Three-time Super Bowl champion Dave Merritt was brought on as the Kansas City Chiefs defensive backs coach in 2019, and he faces his toughest task this season amid the team’s struggle to employ effective coverage against anyone. Up and down his roster of cornerbacks and safeties, players have underperformed to such a degree that the team is dead last in virtually every defensive category related to stopping opposing offenses.
Merritt addressed the media on Thursday before practice about his belief that his players’ eyes are literally not in the right place. He cited “poor eye leverage” as his primary concern in practice this week, and seems committed to getting the issues ironed out.
“I think right now there’s a lot of guys that are playing with poor eye leverage and just reading their keys,” Merritt said of the early-season deficiencies. “One of the things that I talk about all the time is alignment, techniques, keys and assignments. So, when you go into these games and you have a particular alignment that you should be following, you have to make sure you do that, and when it comes to your keys, that’s the eye discipline. So, that’s really the issues that have been going on, just some of that eye discipline.”
Asked to expound on what exactly “eye leverage” is, he pointed to fundamental football strategies employed by defenders for years; namely keeping one’s eyes on the player they’re covering. It might seem basic, but for Merritt and the 2021 Chiefs’ defense, even the simplest concepts are ripe to be re-taught.
“If I’m looking at you and I’m supposed to be watching you, I’ve got to watch you,” Merritt explained. “I can’t all of a sudden go watch someone else. So, whether you’re coaching pop warner, little league, your kids, in basketball, if that’s your man, you teach your kids to cover that guy. You don’t turn around and just start looking somewhere else. Oh, there’s a bird, oh there’s a butterfly. No. You cover your guy. That’s what I mean.”
The fact that the defense is back to pop warner coaching points six weeks into the season is clearly a cause for concern. Fans couldn’t be faulted for wondering exactly what Kansas City was spending their time on in training camp, or if there’s any hope that their problems will be solved any time soon.
