Oakland Raiders: Ranking The AFC West By Position Group – Offensive Lines
By Kevin Saito
3. Kansas City Chiefs
Like most everything about the Chiefs under head coach Andy Reid, the offensive line is solid, competent – but certainly not spectacular. They, more or less, get the job done, but it’s definitely not a line anybody would call powerful or dominant.
There’s something to be said for continuity, of course, but if your starting point is mediocrity – and you maintain that status quo – your team isn’t going to improve. If anything, by setting the bar low and don’t do anything to raise it, you’re only setting yourself up for a backward slide.
Such is the case with the Chiefs’ offensive line. Last year’s starting five – Eric Fisher, Parker Ehringer, Mitch Morse, Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, and Mitchell Schwartz – are currently penciled in to be the starting five this season.
This is a unit that was very middle of the pack in every way possible. Although nobody will ever confuse quarterback Alex Smith with say, Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady, the Chiefs passing game was a very middling nineteenth best in the league – their scoring offense was thirteenth, and their offense overall, was twentieth, for whatever that’s worth.
And like their passing game, the Kansas City running game was also very middle of the pack – fifteenth overall. Spencer Ware ran for 921 yards, but no other Kansas City back had more than Charcandarick West’s 293 yards on the season. As a unit, the Chiefs’ ground game scored just fifteen rushing touchdowns and posted an average of 4.2 yards per carry – with that average being a very middle of the pack sixteenth in the league.
If there is a common theme to be seen here, it’s that Kansas City is running out a very vanilla, very ordinary offensive line. Again. While teams in the AFC West like the Chargers have gotten better – and the Raiders were already head and shoulders better – the Chiefs were content to stand pat.
Which will very likely once again make them – very middle of the pack. And in a division as competitive as the AFC West, if you’re not improving, you’re going to get passed on by sooner rather than later.