which the Oline gets no credit, and our abysmal showing in Offensive Efficiency (OE) comes into focus.


	TEAM	OFFENSE DVOA	WEIGHTED OFFENSE	RANK	PASS OFFENSE	PASS RANK	RUSH OFFENSE	RUSH RANK	NON-ADJUSTED			VAR.	RANK
	TEAM	OFFENSE DVOA	WEIGHTED OFFENSE	RANK	PASS OFFENSE	PASS RANK	RUSH OFFENSE	RUSH RANK	TOTAL	PASS	RUSH	VAR.	RANK
5	DEN	21.0%	18.7%	7	24.2%	8	16.1%	4	21.1%	26.5%	13.2%	6.7%	19
10	ARI	11.9%	8.3%	13	24.8%	7	-11.7%	28	12.2%	23.1%	-7.8%	6.8%	21
25	KC	-6.3%	4.7%	19	-7.2%	24	-5.2%	22	-3.0%	-3.0%	-3.0%	9.9%	29
32	STL	-18.6%	-17.3%	31	-24.5%	31	-12.2%	29	-19.3%	-22.8%	-15.5%	8.9%	26

DVOA takes every single play during the NFL season and compares each one to a league-average baseline based on situation. DVOA measures not just yardage, but yardage towards a first down: five yards on third-and-4 are worth more than five yards on first-and-10 and much more than five yards on third-and-12. Red zone plays are worth more than other plays. Performance is also adjusted for the quality of the opponent. DVOA is a percentage, so a team with a DVOA of 10.0% is 10 percent better than the average team, and a quarterback with a DVOA of -20.0% is 20 percent worse than the average quarterback.

The above chart shows us that despite some of the misleading stats we talked about earlier, last year was worse than we thought for the offense. According to these numbers every time we handed the ball off last year we were seeing results that were an average of 5.2% worse, on a play-by-play scale, than the league baseline.

Now that the pertinent facts are on the table, what does the big picture look like? Well let's look at it this way, STL's offense was far worse than the Arrowspread in 2008. Despite that, though, Steven Jackson was still able to blow LJ out of the water in just about every category possible (DYAR is +100, DVOA is +10%, and EYds were nearly twice LJ's 500). The argument that Larry would still put up a Star season or two if he had our 2005 Oline is further decimated by the play of Pittsburgh and Arizona this past year. Both offensive lines performed worse than ours did in ALY (they get less credit for the run game as a result) and both used rookies extensively as well.

Mewelde Moore, playing behind an O-line with an identical ALY of 3.99 and only a 15% 10+ rating (compared to KC's 25%), was able to finish the season sitting awfully pretty at 6th place in both DVOA (14.3%) and SR (51%) as well as 14th in DYAR (135). Same amount of effective blocking from the O-line as KC, and 60% fewer double-digit gashes, all done by an unproven 4th rounder from Tulane that hadn't done much other than return kicks for the Vikings since entering the league in 2004. Willie Parker and Edge produced very similar numbers (I already addressed Hightower briefly in Part 1, posting his FO stats) to each other both sitting at 28 and 29 respectively in DYAR with James' 0.0% DVOA besting Parker by 12 places. While Parker dealt with a nagging injury much of last year, Edge is the better comparison of the two and even still, his season-record for attempts is 360, far shy of LJ's 416 (James has almost double LJ's career attempts though).

As confusing as all of this is (there's just too much information to really understand all of it even after spending hours-on-end analyzing the data sets) the bigger picture is coming into focus. What it all boils down to is that other RB's in the league over the last few years (I don't feel like quoting the entirety of FO's website so you'll have to do a little research on your own if you don't want to take my word for it) have been able to consistently produce at a much higher level than Larry has been able to regardless of their team's overall offensive showing. Less blocking from linemen (reflected by ALY's) and fewer 10+ gains means that someone like Moore or Tim Hightower (who put up numbers ridiculously close to LJ's.... oh, and he got drafted in the 5th round of 2008 from Richmond of all places) were starting out behind the 8-ball and at least matched LJ's production, if not blowing it out of the water as Moore did.

Ditching LJ sooner than later is what I'd recommend. He's become more of a liability than an asset to our offense since 2006 and doesn't show any sign of returning to form in the future. He's not value-less to the league, but the statistics make a damn strong argument for his being value-less to the Chiefs. Drafting someone like Javarris Williams, whom the Chiefs have shown interest in and has posted one of the best Speed Scores among RB's in this draft (which, history shows, is surprisingly accurate at predicting NFL success), in the mid-rounds would more than likely be ample compensation for losing LJ and would give us a Steamroller that's bigger than Kolby and almost as fast, compared to body weight, as Jamaal.

Hopefully these two posts have clarified how our offense, specifically the run game, functioned last year. I'm considering writing another article similar to this from the defensive side of things and see if I can get a better idea of where we fell down in 08 and what we did right. Any other topic suggestions (or specific questions about our defense you'd like to see me try and find an answer to in the next installment... within reason of course) or input is most certainly welcome. If you notice any errors or things I accidentally forgot, post it in the comments section and I'll either reply there or edit the article straight-up.

It's going to be a long holiday weekend so the analysis of 2008's D could very well be up by Sunday night, just don't hold me to it.

"As a young player when I was growing up, I was looking at the guys ahead of me like Donnie...

JHWK — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 19:53:52 -0000

"As a young player when I was growing up, I was looking at the guys ahead of me like Donnie Edwards, Marvcus Patten and Tony Gonzalez, guys that were years ahead of me in the league and to see how they developed themselves and worked to become pros," Beisel said. "Traveling throughout the league the past four years since I have been gone, being in New England … all New England is is a group of veterans that know how to win and be professional. That is what we developed in Arizona the past couple years, and that is what we are hoping to develop here."

The more quality leaders we can score now the better off we'll be come August. We've got lots of good talent, just have to show them how to be successful in the NFL rather than habitually relying solely on talent.

Good article on Monty Beisel from the Star

Setting the Story Straight on Larry Johnson, Part 1

JHWK — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 16:36:37 -0000

From the FanPosts -PT

So we've been talking a lot about the Chiefs Larry Johnson around here lately and after reading and talking with a lot of the contributors to this site that one thing we're all curiously missing is hard numbers on LJ's true effectiveness in the 2008 season. To do this, I'm using numbers provided by Football Outsiders to give us stats that have been adjusted for the circumstances (ie: the difference between running on Denver versus running on Carolina last year) as opposed to the easily misleading, conventional "yds/carries/etc..." stats we see so often.

That said, the numbers aren't looking too great for LJ once they've been adjusted properly. Figures are after the break.

First thing's first, definitions. I'm going to be using some terms that aren't quite household terms just yet, even around here. Take a second and familiarize yourself with these terms (the explanations are pretty detailed, which is nice): DYAR, DVOA, and Success Rate (RB's only). EYds translate DVOA into yards per attempt figures, that means a positive differential between standard yards and effective yards shows a better RB than their stats indicate, a negative differential is the opposite.

All the following ranks and numbers are in relation to the top 49 RB's in the league for 2008 with 100 carries minimum. We'll look at LJ's numbers first and then we'll compare with those of other notable backs around the league.

Important: DYAR means a running back with more total value. DVOA means a running back with more value per play.

DYAR: For the 2008 season LJ had a DYAR of -37, ranking him 46 out of 49. That means that of the top 49 RB's in the NFL last year with 100 or more carries, 45 of them have more total value to their respective team than LJ to KC. The only 3 backs to turn out lower numbers were Justin Fargas (-78), Tim Hightower (-79) and Chris Perry at a whopping -137 DYAR.

Aside from Hightower, who proved he's not a feature back but a good complimentary split-back, that's pretty horrible company for a power back in the NFL. Johnson's numbers were in fact so bad that he was still 4 yards behind the average replacement (see Replacement Level) before being adjusted for opposing defenses (good for 42nd place).

DVOA: Larry's DVOA of -12.7% is good for 45th place out of the same 49. He was supplanted at 46 by Fred Taylor with Fargas, Hightower, and Perry all holding their ground at the bottom of the list.

EYds and Success Rate: Larry pulled down 874 all-purpose yards and 5 TDs in the 2008 season. Once that's been adjusted for circumstances we see LJ's yards drop by nearly 200 to 699. His success rate for 2008 was only 45%, which drops him in at 29th, worse than a full 59% of RB's listed.

Here's what these numbers mean when you look at the bigger picture: Larry's DYAR numbers give him an adjusted total value lower than all but 3 backs, two of which aren't exactly starting-quality (and never really have been for that matter) and the third was a rookie in a pass-heavy offense that shared carries with Edge James. His DVOA is almost as bad and shows virtually no marked compensation on a play-by-play basis over his total value but rather someone else managed to just barely edge out LJ in terms of value per play.

For comparison, take a look at the numbers turned out by backs around the league last year:

Player	Team	DYAR	Rk	YAR	Rk	DVOA	Rk	VOA	Runs	Yards	EYds	TD	FUM	Suc Rate	Rk
34-D.Williams	CAR	385	1	442	1	28.3%	1	33.7%	273	1,515	1,523	18	0	47%	19
27-B.Jacobs	NYG	300	2	247	4	22.4%	3	16.9%	219	1,090	1,319	15	3	51%	7
26-C.Portis	WAS	286	3	233	5	11.7%	8	7.9%	342	1,487	1,675	9	3	48%	15
34-D.Ward	NYG	265	4	214	6	25.9%	2	19.2%	182	1,027	1,092	2	2	51%	8
20-T.Jones	NYJ	252	5	262	2	11.9%	7	12.7%	290	1,312	1,469	13	2	54%	3
21-L.Tomlinson	SD	88	20	107	16	-1.4%	27	0.2%	292	1,110	1,193	11	0	45%	32
32-E.James	ARI	46	29	39	31	0.0%	21	-1.3%	133	515	535	3	1	44%	33
27-L.Johnson	KC	-37	46	-4	42	-12.7%	45	-9.0%	193	874	699	5	5	45%	29

I included the top 5 backs by DYAR and then included LT and Edge because we see LT and the Chargers twice a year and just restructured his contract and Edge because he was the "power back" in Haley's last offense and has been a source of much comparison for a lot of people on both sides of the LJ battle. Notice how all of these backs were significantly better than their replacements (Ward and Jacobs skew that to some extent by being each other's replacements which is why they're both here) in DYAR and DVOA?

If one were to only look at only Success Rates for the 7 backs listed LJ's 45% doesn't look so shabby compared to the 47% posted by Williams. Williams, however, was in an offense led by Jake Delhomme (not exactly Dan Marino) that focused on the ground game heavily. He posted that 47% SR with 5 fewer fumbles (0) double the EYds, and 13 more TDs (18) as well as top marks in both overall and play-by-play value.

Now, despite his horrible numbers could he still be the best option on the roster at the moment? Probably not. If you look at Jamaal Charles' figures (his 67 carries didn't break the 100 needed to equalize comparisons so take this portion with a grain of salt) he turned in a far better season.

Player	Team	DYAR	YAR	DVOA	VOA	Runs	Yards	EYds	TD	FUM
33-K.Faulk	NE	178	193	46.5%	51.1%	83	507	565	3	0
23-T.Choice	DAL	157	105	32.0%	18.5%	93	471	587	2	1
25-J.Charles	KC	63	66	15.3%	16.5%	67	361	330	0	1

JC's DVOA was almost a full 30% better and his DYAR was 100 points better. That doesn't mean he's at the level of a feature-back but rather a good barometer of what could be done behind our O-line's piss-poor excuse for blocking.

That in mind, what are everyone's thoughts on LJ's value to the Chiefs? I'm withholding a final verdict til I've had a better chance to look at our Line's adjusted performance in tomorrow's post but do these numbers sway anyone from one side to the other? Is LJ still the "lesser of ~~two~~ three evils" when it comes to our ball-carriers?

In Part 2 of this post, which should be posted tomorrow evening, I'm going to examine the numbers relating to our O-line for 2008 as well as comparing LJ, Kolby, and our O-line to their 2007 stats to see if we can get a better feeling for what to expect in 2009 should LJ be retained and/or Kolby stays healthy. Before you make the argument that the numbers were skewed by the line, remember, all our RB's had to deal with the same porous blocking.

The Current State of the Chiefs and The 2009 NFL Draft

JHWK — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 19:05:03 -0000

From the FanPosts. Effort like this is rewarded. -Chris

It's never too early to start looking down the road at what sort of talent is going to be available on day 1 of the 2009 Draft, especially when you're 1-8 on the season and coming off a 4-12 season which ended with 9 straight losses.

I'll also be going over each of the key position groups and what the depth chart currently looks like to see from where we came and get a better idea of how far away we are from being back in contention for the West. Also a little fantasy advice scattered throughout. More after the flip!

I'm only giving the first three rounds because after that you get into more gray areas as the freak athletes and top 100 prospects go flying out the door and you're left with more gambling in the late rounds. Not to mention, Rd4-7 picks depend a lot on what we're able to pull down in the first 3 rounds.

That said, places I think need to be at the top of our priority list, in order: DE, ILB, or OL (order of all three depends heavily on what the draft board looks like when the rock drops on us).

Position Groups:

Offense:

As far as things have been looking the last 3 weeks we seem to be set *knock on wood* at QB. Thigpen is putting up absolutely gross stats right now, made even more impressive consider how he played in Atlanta AND remember a month ago when our OL couldn't open a hole big enough to see through and they were almost WORSE at pass protection! While I still feel we need to address our O-line in every way possible this off-season, it has gone from being a top 2 priority to somewhere in the 2-3 range.

Our backfield is also performing surprisingly well, I've been pleasantly impressed by Charles much earlier than I had anticipated. It wasn't as much a matter of whether he'd learn how to produce in this league or not but more of when, and I'm happy to say that if you overlook the ankle, which shouldn't nag at him much longer if the team doctors keep him off it for a few more days. Savage is running the ball well, reminds me a lot of DSproles, especially since both are backing up all-star runners in LJ and LT respectively (they both have looked bad this year but I still have a feeling they've got at least a couple good years left in them as feature backs).

Mike Cox is playing well at FB, won't hear his name called out over the speakers much but we've been hurting bad ever since we let TRich skip out of town and lead-block for AP in Minnesota. Within a few years Cox should be a solid backfield blocker which will be an integral part of our offense if we decide to stick with anything even remotely resembling the spread. If Herm stubbornly tries to revert to his own brand of Martyball again then I'd like to see more emphasis put on the OL and better lead-blocker than Cox, hard to judge the untapped ability without being in the locker room though in my opinion, especially with a fullback.

Our receiving corps looked shallower than a juice box at the beginning of the season but I'm actually quite pleased with how they've shaped up recently. Mark Bradley (whom I started in two leagues this past weekend despite a whopping 0.0% start rate and less than 3% own per ESPN's fantasy stats; if you haven't already, pick him up at least as a tie-breaking benchwarmer but keep in mind, he's had double-digit fantasy games the last 3 weeks in a row after escaping the WR killing grounds of Chicago) came out of nowhere and is finally able to balance out the field with Bowe and Gonzalez (who's looking better than normal lately and has a good heir in Brad Cottam).

Toss Will Franklin (looks promising but had a bad set-back early on and is only now getting a chance to really shake off some of the rookie jitters so we'll see where he stands in 6 weeks) in as your slot guy and if you need to go 5 wide for a hail mary you can throw Webb and Darling in (about all they've shown to be good for this year is one or two catches blocks per game).

Kevin Robinson will probably ride out the year battling for the KR/PR slot but if we can get KSmith or LJ healthy I'd liked to see Savage back to return. His size and quickness make him a tough target to mark on the field plus he's got good burners on him, give a guy like that the ball and a little open space and he's going to make you pay for it.

Defense:

I'll start with the secondary, then the linebacking corps which will tie in with our D-line.

Thus far Herm has stuck true to form and proven he's one of the better coaches in the league at evaluating DB prospects. The Brandon's have been playing magnificently and, considering their youth, have more than a few mulligans left in the bag for the stupid rookie mistakes they'll inevitably make a few more times this year. Flowers has shown he's got a very strong base for what could very well develop into one of the top shutdown corners in the league with a few more years of experience. Carr, despite being a later pick from a mid-major has proven on more than one occasion that he's willing to earn the right to start on this team.

That's really it though for our CBs, Mo Legget is a raw talent, he's got enough of it to make it as a nickel back for KC in the future but for this year, he's a stop-gap until Surtain gets healthy again. Macklin and Colclough have yet to see any major game-time so the verdict is still waaay out on that one.

We seem to be well-stocked at Safety as the 2nd half of the season builds some momentum. Bernard Pollard and Jarrad Page have both proven why they're starting for KC. The addition of DaJuan Morgan through the 08 Draft gives us some insurance and could help pressure Pollard and Page into wrapping up rather than swingin for the fence with every hit. Aggression within a defense can win and lose games, something I'm gonna guess Gun knows all too well, but there's a difference between tattoo'ing a receiver over the middle on 3rd and long and trying so hard to blow the other guy up that you miss the tackle behind the line of scrimmage and give up a 30 yard gash instead.

Every year I feel like our corps of LBs gets better and better and then gameday shows up and our LBs don't. The last few weeks we've been seeing more production from DJ and Demorrio, one of whom should be a heavy-hitting stud by now and is finally starting to look like he's figuring things out. It always looks like our LBs are trying to do too much at one time on just about every snap. We're missing reads in coverage and stuffing the wrong gap far too often, which is why we're +8 in turnovers and 0-3 in the last three weeks.

The rest of our LB's are pretty non-descript as of Week 10. The same can sadly be said about our D-line when it comes to pass-pressure. Glenn Dorsey is playing well all things considered and is on pace to whomp past greats like Warren Sapp in tackles as a rookie. Moving Tamba back left was far overdue and he seems to be getting back into the habit of consistently pressuring the pocket. The rest of the DLinemen rotating through have looked like an entirely different group than they did 2 months ago. They've still got a long road ahead of them just to reach mediocrity within the league but it's nowhere near as bad as I was anticipating after the way we played against Tennessee, Carolina, and Oakland.

The 2009 Draft

We're most likely looking at a pick somewhere in the 3-5 range which is awesome. At least we can try for another home-run of a draft class and have a legit chance of doing so with a top 5 pick.

Round 1: Michael Johnson - DE (Georgia Tech)

The man is 6'7" 260lbs and runs a 4.63 40. He's got top-end talent and he's massive. Watching him play gives you a better feel for his ability, reminds me some of the physical ability Jared Allen had when he first showed up at Arrowhead as a rookie (6'6" ~255). A little time in an NFL-quality weight room and he'll be ~270 and just blowing opposing QB's. After the Hali Experiment went down in flames KC needs a dominant pass-rushing RE and Michael Johnson is the prospect.

Rey Maualuga - ILB (USC) would be another excellent pick here as well. Both are top 10 prospects and either would be an enormous help in shoring up our wretched run defense and sack totals.

Round 2: Herman Johnson - OG (LSU)

Yet another freakishly enormous rookie at 6'7" 349lbs and runs a 5.45 40, not the quickest guy on the field but with his size DT's will have their hands full on every down. He would immediately be able to compete for, and likely win, the starting RG spot from Day 1. The trend KC seems to be flirting with is that of a very large, physical team that can get a good first push off the line and Johnson fits that mold to a tee.There's a lot of room between Johnson and the next best prospects (Canfield and Parker of Cinci and Tennessee respectively) on the list, if we intend on addressing our OL in the draft this year, and we most definitely should, we couldn't make a better value/need pick than this kid.

Round 3: Either we look to the OL again with one of the better Center prospects to come out in the past few years with Antoine Caldwell - C ('Bama), excellent leader, acceptable size, could stand to gain some weight at the NFL level but has been playing on a heretofore undefeated Alabama team that can run and pass at will, a testament to the OL's ability to protect the QB across a mix of offensive packages.

Or, we could go with an ILB (assuming we take Johnson over Maualuga in Rd1 otherwise Caldwell would be a solid value pick while still filling a need) like Scott McKillop (Pitt) or Daniel Holtzclaw (Eastern Michigan). Both have almost identical metrics at 6' 1" ~245 and 40-times in the 4.63-4.65 and have been heavily underrated (Holtzclaw more so than McKillop) but each looks to be a solid draft prospect. McKillop ended '07 with 151 tackles which lead the nation, Holtzclaw had 125 tackles with 2 INTs as well in '07.

I'd love to see KC pick up M. Johnson, H. Johnson, and McKillop or Caldwell in a dream draft scenario (in order of preference). I'm not factoring in supplemental picks, trades, etc... as yet because it's still only November and that'll all change a lot over the next 5-6 months.

Until then, we just have to do our best to enjoy the football our Chiefs are playing lately which shouldn't be too hard regardless of the outcome. These kids are playing with a new fire these last few weeks though, after the debacle that was the first 6 weeks of the season for KC things are beginning to click on both sides of the ball for our rookies. They're learning to play together as a team and it's finally showing, won't be long before we get another win or two under our belts.