The Kansas City Chiefs and Houston Texans are getting prepared to face off in the NFL’s season opener on Thursday, Sept. 10.
It’s been an offseason unlike any other before it, creating some unique circumstances heading into the start of the 2020 NFL season. For Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, his list of concerns heading into the season is longer than it would typically be given the challenge of having no preseason games.
“Yeah, probably more because of the unknowns,” Spagnuolo told reporters of his list of concerns on Monday. “You can get a little bit off of the preseason games. You get a little bit of feel for how the opponents are going to interact with each other. I think if we would have had our four normal preseason games then we would’ve seen 25-30 snaps of their first group. We kind of missed that so it’s a little bit of a guessing game. Again, that’s going to be part of the chess match going on during the game. The team that makes the adjustments best will have the best chance of winning. Again, I’ve told our guys that because it is unique, and the first game really is like this all the time, it’s really more about us and how we function than it is about trying to get tips on what they may do. We’re going to kind of focus on that.”
Making adjustments will be one of the most important parts of winning the game against the Texans in Week 1, but it’s still not at the top of the list of concerns for Spags. For his defense, he’s most concerned about tackling or the lack thereof for his unit without any preseason play.
“No question that’s my number one concern,” Spagnuolo said of tackling. “I’d echo that, if that’s what people are saying, I agree 100 percent. We’ve tried to simulate it as much as possible. We didn’t have a lot of live periods and we did a little bit of tackling in that way. I think the assistant coaches have done a great job getting it done as best they could. We have a big heavy bag out there we’re trying to hit. We try to put them in those positions. I don’t know whether this will help or not, but every day we watch tape of tackling, I’m talking about good tackles, how to tackle, so maybe it’s a visual thing. It’s a concern that we won’t know until we get into the middle of the game and see how some of these guys react.”
There’s no way to simulate the live tackling of an NFL game during practice. Even the “live periods” that Spags talks about aren’t quite the same. You can take your teammate to the ground, but they’re not flying around out there at 100% speed and hitting them as they would opponents.
There’s only so much that hitting weighted bags can do as far as preparing players for tackling. At the end of the day, Spags will have to trust that he’s coached his guys up on the fundamentals and that they have it ingrained in them when they finally take the field for the first time on Thursday.
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