Yesterday I had to take my car in to get an alignment done, this took over two hours because the guy in front of me had major problems with his car. Anyway this gave me the opportunity to sit and read several ESPN the Magazine and SI magazines. I can not remember in which one I read this and I am having to go off of memory but I wanted to pass along a point that they made about the chiefs and the Defense.

When you go back and look at team that have turned their D around and gotten signifigantly better from one year to the next there is a way to predict what teams are likely to be able to do this. This is in relation to 3rd down conversions given up compaired to how well the D did on 1st and 2nd down.

The Chiefs have been very tough on the first 2 downs all season but they give up 3rd down conversions at a really high rate. Teams that do this will generally address this problem in the offseason, can you say DE, and the next year will suddenly be a very good defense because they fix the major flaw and they are already good on 2/3rds of the plays.

If we end up with the same coaches next year don't be shocked if the D suddenly turns it around and becomes the strenght of our team. - I think the coaches will be new myself but you never know.

In the last five weeks of this season Tyler Thigpen has been as good as almost any Quarterback in the NFL. Without the drain of the Atlanta game he would be in really elite company in his statistics, but as it is he keeps climbing every week. We have seen a massive improvement from the QB play during the time that the spread has been used here in Kansas City.

The question that many fans here and through out Chiefs' land have wondered is: Will Tyler Thigpen be a successful NFL QB once teams get enough film on him, and how will he do against top ranked teams, can he overcome them? We would all like the answers by the end of this season so that the Chiefs can have a clear direction to go in the offseason in reguards to the quarterback position.

The game today in Oakland against the hated Raiders should be a good test of Thigpen's ability to be a successful NFL QB. He has played against good defensive units this year but the argument can be made that the opposing teams didn't have sufficent film of Thigpen or our new offense to properly prepair a game plan. Now with 5 weeks of film to look at teams will be able to game plan for Thigpen and our offense.

Oakland has been especially difficult to pass against lately and are currently ranked 10th in Pass Defense. Add to that the fact that in the last three games they have held quarterbacks to an average of just 150 passing yards with one touchdown and five interceptions and you are looking at a hot defense. If Thigpen can overcome this defense and show continued improvement then it will go a long way to help us see if he really is the answer or just another young QB benefiting from lack of film for the other teams to plan with.

Here is thelink

I guess they decided some experience was needed after all, one of the CBs is actually 30 this year 5 months younger than myself. After losing 2 games in part due to the lack of experince in the secondary we did need to look for some more help. What does this say for the youth movement is my question.

I hope this will shore up our secondary and allow us to hold a lead when on Defense because we know that the other team will be throwing if it comes to that.

If you are a statistical junkie, like I am, you have to know about Football Outsiders. They actually go back and chart every play of every game. Then they compair how the team did on each play compaired to the NFL average in the same position (3 and 7 behind in the 4th QTR) to let you know if your team is playing at, below or above other teams in the NFL.

So this week they have their numbers up for week 3 in the NFL. Last year New England was so good so fast that they tracked them against all of the teams as far back as they have been breaking down the stats, I think 1995, and found that New England was by far the best team ever.

This year there are 3 teams that they are tracking to be the worst team of all time and the Chiefs are in the running. But at least so far we are not as bad as St Louis.

Check it out here: http://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/week-3-dvoa-ratings-1 

I think we made a lot of progress this week on the offensive side of the team. The right side of the line, other than the very first play actually looked servicable. And when the OC remembered that you can do toss plays and not just hand offs to run the ball things really started to open up. Once the Chiefs could run a little Tyler looked like he settled down a little and started playing better, he got tight at the end and starting regressing a little but I was encouraged by his play and the progress I saw from last week. At this rate he might actually be a OK backup.

On the defensive side of the ball I have to mainly blame the players for the problems we saw today. Way too many missed tackles for a professional football team, I have seen better tackling by freshmen high school teams. Some specifics:

• Hali keeps getting blown off the line by the LTs he faces, and today he was up against a rookie. I don't know if he is undersized for the RDE position or what but he looks terribly overmatched so far this season.
• Pat Thomas seems to be reading and getting into position to make plays but then gets juked out of his shorts or is unable to wrap up and make the tackle. If he is the best MLB we have that has to be a priority next off season.
• DJ has a problem disappering in games, I don't know if he is just getting blocked or what the problem is but I am not seeing a stud LB type of plays from him. If he is as good as people like to say he should be blowing up a lot more plays than he is currently doing.

The defensive play calling seemed to get players in a position to be able to make plays and they just would miss their opportunity. But at least these seem to be correctable mistakes and will probably work themselves out.

 I have my knee jerk reactions after these games where I want to scrap this plan and move on, and I still think in todays NFL it shouldn't take years to rebuild. Too many teams turn it around in just a season or two for me to be happy with the thought of just being satisfied with losing for the next two to three years.

What started to worry me at the end of the game was the fact that so many of the players looked totally beaten mentally and had a look of "I give up." I have felt that most of the team buys into what Herm is trying to do and I hope that as long as he is here that they buy what he is selling. But I wonder if they can't squeek a win out here soon what kind of effect that will have on the players mentally. Losing can become ingrained into a person's psyche and they will doubt that they can even win the game, even if they are up at the end of a game. Similar to how the raiders use to be in the 90's they got use to losing to us and every time they were winning you could see in their eyes that they were just waiting for something bad to happen that would cause them to lose.

At some point we need a win to keep spirits up on this team. Not just so that we go 3-13 instead of 2-14 on the season. I think a win followed by some close games will help this team really feel like they are on the right path and really start to progress. I just hope it happens before they become use to losing and this rebuild becomes the Cinncy version; year after year after year.

While I was at work today I had a thought that literally stopped me in my tracks. I have been in the group that pretty much has decided that Thigpen is no good and never will be an NFL talent. His game last week was one of the worst QB performances I have seen in a long time, the only reason it was not the worst was because the DBs kept dropping sure interceptions thrown to them. But I got to thinking about how impressed the Chiefs and Vikings were with him as a project QB.

What would be really really interesting is if with a full week of practice with the first team offense and a game plan centered around him and his skills. What if Thigpen actually went out and had an above average game for an NFL QB? Even more troubling would be what if he actually won the game for us?

What in the world would Herm do if all of a sudden this project QB that he is throwing to the wolves started playing way beyond expectations and actually won a few games before Brodie was able to return to the lineup? The more I have thought about it I think the true reason we see Thigpen over Huard is that Herm doesn't want another QB to come in and win games with this team while Croyle is out. So just imagine if we had a QB controversy between the winning Thigpen and the never won a game Croyle.

Now I know this has almost no chance of happening but I just had to bring this up once it crossed my mind today.

According to Teicher at the Star [Ed. note: Remember to link the stories you quote! Thanks! -Chris], Herm want to go young and play the the 2008 regular season preseason with a view to the future. That is unless you play offensive line, then the goal is totally different.

Herb Taylor played well enough at left tackle in the preseason in Branden Albert’s absence that coach Herm Edwards suggested Taylor would play some once the regular season started.

Taylor hasn’t played except on special teams. With right tackle Damion McIntosh having his problems, using Taylor in his spot might be one step toward better offensive-line play.

But Edwards said continuity on the line is more important.

“In the past, the thing we’ve struggled with is those guys (not) playing together,” Edwards said. “Now they’re all healthy, for the most part. We’re going to (let them) play together for a little while.

“But I’m not going to say no to anything.”

This kind of double standard with players and positions drives me crazy! If the plan is to play youth and get them experience this year fine. If it is to play the best players at a position and try to build a winning enviroment and bring the young players along as they show signs of improvement fine.

But DO NOT try to sell me on giving an untest QB the chance to start "so we know what he can do" and then sit two younger possibly better linemen so that we "have a better chance to win."

Pick a direction and stick to it this year!

Well it looks like we will be drafting very high again next year, and with our current staring QB being injured as much as he plays we may need to look a drafting a QB next year. Many people have different opinions on what makes a good pro QB from college, here is just one article I found that was very interesting in projecting QBs to the NFL.

The future NFL success of quarterbacks chosen in the first two rounds of the draft can be projected with a high degree of accuracy by using just two statistics from college: games started and completion percentage.

This theory was introduced in Pro Football Prospectus 2006 and further refined in Pro Football Prospectus 2007. The projection created by these stats is known as the Lewin Career Forecast, after the creator of the theory, David Lewin.

Scouts expected players such as Kyle Boller (48 percent), Jim Druckenmiller (54 percent) and Ryan Leaf (54 percent) to suddenly figure out how to complete passes once they hit the NFL. It isn't surprising that it didn't happen. Having a high completion percentage (above 60 percent or so) is no guarantee of success, especially if it was done in a small number of games in a fluky system (Tim Couch being a strong example), but it is a prerequisite for it. Games started are important because the more film that exists of a player in game conditions, the easier it is to find weaknesses that might come out against different opponents or different schemes. When scouts don't get sufficient information, they place too much weight on "measureables" and off-field workouts, and make mistakes like Couch (26 starters), Leaf (24 starts) or Akili Smith (19 starts).

The Lewin Career Forecast only applies to the first two rounds because it assumes that with enough game film to judge, scouts can accurate identify players who are "system quarterbacks" and will not succeed in the NFL, and those players appropriately fall on draft day (Colt Brennan being a good example from 2008).

From 1996-2005, the worst quarterback drafted in the top two rounds who had 37 or more college starts and a completion rate above 60 percent was Eli Manning. When the worst projection belongs to a quarterback who just led a two-minute drill to finish off a historic Super Bowl upset, that's a good projection system.