Quote:
Originally Posted by PAChiefsGuy
It's the same QB. You think he forgot how to play football in a couple wks?
It is not a simple zone defense. If you think it is so easy, you go out and you try beating it. Defenses are disguising it well and confusing him. And it is not just the passing game that is struggling, our running game is horrible right now. Teams are not stacking the box, zone D gets killed when you do that they are running a base zone D. Our running has got to improve as well posters here just don't like to talk about that because it does not involve criticizing Smitty.
Reid deserves blame too he's the one who is calling the plays. Reid will figure the zone D out. Reid and Smitty are both too good not to.
I'm confident things will change. What defenses are trying is working right now but it will not work forever. Smitty will get back on track. I'm actually glad it is happening now. Gives us time to figure it out before the playoffs start.
A lot of you just like to panic like a nuclear war is going to happen because of a few bad games. Either they will figure it out and get this ship going in the right direction but even if they don't we have Mahomes for next season so it is not the end of the world. Either way, life goes on.
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This is not the same qb. Alex is playing like a totally different qb. And it started in Pittsburgh when they ran zone blitz. Teams have schemed against our gimmicks. That shovel pass to Kelce and the misdirections don't fool anyone anymore. And our qb isn't making the right reads pre snap. When he doesn't know where to go he has terrible pocket presence and tends to slide into pressure. And as we all know if he doesn't like his primary read he immediately moves to check down.
Defenses went back to what was stopping him in the past. They're stacking against the run. They're abandoning all deep zones and focusing exclusively on the flats. When you play with such a ridiculously short field, you can be a hell of a lot more aggressive at rushing the passer. Playing zone doesn't mean playing passive. The steelers beat us because they played aggressive zone with a lot of disguise and other teams are copycatting them. And it's working.
And we all know the solution that Alex will never do. Be aggressive, take some chances, throw the ball in tight windows on timing routes, stretch the field to keep the defense honest. Teams are abandoning deep zones and we're still relying exclusively on this checkdown nonsense. Playcalling did a great job masking Alex Smith early in the year. But playcalling isn't going to Loosen up the defense. That is squarely on Alex Smith to be a little less Alex Smith. We know he's capable of doing it and that's the frustrating part. He just won't do it because it's not the safe thing to do.