Kingsley Suamataia Week 1 film: Flashes and growing pains
The Chiefs' rookie LT experienced a baptism by fire Thursday night, with some rough snaps and also some that showed why KC is bullish on his future.
The vast majority of rookie offensive linemen are going to struggle out of the gate. In fact, most of them aren’t close to being ready to stepping onto the field and would be a massive anchor to the offense if they did. That’s life in the NFL.
And starting off against a deep and talented Baltimore defensive line? That’s just a bummer. But THAT is life as a starting left tackle. Kingsley Suamataia just got his first taste of it. And while I’m sure he’s glad to get that first game under his belt, it’s only going to get tougher from here with the Bengals and Trey Hendrickson coming to Arrowhead next week.
So how did the rookie do in his first “REAL real” NFL action? He stood out during the broadcast on several snaps, some for bad and some for good. And there were plenty of narratives going around about him after the game (some from analysts I deeply respect, for what that’s worth, and I’ll link to all of them so you can get a thorough look at multiple opinions). What a guy does on 3-4 plays doesn’t define him for good or for bad. It’s what he does snap after snap after snap.
In order to try and gauge that “snap after snap” level of play, the only thing to do is go to the film and see how it looked. So that’s what we’ll do here today.
(if you want to check other analysts’ takes, Brandon Thorn did a full breakdown of Suamataia’s film on his exceptional Trench Warfare substack. Nick Jacobs discussed him at length on Twitter/X. And former pros Chase Daniel, Mitch Schwartz, and Andrew Whitworth all talked about him with varying opinions on Twitter/X. It’s interesting the variety of opinions on Suamataia’s first start)
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 as a pass blocker (“PB”) and a run blocker (“RB”), 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.
With that in mind, let’s talk about Suamataia’s first taste of the actual NFL. The results were… well, let’s start off by calling them mixed and go from there.