Joe Thuney and Mike Caliendo vs the Texans: Solid, not great
Looking at the Chiefs' temporary LT/LG combination to examine what the best path forward would be
Expectations are a funny thing.
What I mean by that is what we expect tends to color the way we view things. Our opinion of an average movie is wildly impacted based on what we expected going in. Thought it was going to be great? You’ll walk out of the theater bemoaning its flaws. Went in believing it was going to be horrible? You’ll likely be pleasantly surprised and think about the way it surpassed expectations.
The same thing happens with sports. The way we view a players, games, and even teams overall tends to be highly impacted by what our expectations for them are. One of the easiest examples of this is the way Patrick Mahomes is viewed week in and week out. He can play a solid game, or even a very good one, and have people talk about it the following week as though he’d been subpar. Expectations color opinions.
The reason I bring this up is that the conversation of Chiefs left guard left tackle offensive lineman Joe Thuney and Mike Caliendo is, to an extent, being colored by the expectations fans had when the All Pro LG (Thuney) shifted to LT and the career backup (Caliendo) came in to play LG. What I mean by that is that given how poor the LT play has been consistently this season, combined with Thuney being forced to play out of position (and in a spot his shorter arms are more of a problem) and Caliendo coming off the bench, the fans had pretty subdued expectations as to how the duo would perform.
Basically, the hope was that they wouldn’t tank the offense. And when they didn’t, the conversation swung a very specific direction. And I’m not blameless in that, openly asking whether keeping Thuney at LT and Caliendo at LG was the right way to go down the stretch. The offense looked more functional Saturday against the Texans than it has much of the season, and with Thuney/Caliendo not appearing to actively hinder things (combined with low expectations) one can understand how the hype train would start.
And so the questions have started circulating. What should the Chiefs do if/when DJ Humphries gets healthy? Shift Thuney back to guard and insert Humphries into the lineup? Or roll with what they’ve done the last two weeks? The hype surrounding Thuney’s play at LT (and make no mistake, the fact that he’s out there not embarrassing himself is INCREDIBLE) has reached the point that it’s a legitimate question to be asked.
Of course, hype and reality don’t always match. And without reviewing/charting each snap it was impossible for me to say for sure exactly how well either player had performed against the Texans other than the gameday vibes test, which is always treacherous. Given the importance of the question, the only thing that made sense was to go back and look at every snap for both, charting each player and examining how the offense as a whole shifted (or didn’t) to help Thuney at his “new” position in particular.
And so that’s what I did, to try and figure out just how good Thuney and Caliendo have been, how the offense adjusted in the Texans game to account for them (if at all), and how that colors my opinion on the next steps for the Chiefs’ OL.
In case you’ve forgotten or are new to this site, the way I review/chart OL play is for wins, losses, and neutral plays, while also looking at pressures/hits/sacks allowed. It’s a way to isolate how the lineman performed from the rest of the offense while avoiding some of the pitfalls of gauging offensive line play.
As a refresher, keep in mind that a 10% loss percentage is my line for what I’m comfortable with from a starter. There’s some variation game-by-game depending on quality of competition and amount of “help” a tackle gets (in the form of chips, moving pockets, rollouts, play action, slides, etc), but that 10% has served me well over the years. And losses are definitely the stat to watch the closest. The problem with a loss from an offensive lineman is that it can torpedo a play or, at the very least, make it much more difficult for the play to succeed. In other words, a win by a lineman doesn’t guarantee success, but a loss goes a long way towards guaranteeing failure.
All right, let’s talk Thuney and Caliendo’s film vs the Texans.