The news only gets worse by the day at this point if you’re the Kansas City Chiefs. One day after suffering a humiliating home loss to the Buffalo Bills, the Chiefs learned the worst possible news concerning Eric Berry’s injury stemming from the first quarter of that game. Berry is now out for the year, as you likely know by now, but what you might not know is that the Chiefs couldn’t be set up any worse at safety than they already were.
Now that Berry is out, who will the Chiefs turn to? Even though decent safeties were on the market this off-season even in a back-up role, the Chiefs stuck with Jon McGraw for another year and brought in Sabby Piscitelli from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Promising youngster Reshard Langford was cut in the process, leaving many to wonder what was going on.
The reason for the furor over a back-up safety position wasn’t about foresight on anyone’s part concerning Berry’s injury. Instead, Piscitelli was arguably the single worst player in pro football last season. Aside from Jake Delhomme, Piscitelli was listed as the least valuable player in football over at Grantland recently. He’s also listed as the worst safety in football in 2009 by Football Outsiders. Not exactly a vote of confidence, despite the fact Todd Haley apparently likes him enough to give him a nickname (“Jersey Shore”).
There’s no way for a team to completely be okay with a loss of a player like Eric Berry. The Seahawks would miss Earl Thomas, the Ravens would miss Ed Reed and the Steelers aren’t the same without Troy Polamalu. But the Chiefs aren’t just going to miss Berry. They’re going to be lost without Berry. He was the MVP of the run defense and an impact player all around. He was a game-changer that offensive coordinators had to constantly worry about. Now the Chiefs are below average and will give up more plays than they already did against the Bills last weekend.
Just when you thought the Chiefs had hit bottom, here comes some more bad news. The Chiefs have an uphill battle ahead to find a new defensive identity.