Can Mike McDaniel scheme his way out of Dolphins’ injury hell? Is Patrick Mahomes doomed because of Chiefs’ drops?

(Amber Matsumoto/Yahoo Sports)

Any given Sunday (or Monday, or soon, Saturday, or Black Friday …)!

That’s what’s great about the NFL. Teams that recently took one on the chin can fire back the following week and completely derail a contender’s plans. Lost your starting quarterback? Ah, no worries, let’s rip off two straight against playoff teams.

It’s how every week can be in every season, especially in 2023, the year of the defense, the punt and the quarterbacks (emphasis on plural).

Six division leaders lost in Week 14. With that being the case, I am going to bring out my patented Worry-O-Meter and how I rate the level of concern I feel for each team’s contender chances (you’ll notice I was hungry when I wrote this article, which will be apparent once you reach each team’s rating). I am going to skip over the Falcons and the NFC South. I’ll deal with that division once it starts to make itself presentable.

For the remaining five potential division leaders, let’s take a look and see what the Meter says:

I know about the Chiefs’ wide receivers. You know about the Chiefs’ wide receivers. They are starting to get rattled off on social media and talking head shows like Santa’s reindeer: “there’s Valdes-Scantling and Toney and Moore and Blitzen.”

Kadarius Toney’s offensive offsides penalty has gotten plenty of the shine. But the Chiefs’ young wide receivers room has had numerous instances every week with misaligning pre-snap or lacking detail on their assignment post-snap.

Then there are the drops. Oh, the drops.

The Chiefs have lost 25.2 expected points this year from drops from their pass catchers. That ranks fourth in the NFL. If you narrowed it to just drops by Chiefs wide receivers (which 15 of their 23 team drops have been by), the Chiefs have lost 21.9 expected points from drops, which would rank first in the NFL. This offense is also tied for first with the Seattle Seahawks in penalties per snap (6.2%).

Even with the drops and…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/the-overhang-can-mike-mcdaniel-scheme-his-way-out-of-dolphins-injury-hell-is-patrick-mahomes-doomed-because-of-chiefs-drops-140055109.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2023-12-14 14:00:55

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