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KANSAS CITY, Mo. —Todd Haley opened his news conference Monday by reeling off some defensive statistics from Sunday's win in Chicago. The Chiefs had seven sacks and three interceptions while holding the Bears to zero for 11 on third downs and zero for two on fourth downs.
The fact that even with a showing like that the Chiefs still needed to sweat out the finish of their 10-3 victory speaks to just how much they'll need similar defensive games during the season's final month.
"I just can't say enough how defensively we're coming around at the right time and getting comfortable playing defense," Haley said. "We're going to have to do that the rest of the way."
The Chiefs haven't scored more than 10 points in a game since October and have just one touchdown in the three games since Tyler Palko took over as their starting quarterback. That touchdown was a stroke of luck, the Hail Mary pass to Dexter McCluster on the final play of the first half in Chicago that provided the game's final margin.
The next two games, beginning with Sunday's meeting with the Jets in New York, are against two of the NFL's highest-scoring teams. The Green Bay Packers come to Arrowhead Stadium to play the Chiefs the following Sunday.
The Chiefs, in their present state, won't be winning any scoring battles against the Jets, averaging 24 points a game, or the Packers, the NFL's high-scoring team at 35 points per game.
They need to keep the scoring to a minimum, as they did at Chicago. That's suddenly a reasonable thought, even against two of the league's best offensive teams.
The Chiefs are 18th in points allowed, an unimpressive number on the surface. But they've steadily climbed toward the middle of the rankings after a disastrous start to the season.
The Chiefs are allowing around 17 points per game over their last four games, a statistic skewed by the 34-3 loss in New England. Even then , the Chiefs had the high-scoring Patriots confuse d early in the game. It got away from the Chiefs only after the Patriots returned a punt for a touchdown and Palko started scattering interceptions all over Gillette Stadium .
The reasons for defensive improvement are many. The Chiefs on Sunday picked on a Bears offense that was playing with backup quarterback Caleb Hanie, the Chicago version of Palko. Then, in th e first quarter, the Bears lost star running back Matt Forte for the game because of a knee injury.
The Chiefs are suddenly getting superb play from their linebackers. That's nothing new for Derrick Johnson and Tamba Hali, but rookie Justin Houston, who had three sacks, and Jovan Belcher, who had seven tackles, had perhaps their best games of the season.
Houston's play has steadily improved since the middle of the season.
"The play of Justin Houston has to be commended," Haley said. "His progress has been tremendous from the start. He's obviously playing at a pretty good level right now that's helping us in a bunch of different ways.
"That's allowed Tamba to continue to play at a high level. It's allowed Derrick Johnson to continue to just play at just the unbelievable level which he's playing. When (Chicago's Brian) Urlacher gets me after the game and says that number 56 is really something, that's saying something."
"He's been a little better at everything. He just seems to get a little better every week."
Johnson has finally become the player the Chiefs envisioned when they made him their first-round draft pick in 2005. He made several big plays in Chicago, but his best may have come on the first-quarter play when he beat a block to get through a gap and tackle Forte for no gain. Forte was injured on the play.
"That really wasn't his play to make, but when you have somebody as talented as Derrick and playing at the level at which he's playing, he obviously has the green light to make some of those plays," Haley said. "It was not an easy play to make, and I think that's what caught Forte off-guard."
