The Kansas City Chiefs defense has been the topic of conversation recently -- but in a good way because they're good.
The offense?
Well, that's a whole other can of worms.
The Chiefs offense has been, for the most part, very disappointing. They haven't yet, through two games, been able to demonstrate that they can consistently drive up and down the field and punch it in for touchdowns.
On Sunday against the Browns, Chiefs QB Matt Cassel lead his team on two drives that spanned 11 or more plays and 60 or more yards. Now this is a good thing. The yards per play is very low, but whatever. They're getting into the opponent's red zone, which is the key. Unfortunately, they were only able to get six points out of those two drives.
The Chiefs won the game on Sunday against the Browns but the offense didn't score a touchdown. How often can that happen?
There was talk about the Chargers loss last week to the Chiefs being a fluke. I understood where those that said that were coming from because the Chiefs scored on a 50-plus yard touchdown run, punt return and a touchdown set up by a forced fumble. The Chiefs offense wasn't forced to go 60, 70 or 80 yards and score a touchdown.
At some point they'll have to do that.
Cassel's play in the first half against the Browns was border-line embarrassing. He turned the ball over, wasn't completing many passes and generally giving the impressive that he was holding the offense back.
The second half Cassel turned things around and led the Chiefs on two long field goal-scoring drives. It'd be nice if they could punch those in but for Cassel that's improvement.
His final numbers are 16-of-28 for 176 yards and two interceptions. The good news is that the second half of the game showed that Cassel could move the offense up and down the field. The bad news is that we haven't seen him do that very consistently.
For now, the defense and special teams are winning games for the Chiefs. At some point, if the Chiefs are going to be taken seriously by the rest of the league, the offense will have to start clicking. There are only so many ways you can score a non-offensive touchdown.
In the end, though, Cassel has done enough to get the Chiefs the victory. His turnovers were costly, as all turnovers were, but they weren't the death blow. We've seen improvement in some areas from Cassel but the inconsistencies will be difficult to overcome in the future.