Houston Texans vs. Kansas City Chiefs Review | PFF Grade Release Show

Houston Texans vs. Kansas City Chiefs Review | PFF Grade Release Show

This video is presented by Western and Southern Financial Group. A game plan for your financial future. Every great team starts with a strong foundation and your future should too. With life insurance built like a championship roster, Western and Southern helps protect what matters most so you can focus on winning today while planning for tomorrow. Whether you’re just starting out your journey building your dynasty or ready to retire like a champion, Western Southern has the right play for your life stage. Visit western southern.com to get your free life insurance quote today. Western and Southern built to win. We got a lot of games that we were going to get to here, but we start as we always do with Sunday Night Football. And you mentioned the Chiefs were one of those teams, Patrick Mahomes, on the outside looking in right now in a major way below 500. Now they’re in a spot where they have been eliminated from winning the AFC West, which means that for the first time in God, what is it? Nine years, isn’t it? Didn’t they win nine in a I thought it was long. I thought it might have been even longer than that. We’ll look this up in a second. I thought it was nine. 2015 it was Denver and then hasn’t it been nine since then? Okay. So, it would have been nine since then. All right. So, almost a decade of Kansas City Chiefs dominance in this division. And uh we know that we’re going to crown a new champion in that division. It’s because the Houston Texans defeated the Kansas City Chiefs in this game by a score of 20 to 10. Let’s look at the top five graded players for the Texans as winners of this game. Number one, safety Jaylen Petri, 90.5 overall grade. He was all over the field last night. Now, I’ll dig into him a little bit more. He’s my most impressive, so I’ll talk about him a little bit more in a second, but defensive tackle Sheldon Rankins right behind him with an 82.6. Defensive tackle Tommy Togei with an 82.2. Edge rusher Will Anderson Jr. a 785. And then edge rusher Dell Hunter a 73.2. CJ Stroud in this game a 58.9. And again, just to remind everybody of the PFF grade scale, a a neutral grade is a 60.0. So CJ Strad right around that neutral grade. And I think if you watched last night, a lot of struggles with the offensive line. CJ really just could not do a lot. That grade kind of checks out there from what we were watching when we were watching it live on Kansas City’s side of things. Defensive tackle Chris Jones. Uh man, he looked like Hall of Fame Chris Jones last night. And it’s kind of crazy that even that wasn’t enough for them to get the win. He had a 90.3 overall grade. Offensive guard Kingsley Suumataya with a 78.9. Linebacker Drew Tranquil a 782. Edge rusher George Carlos a 78.0 and then rounded it out at number five linebacker Nick Bolton a 76.7. Patrick Mahomes in this game 65.0. Do what was your stat that told the story here? I I think the lesson here and I think we’ve known this for probably the better part of a year and a half but there is only so much Patrick Mahomes can do to save this team, right? And the defense put forth a good enough effort to win this game, right? I thought they were put in a couple of bad spots in the fourth quarter with Andy Reid and the fourth down calls that were made. But either way, the defense was good enough. Mahomes, he’s trying to carry this offense. We’ve known all year that they can’t run the football. But the big stat for me, if Mahomes has to carry and you can’t run it, you’ve got to be better as a receiving core. 53.1 receiving grade in this game. Worst in two years here for Kansas City. So you look at only 19 yards after contact, after the catch, right? one missed tackle forced five drops and most of them in huge huge spots. You talk about uh Noah Gray with a third down drop early in the game. Kareem Hunt with a third and two drop would have been a first down. Rasheed Rice on that fourth and four uh that Andy Reid went for in the fourth quarter. And then Travis Kelce for the third time this year had a drop that resulted in an interception. One for four uncontested targets Kansas City was. You just can’t make those mistakes when you have opportunities to make plays against this defense, which only gives you so much margin for error and the pass rush is so great and there’s only so often you get open against a secondary that continues to get better. The Chiefs around Patrick Mahomes, it has to be said they’re just not good enough. Yeah, we knew that in the run game, but in the passing game, guys like Rice and Xavier Worthy and Kelsey, they have to come through more consistently. They didn’t do that in this game. That’s why the Chiefs only had 10 points on the night. Yeah, I I’m totally with you. It’s not like Patrick Mahomes was perfect. I’m not trying to absolve him of all blame here. I think that there are things that Patrick Mahomes has been just a little bit off with this year where at times over the course of their Super Bowl runs, it feels like he’s just putting the ball exactly where it needs to go every single time. This year, it’s a little bit different. It’s a little bit off. The accuracy is not quite as pinpoint as it has been in the past, but still, a lot of these passes are hitting these wide receivers in the hands. And you talk about the five drops, the first three drops that we have recorded, third down, third down, fourth down, and it’s like, okay, well, if if if Mahomes is hitting you in the hands and you’re dropping the football on those crucial downs, you’re already putting yourself so far behind the eightball because, like you said, you know that Houston’s going to lock in on defense. And then when you look at the last drop, it was the it was the Travis Kelce drop where, you know, it’s a again, it’s a little bit behind him. And that just goes into what I said about Mahomes being a little bit off with the timing. It’s a little bit behind Kelsey, but Kelsey, it hits him in the hands. pops it up and Aziz al Shayer is right there for the interception to seal the game and so my staff that told the story is sort of along the same lines of what you were saying and you leaned a little bit more into the passing side of it. Mahomes is the leading rusher again for this team. You talk about him being let down by the receiving core, the guys that he’s throwing passes to, they can’t run the ball, man, they cannot run the ball. I can’t tell you how many times I do mock drafts and I have Jeremiah Love for Notre Dame going to the Kansas City Chiefs. Funny enough, I didn’t on the one that I just wrote for this Monday, which you guys can see over at pf.com, because honestly, I just wanted to switch it up. I have done this so many times, given them Jeremiah Love, and that pick makes a lot of sense because as of right now, they don’t have the dynamic ability out of the backfield, and it’s just Patrick Mahomes and what he could do with his arm specifically, and now his receivers are letting him down as well. So, I’m not trying to take anything away from Houston. Houston did an excellent job in this game playing their style to go into Arrowhead and beat the Chiefs, which when we talked about this on the previous show. Everything was on the line here, right? You and I talked about this. If they lose this game, you basically just have to win out and pray. And that’s that’s where they’re at. So, Kansas City knew they had to win this game. And we’ve seen them win this kind of game so many times over the last three or four years. They didn’t this time around, and it’s a credit to what Houston was able to do, especially on the defensive side of the ball. My most impressive guy was Jayla Petri. 90.5 overall grade. So an elite overall grade for the Texans. 90.2 coverage grade. He had that interception. He had that incredible hit on Rashan Rashid Rice in this game as well. Petri was all over the field. This is the type of game where it’s why he’s one of my favorite players to watch in the NFL because he truly I and I love how Houston has set this up. We’ve talked about this a little bit, how drafting the right skill set of players allows you to have this true top tier, high ceiling type of a defense, especially on the back end for the Texans. Look at their two outside corners, right? It’s Kamari Lassner. It’s it’s Dererick Stingley Jr. They can match up one-on-one against basically wide any wide receiver in the NFL. So, you have two corners they feel very confidently in man coverage. You then have a backend safety in Caleb Bulock who what he does best is center fielder range, side to side. let him be a single high type of a player and all of that builds around allowing a guy like Jaylen Petri basically free reign. Yes, he’s got his structure of like, hey, you’ve got the number two receiver, you’ve got the number three wide receiver as sort of that nickel defender, apex defender, whatever you want to call it, depending on what his depth is and what he’s asked to do. But he’s flying around, man. He’s just flying around and they’re telling him, Petri, go make the play. And he did so many times in this game and he was just he was so impressive. and he’s representative really of their entire defense. They just constantly attack the football at all three levels, right? He’s among the most aggressive of them. But Kalin Bullock does the same thing on the back end. Kamari Lacier with the interception in the fourth quarter in this game. Obviously, the pass rush doing what they do constantly. I believe Hunter and Anderson combined for was it 13 or 15 pressures in this game again. And they didn’t get Mahomes down very often, but they made him get rid of the ball and move before he wanted to. So, this defense is easily in the argument as the best defense in football. just went into Arrowhead and allowed 10 points to Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs and got the biggest win of their season. And now, right now, because of a tiebreaker with the Colts and where the Colts are, Texans are the seven seed. They’re in the playoffs and they’re in a hot race now for the division title with the Jacksonville Jaguars. It’s going to be a lot of fun in the AFC South down the stretch. My most impressive guy, I just want to shout out Chris Jones cuz he did everything he possibly could to win this game. 92.4 pass rush grade, eight pressures, a sack, a batted pass, a 25% pass rush win rate. He was unblockable. You mentioned the Texans and CJ Shroud really struggling to get things moving, especially in the second half. Chris Jones just took over on the defensive line. He did everything he possibly could. Just couldn’t find enough points on offense for the Chiefs to get a win here. I I I do want to talk a little bit when we when we go through some of these, you know, previews with these teams. It is about the next four weeks as well because we’re done with by-weeks, right? This is the last week that we had any by-weeks. So, we’re getting a full schedules for all the teams in the last four weeks of the season moving forward. Uh the Houston Texans are now one game back of the Jacksonville Jaguars for the top of that division. We’ll get to the Colts unfortunately who are right there record-wise, but uh in terms of outlook, not so great. When you look at the Texans now coming off of their fifth straight win, okay, they host the Cardinals. They host the Raiders. They’re at the Chargers who we know, man, with the how beat up the Chargers are on that defensive line. That’s a matchup where you got to feel good about Houston’s defense limiting that Chargers offense quite a bit. And then the last one is hosting the Colts. You feel you feel like they could stack up another four in a row here. And and how big of all of these wins, the Bills win was a huge win. Obviously, this win was huge. How big for the sake of tiebreers and possibly winning that division was that big comeback from Davis Mills against Jacksonville that he pulled off because now you split the two games and you let division record decide that part of it. That was really the biggest win out of all this. On top of the fact that, keep in mind, was it they went three and 0 with Davis Mills as the starting quarterback, they would not be here without him, especially with that being the biggest win of the three. I I think when you look at just everything coming together for this team after starting 0 and three, and now they’ve won eight of 10, and they’re in prime position to get a wild card spot, you’ve got a tie break over the Chiefs. You’re two games ahead of everybody else except the Colts. And we’re about to talk about the Colts cuz that doesn’t look so great right now. Texans got to feel really, really good about where they’re at and the momentum they’re building. and they’re not even anywhere near clicking on all cylinders on offense yet. If they get that done, they’re really dangerous. As for the uh Chiefs, they’re versus the Chargers next week and then it’s at the Tennessee Titans. Um then it’s versus the Denver Broncos who could very well be playing for seating still and getting that first round buy uh with the teams at the top, most likely the New England Patriots. And then they’re at the Las Vegas Raiders to end the year. So you I could absolutely see the Chiefs finishing three and one in these last four games. I I think that that’s possible for them, but that gets them to nine and eight. They won’t they won’t get in at nine and eight. They have to win all four. Yeah. And and then they have to hope to be ahead of somebody. And you just mentioned the Houston schedule. I I right right this second. I might pick them to win all four of those games. Right. Certainly three of them. The the biggest issue that I have right now with Houston is simply how bad their offensive line looked last night. Now, it looked better a the weeks prior they did look better. And so, you’ve got to hope that okay, you were facing Spags and Chris Jones in Kansas City. It was just a really tough night. And you hope that the next four weeks are a lot closer to what we’ve seen, you know, when Davis Mills was starting when I think that things were a little bit better for them. If their offensive line starts to regress from where they started when they were 0 and3 on the season to start things off, then Jacksonville’s chances of winning this division and making some noise in the playoff, I think, significantly improved. And I think we’ve known this with them since last year in this matchup, they just don’t have an answer for Chris Jones. It is what it is. Now, if they don’t have to face Chris Jones in the playoffs, then fantastic. Right now, there’s other good pass rush teams. You think about Denver, you think about Jacksonville, this is going to come up at some point if they make the playoffs. But right this minute with the last four games they have and what they’ve gotten through, we feel good enough about it.

PFF’s Trevor Sikkema and Dalton Wasserman review the matchup between The Houston Texans and The Kansas City Chiefs.

Get 30% off your PFF Subscription with our Holiday sale!:
Code: HOLIDAY30
Link: https://subscribe.pff.com

🏆 Dominate your fantasy league: http://fantasy.pff.com/
📱 Download the PFF App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/pff-fan…
✉️ Join our newsletter: https://forms.gle/maqTaBKcmdPR5Vma6
🏈 NFL/NCAA Player Grades: https://www.pff.com/grades

Thank you to our sponsors. If you’re interested in supporting our shows, please reach out to sales@pff.com