Super Bowl Preview Pt II: Chiefs Defense

Steve Spagnuolo might be the most underrated defensive coordinator in football. As a defensive play caller, he’s won three Super Bowls at two different spots and has an outrageous 17-4 career playoff record. But due to his underwhelming few years as a head coach splitting up his two championship DC stops–and the fact that the Chiefs have not exactly been known for defense until this season–he never seems to get his due. 

While young up-and-coming whiz kid play callers are always going to get more fanfare, well-established coordinators (especially those on the defensive side of the ball) are often taken for granted. But the work Steve Spagnuolo has done in turning a young and unproven Kansas City defense into one of the better units in the league has been remarkable. This Chiefs team would not be here without its defense, which–regardless of your belief level in “Playoff Mahomes”--has been the better unit on this team for the entirety of the season. 

This defense is 7th in DVOA, 5th against the pass, and 27th against the run. They’re 6th in EPA/snap, 3rd in SPA/pass, and 25th in EPA/run. By all accounts, this is an excellent-to-elite defense with one glaring weakness.

CAST AND CHARACTERS

Chris Jones continues to be the best player on the Kansas City defense, and–despite the presence of two other All-Pro candidates in the secondary–its single most important. While Aaron Donald has long dominated the discussion of top defensive tackles–and rightfully so–Chris Jones is more versatile, and his ability to play inside and out–paired with his incredible instincts all along the defensive line–makes him a matchup nightmare and movable chess piece in a way that no other interior lineman in football can replicate. 

Other than Jones, the rest of the KC interior linemen are space-eater types, but they have a healthy rotation of them. Tershawn Wharton’s got a little juice as a pass rusher, but Isaiah Buggs and Derek Nnadi are throwback nose tackles. They’re there to occupy blockers and let everyone else get singles while blitzers run free. The edges are a talented group, although they’ll be missing former Niner Charles Omenihu for the Super Bowl, as he tore his ACL last week. He had 7 sacks in 11 games, which was the third-highest total on the team behind Jones (10.5) and George Karlaftis (10.5), an impressive second-year player with a nice blend of power and closing speed. Mike Danna starts opposite Karlaftis, and–with 6.5 sacks–he’s no slouch either. Again, Jones can go anywhere along the line, so there’s no real weak spot along this front.

Outside corner L’Jarius Sneed is their headliner in the secondary, even if he (surprisingly) wasn’t named to an All-Pro team this season. Given the Chiefs’ aggressive blitzing nature and their affinity for man coverage, Sneed gets put on an island more often than most, but he’s done an excellent job erasing teams’ No.1 receivers and making plays in coverage and as a tackler. Although Sneed gets the majority of the fanfare, second-year nickel corner Trent McDuffie was the Chiefs’ first-team All-Pro selection in the secondary. He’s an incredibly well-rounded player who can stick on your top slot receiver, bounce out wide, or blitz about equally well, but his versatility has won him his post-season awards more than his lockdown ability.

Part of the reason Spags’ work with this Chiefs defense has been so impressive is because this is an incredibly young defense. Of the four corners and four safeties who get the most snaps, only Justin Reid (in his sixth year) and Mike Edwards (5th year) aren’t on rookie contracts. Starting outside cornerback Joshua Williams–who has had a very strong season in his own right–reserve CB Jaylen Watson, and starting safety Bryan Cook are both second-year players. While Chamarri Conner–a talented matchup-specific safety–is a fourth round rookie. Spags loves extra DB sets so all of them play.

Drue Tranquill–owner of one of the best last names for an NFL linebacker–and Nick Bolton are their top options at linebacker, but–just like in the secondary–the Chiefs play a lot of guys. That means Leo Chenal and Willie Gay will get some run in the Super Bowl. They don’t have any stars at linebacker, but this is a well-coached group that triggers quickly and has solid athleticism across the board.

DEFENSE

Steve “Send It” Spagnuolo (no one calls him this). Spags is one of the best and most creative pressure men in the NFL, and–at his core–his defense is a four-man front that blitzes heavily from all over and likes to run man and matchup zone coverage on the back end. The Chiefs are the 5th-most blitz-heavy team in the league and run the 5th-most man coverage. Cover 2 man is probably his favorite coverage–especially on passing downs–as its shell allows for a wide array of bracket coverages tuned to specific receivers and alignments and is easily hidden within (or hides) other two-high looks such as quarters. That also meshes with his affinity for deploying dime personnel (six defensive backs), which the Chiefs ran the fourth-most in the NFL. 

Everyone who has ever played football had one idiot coach who just wanted to run man coverage and blitz every down despite only having two blitzes in their playbook. Spagnuolo is decidedly not an idiot and the best possible version of that coach. A man who loves to blitz, but also knows when to back off, has enough exotic pressure packages to make the blitz rate worthwhile, and blitzes with intent. 

Like an Instant Pot. The Chiefs finished the season No.1 in adjusted sack rate, 2nd in total sacks, and second in pressure rate (to the Lions), but they were only 20th in pass rush win rate. That’s likely a testament to two things. First off, their pressure rates are greatly aided by their blitz-happy approach, which… yeah, they’d better be or you should stop blitzing so much. Secondly, their down-the-field coverage is so good that quarterbacks are often forced to hold onto the ball longer than they’d like, generating a bunch of coverage sacks. This tracks given their talent at corner and the inherent versatility they have in bracketing top targets from running so much two-high pattern matching. Whatever way you slice it, this is an excellent team at pressuring and taking down quarterbacks so protecting Purdy and giving him a variety of outlets will be key.

Rando Roulette. As noted in the roster breakdown above, the Chiefs play a lot of players on defense. They like to mix and match both personnel and personnel groups to play to their weekly matchup, specific situations, and–of course–coverage and blitz pairings. This also gives them the inherent benefit of keeping more players mentally involved in practice and in games and preventing the defense from wearing down over long drives. I’m sure there are tells of some sort here, but that would require the kind of film study and excel sheet filling that I’m not going to partake in with this free blog. I’m sure if the tells are at all relevant, Shanahan’s staff has cataloged them.

Money on the Money Downs. This Chiefs team ranks near the bottom of the league in takeaways but they still excel at limiting points and getting their offense the ball. They’re 2nd in success rate on both third and fourth down defense (the “original” takeaway, if you will). Their ability to generate negatives via sacks and excel on crunch downs has played a major part in this Chiefs defense allowing the second-fewest points in the league.

POTENTIAL OFFENSIVE KEYS

Sweet Mother of God, Run the Ball. It’s time to talk about that one glaring weakness. Despite being a disciplined, well-coached, and sure-tackling defense, the Chiefs are 27th in DVOA against the run, 25th in EPA/run, 29th at the rate in which they allow runs of 10 or more yards, dead-last in ESPN’s run stop win rate, and dead-last in short yardage run defense. Whether it’s double tight stretch, throwback under center I-form, fly sweeps, tosses, or our standard shotgun run looks, we should run the ball early and often.

It’s important to note that Raheem Mostert’s 2019 NFC Championship Game performance really spoiled us as a fanbase. That Packers’ run defense was so bad and so unsound that the matchup became truly as simple as “run it every play.” While I’d love nothing more than to be able to do that on Sunday, there’s a reason we haven’t had that kind of success in the run game since. That season put defenses on notice. You can’t just line up and “run your stuff” against this offense. Now, at least half of the NFL runs some variation of Shanahan’s offense, which means defenses (and coordinators) across the league spend the majority of their time building strategies to combat our specific run game. Granted, we have the original, the best, and the most creative version of that run game, but it’s still built within the framework of an offense that every defensive coordinator has a strategy to combat. So while the run game will be massive in determining our offensive success, we’ll need to do several things in the run and pass game to keep that run game open all game long. But make no mistake, we need to stay committed to the run, which means we need to be creative and efficient in taking the Chiefs out of the fronts and looks that are selling out against it.

Loaded Lines and Aggro Edges (there’s a cocaine reference in here somewhere). One of the first steps that defenses often take to slowing our zone/stretch game is loading the line of scrimmage with enough players that it becomes mathematically impossible for us to generate many double teams at the point of attack. This not only takes away the double team benefit of our scheme but also attempts to hold up second-level blockers who can carve out cutback lanes while cluttering the line of scrimmage to shrink and muddy up any rushing lanes.

Given that–and how the Chiefs played the Packers and the Dolphins this year–I would expect to see a healthy dose of five- and even six-man fronts on early downs, with a variety of linebackers and defensive backs acting as rolled up edge defenders as well as heavy edge blitzes to simulate those loaded fronts.

This is a 5-2 against gun look with the back away. You can see how they’re playing outside shade everywhere on the strong side–keying the Dolphins’ heavy lean towards trying to hook defenders and break stretch runs outside. Note also that linebacker Willie Gay (#50) is a late addition to the play side, with a checked creep up and blitz due to the motion away of Tyreek Hill.

The result is a run where Gay (top arrow) blows up the point of attack, which forces Mostert to cut up field early and into the hands of the unblocked backside edge defender (bottom arrow), who has crashed hard inside.

Against the Packers, the Chiefs showed more 4-3 looks–likely because they were more afraid of Jordan Love and Green Bay’s intermediate-to-deep passing game. But they still deployed plenty of loaded fronts, they just got into them later and sneakier in hopes that they wouldn’t get exposed in the passing game through pre-snap recognition. 

However the Chiefs plan to deploy their ever-changing fronts, it’s safe to assume they’ll have a bunch of different looks aimed at trying to load the line of scrimmage and play hyper-aggressive on the edges. By selling out hard on the edges they hope to force everything inside and collapse runs from both sides before the back is able to slice through the middle of their defense. While it will be tough to diagnose and properly block all of their looks, it’s worth noting that the Chiefs HAVE to do this to stop the run because they simply aren’t stout up the middle and give up way too much ground when you run right at them. This is all window dressing and sleight of hand to disguise the fact that you can road grade them in the running game as long as you diagnose what they’re doing and have the proper restraint plays to punish them for their overaggressiveness. 

Restraints (The Fun Kind). So how do we keep the Chiefs’ aggressive edges honest and open up the run game? Let us count the ways. 

Fly Sweeps/Touch Passes - In a traditional under center run game, naked bootlegs were the primary way of punishing aggressive backside pursuit. Those are still on the table, but modern offenses have a few other options to accomplish the same goal. When the edges are playing aggressively towards the running back, making them lose contain with fly sweeps early is a good way of keeping them honest and slowing up their backside pursuit.

The Packers ran a touch pass fly sweep on their very first play from scrimmage, catching the Chiefs overpursuing on the backside and setting the tone with this nine-yard gain to Jayden Reed. 

They’d go back to fly sweeps, touch passes, and reverses throughout the day–mostly to great success–and their early and consistent commitment to the concept helped the backfield run for 104 yards on 21 carries (excluding the yardage gained from the sweeps and touch passes themselves). While that may not seem like an overwhelming number, note that Aaron Jones missed this game to injury, so the primary ballcarrier was AJ Dillon, who averaged only 3.4 ypc this season. The Packers were getting a lot of push in the run game all day.

Bubble Screens - For any spread offense people, one of the most obvious ways to do this is with the equivalent of a bubble screen, which both the Dolphins and the Bills ran plenty of in their playoff matchups.

This is a pretty traditional bubble screen set-up, but there are several ways to create this same constraint on the backside pursuit (red arrows). The aggressive alignment of a defender on the line of scrimmage and the linebacker inside that player means they’ve inherently got bad angles, and this horizontal backside stretch—in whatever way you want to call it—can often get you cheap yardage. Most importantly, if the defense has to respect it then you can pop off rushing lanes like this, where the backside pursuit is hesitating because they’ve been burned too often by the bubble screen.

Dump Offs/Swings - There are other ways to attack the weakside flat and widen the space the backside edge and linebackers have to cover. Both the Bills and the Dolphins were committed to just dumping the ball out wide and letting their receivers work in space. Often, that was accomplished with a receiver going across formation in motion.

Somehow Tua turfed this and it fell incomplete, but you can see how the linebacker—already at a disadvantage based on alignment—and hard-crashing edge both take themselves completely out of the play selling out against the run. If Tua had hit more passes like this the Dolphins run game could have had more success. After all, this is Devon Achane—one of the fastest and most elusive runners in the league—with two blockers on two DBs and the closest defender about 30 yards away.

Motion is the easiest way, but you can also just dump the ball to someone like a hot screen, or, you can get creative and send a receiver with a tight split to the other side of the formation after the snap.

It works especially well if the receiver you send over there is as fast as Tyreek Hill, but I don’t think any of us would be mad with that kind of completion going to Kittle or Deebo with this kind of room to run.

Weakside Play Action - Finally, there’s the good old fashioned play action pass. That can include—among other things—weakside leakouts from backs or chipping tight ends and shallow crossers from the opposite side of the field. 

In this case, both circled players actually got open and Jordan Love threw the deeper route, but that short route—or ones like it—sprung free multiple times on film.

If you hit the Chiefs enough times with receivers coming across formation off of play action, they may start tasking their safeties with guarding the crossers, hoping that their added speed and friendlier angle can get the job done. But this takes away the safety’s ability to help out on outside receivers, isolates them in a way that the Chiefs don’t always want, and–given how much they play man coverage–can mess with the defense’s keys and run fits.

Here you can see All-Pro Trent McDuffie has been tasked with following the wing back tight end in man coverage, so as to prevent a cross formation shallow or leak out off play action.

But with the safety in man coverage and now worried about getting outflanked by a receiver going across the formation…

…it can become difficult for him to know whether it’s pass or run until it’s too late.

Split Zone - Split zone/stretch isn’t really a way of punishing the backside edge defender for crashing hard against the run, but it is a way of blocking him when he does it. The Packers used it a bunch throughout the game (including in the clip above) to ensure they had a cutback lane to run through.

This is third-and-two. Here, the Chiefs are showing 4-3, but—possibly due to the motion or possibly just as a pre-determined call—they are creeping up Willie Gay into a 5-2 look, sending him off the edge, then sending a double dog blitz from both nickels.

Without the split zone action this play would have been boned. But instead…

It’s not the biggest hole, nor the prettiest run you’ve ever seen, but it was a four-yard gain on third-and-two against seven-man pressure with two linebackers also in support. Thus, it is beautiful.

All these plays can pick up chunks of yardage and—in some cases—even spring for big gains, but their primary purpose is to make the Chiefs play our run game honestly. Because if they have to do that, they won’t be able to stop it. Running the ball successfully will be the single most important factor towards our offensive success.

Open Hearts, Closed Formations. There are a couple of other ways to prevent the Chiefs from selling out against the run on the edges–one being the use of formations.

The Bills deployed some closed formations and a ton of tight bunches, which–while not technically closed formations–served the same purpose in the run game. 

The Chiefs would love to play someone on the line outside of this bunch formation to operate as backside pursuit, but since there’s no receiver wide of the bunch they can’t reasonably do so. Putting a corner on the line of scrimmage opposite the furthest outside receiver–especially in man–would absolutely hose the Chiefs if this was a pass. The corner would get picked, switch release pass offs would be impossible, and the second receiver would run free on a deep safety or linebacker with all of the outside available to him and leverage over everyone. So they have to play their outside corner off the line of scrimmage.

This creates numbers in the box once again and double teams on the backside of a run away, which leads to the sort of cutback seams that zone and stretch concepts are built off of. 

Runs away from this bunch alignment–or towards a traditional closed edge–worked well throughout this game, but the Chiefs did adjust by having the defensive back over the bunch’s second receiver crash into the No.2 and No.3 on every snap. They basically tasked this DB with eliminating both blockers–like a two-gapping defensive lineman–to crunch down plays and try to get penetration. That may work against Khalil Shakir and the Bills’ wideouts, but I’m not sure how well that adjustment will go against Deebo, Kittle, Juice, Jauan Jennings, and Brandon Aiyuk–the top-graded run-blocking wideout in all of football.

Tic Tac Toe. One of the tenets of the Chiefs’ defense is that they almost always have a check or two prepared for different types of motion. The thinking goes that–if the offense is going to get more information and an advantage from motion–the defense can reclaim that advantage by adjusting from the motion just before the snap. That could mean players rolling up as edges (which we saw above), rotating safeties, receivers being handed off, d-line stunts, blitzes, and everything in between. Defensive checks are great, but if the offense deciphers what checks you’re making in what situations–either during film study or the game itself–the offense can spring people open in a hurry.

Here the Chiefs are in man and have Trent McDuffie running across formation with orbit motion. In order to keep a good angle on his man he has to really book it, so–knowing this–the Bills have called a play specifically to get the motion man loose the other way. 

It will be up to Shanahan, our coaching staff, and our offensive line, to get a grasp on what checks are most likely to happen against what looks and attack them both in the passing game and the running game.

Depth or Disguise? The Chiefs’ cornerbacks are excellent and so is its pass rush. We know that. But I’m not totally convinced that their heavy rotation of players isn’t hiding some potential weaknesses as much as it is catering to players’ strengths. Willie Gay already seems a bit like a “point-and-shoot” type of player. He’s a plus athlete but I think there’s a reason he’s often rolling up on edges, blitzing, and spying quarterbacks and not reading and reacting or dropping into coverage. The other linebackers are well-coached and far from liabilities in coverage, but with all the help they get from the safeties, how well do they hold up on an island. And the safeties? Yes, they’re strong help defenders, but—like with the linebackers—there are questions about their ability when they get isolated in man coverage. Per PFF, Mike Edwards was graded as the 81st safety out of 95 and Justin Reid was 75th. Now a lot of teams have been able to target them in one-on-one coverage, but when they have those offenses have had success. Justin Reid, for example, gave up 7 catches on 9 targets for 83 yards and a tug against the Packers, who hunted him all day with motions, switch releases, and route combos that they knew would isolate one of their wideouts (usually Christian Watson) on him without help.

Shanahan is as good as anyone at finding and targeting players in one-on-one coverage with our horde of weapons. While it will be a bit harder given the Chiefs’ scheme and its aggressive blitzing nature, I’m sure there are more than a few matchups we’ll be looking to exploit that don’t involve testing those outside corners.

Chris Jones Threat Level: High. Now that we’re moving into the passing game section of things it’s worth reiterating how good Chris Jones is and how potent this pass rush can be. Jones will line up everywhere, and will for sure get some reps on the right end opposite Colton McKivitz given his struggles in pass pro. Jones isn’t only dynamic as a pass rusher but he’s as good as anyone at getting into passing lanes and batting down balls. That’s particularly useful when he’s aligned outside and the Chiefs are thinking quick game. I’m a fan of both of the Chiefs’ two defensive ends as well, but Jones (and the blitzes) are what we need to be the most aware of. Everyone knows that the non-Trent Williams section of our line is the big weakness of our offense. Schemes aside, how they stand up to the Chiefs’ front seven—especially in pass pro—could go a long way in determining what our offense can and cannot do.

Blitz Clock Brock. The past two defenses we’ve faced have dropped their linebackers directly back into the seams to prioritize taking away digs and maintain downhill angles toward any completed slants. This has led Purdy to–at times–stay too long on his deep and intermediate routes and be late getting to his checkdowns. We love Purdy’s aggressiveness in the passing game and if the linebackers are preoccupied with CMC or our short routes then by all means look for the digs behind them, but with a team as blitz-heavy as the Chiefs, Purdy will need to make sure his internal clock is dialed from the start. We’ve gotten away with slow starts the past two games. Let’s not go for a hat trick in the early deficit category. 

Shanahan and the rest of the offense can certainly help in this regard, but ultimately it will be up to Brock to get the ball out on time and to not put it in harm’s way. Big plays are great, but efficiency is key.

Brock Vick. Well, not really. But you may have noticed one of the other great ways to freeze aggressive backside edges is to run zone read. I’m not exactly suggesting we do that—at least no zone reads where we expect Purdy to pull them—but our second-year signal-caller is sneaky athletic, and with the Chiefs’ blitz-happy nature and their lean towards man and matchup zone coverages, they are one of the worst teams in the league at defending QB scrambles (yes, I know, with every passing day, the Ravens’ offensive game plan in the AFC Championship Game makes less and less sense).

We’re not going to go all Josh Allen on them, but when Purdy has an opening on the ground he should take it. I’m not saying he should get happy feet all of a sudden, but efficiency and staying on schedule are the name of the game here, regardless of how pretty it may look.

Slime Time? Deebo’s role in this game is going to be fascinating. On one hand, the Chiefs are a man- and press-heavy team with lots of safety help from guys looking to drive on slants and sure tackling all over the field. That does not play to Deebo’s strengths. Aiyuk is our man-beater, then Kittle, then probably CMC before we get to Deebo. On the other hand, L’Jarius Sneed will almost certainly be shadowing Aiyuk, and while the Chiefs were 5th in DVOA in guarding No.1 receivers, they were only 25th in guarding second wideouts. It’s also a game where we’re likely to be rewarded if we can run a lot in many creative ways, where dump-offs to motion guys and fly sweeps could be a big part of the gameplan, and where the opposition loves to blitz—thus vacating the underneath areas where Deebo excels. There’s a very real world where if we take home the Lombardi Trophy, Deebo is taking home a Super Bowl MVP.

Finally, a few notes on special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights, not outside of them; (2) just put that shit in the endzone on kickoffs.

There are countless narratives—about players, teams, coaches, worldwide popstars and their potential flight schedules—that make this a fascinating Super Bowl, but the chess match between the opposing coaches will be as good as it gets. The Chiefs are undoubtedly dangerous, and our playoff defense and slow starts have shaved (and continue to shave) years off of my life. But I’m keeping the faith that our body of work is a better representation of how we’ll play than the last two weeks and that our team—many hardened by the bitter loss four years ago and the many close calls since—will show up and perform their best. If that’s the case, then we’ll be Super Bowl champions. Because no one’s best is better than ours.

Always and forever,

Go Niners 🏈👍

Super Bowl Preview Pt I: Chiefs Offense

It’s February, 2020. 

Life is good. The Niners are good and about to face Kansas City in the Super Bowl. Jimmy Garoppolo has played a full healthy season, and there’s no reason to believe he won’t do that again at some point in his life. But best of all, there’s no way a global pandemic will upend everyone’s lives, tank the global economy, and kill millions across the world. The moral of the story? Bad things happen when the Chiefs win.

Let’s exorcise some demons.

CAST AND CHARACTERS

Patrick Mahomes needs no introduction, as he’s the best quarterback in the league (by quite a large margin) and his face is unavoidable due to the never-ending number of endorsements he’s currently a part of. He hasn’t had his best year statistically, but he’s still the last quarterback you want to face at any given point or time—especially in the Super Bowl. He’s already well on his way to the title of best quarterback ever, and—if he beats us—the majority of media types will be sure to crown him with that designation immediately. Many consider his wife annoying and the federal government is currently considering if his brother is a sex criminal or just your standard run-of-the-mill Tik Toker douchebag, but Patrick Mahomes himself seems like a chill-enough dude. 

His number one target is Travis Kelce (aka Taylor Swift’s boyfriend), who also needs no introduction because someway, somehow, every ad that didn’t go to Mahomes went to Kelce this off-season. They could have picked any other player in the league, but they had to choose another Chief and one who is considerably more annoying. If you don’t know him from those ads or from dating the biggest pop star on planet Earth, maybe you know him from his podcast or the reality show where he dated fifty women at once. That’s right. This is the way the world works. Best to begrudgingly accept it, as it will only grow stronger from your tears. Due to the existence of his reality show, any arguments that Kelce is not a fuck boi must be prefaced with the modifier “anymore,” but arguments that he’s the best tight end of all time are legitimate–especially when blocking isn’t taken into account (which, lets be honest, it rarely is). Kelce is the definition of a “finds a way to get open” guy while Mahomes is the definition of a “finds a way to get the ball there” guy. Together, they form one of the most formidable duos in NFL history. 

Pulling the strings is Andy Reid, a top-five all-time coach, one of the best offensive minds in football history, and unquestionably the most likable part of this team. He too is in a ton of nationwide ads, but at least he’s funny in them while eclipsing Mahomes as a comedic actor. His offenses are built on creativity, diversity, and game-to-game flexibility, making them difficult to strategize against. He’s also the most recently relevant example of how the “you can’t win the big game” narrative only lasts until you win the big game and people finally shut up about it. Mahomes, Kelce, and Reid are all first-ballot Hall of Famers. 

The offensive line has always been a strength of Andy Reid teams. LG Joe Thuney, C Creed Humphrey, and RG Trey Smith make up arguably the best interior offensive line in football. However, Thuney’s health is very much in question after suffering a pectoral injury in the divisional round. He was PFF’s top-rated pass-blocking guard this year, and—if he can’t go—Nick Allegretti will likely take his place. Allegretti is a former starter for them (during their losing Super Bowl run) so he’s not a scrub. The tackles—Donovan Smith and Jawaan Taylor—are not elite, but we’ll get to them later. 

The top non-Kelce options in this offense are first-year receiver Rashee Rice—who is the only actually good wideout on this team—and second-year running back Isiah Pacheco—whose high-knees and hard-nosed running style have made the internet compare him to an angry child. Pacheco is a nice, physical interior runner who can catch the ball out of the backfield, while I think Rice actually gets slept on a bit due to how infamously poor the rest of the Chiefs’ receiver play has been this year. 

The remaining wideouts who play are Marquez Valdes-Scantling, the team’s top deep threat who has stepped up big in hauling in a few impressive long bombs during these playoffs, Mecole Hardman, the team’s second-best deep threat who is most likely to get an end-around, Richie James, a former 49er who gets snaps because he’s a predictable professional, and Justin Watson, a man who plays football. The wideouts who don’t play but may in the Super Bowl include Skyy Moore, last year’s second-round pick who is coming back from injury and has a slam-dunk vodka sponsorship waiting for him if he ever becomes good, and Kadarius Toney, whose impressive athleticism is regularly dwarfed by his crippling, game-ending mistakes and who just made headlines after implying the team was lying about his injury designation (hip/personal reasons) during an IG live stream where he told them “suck my dick” just hours after his first child was born. L.O.L. His entire career has basically been this video from his senior bowl practices. 

Rounding out the skill position players are Clyde Edwards-Helaire, the team’s second running back, and former Niner receiving back Jerick McKinnon, who (surprise) is currently injured but maybe has an outside chance to play in the Super Bowl? He carved out a substantial role in last year’s Super Bowl run due to his receiving ability. It’s also worth mentioning the Chiefs’ second and third tight ends because they have run a lot of 12 and 13 personnel as of late and both get double-digit snaps per game. Noah Gray is their all-purpose Ross Dwelley-like backup. He can line up wherever, his versatility suits the offense, he does everything decent, and he catches the ball well. Blake Bell is their third guy and mostly just plays inline. He’s a good-sized dude and a good athlete, but the dynamic versatility he showed in college (he was both a starting QB and a starting TE at Oklahoma) hasn’t shown up in the pros. 

OFFENSIVE SCHEME

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the fall of the Chiefs’ offense this season, and it’s understandable why. This unit went from leading the league in scoring and yardage a year ago to ranking 15th and 9th in those categories in 2023. Just as importantly (from an outside perspective), they racked up more offensive duds this year than the rest of Mahomes’ career combined. That’s not an exaggeration. Even if we exclude the week 18 game where they pulled many of their starters, this Chiefs team has scored fewer than 20 points eight times this season. In the five seasons prior in which Mahomes was their quarterback, the Chiefs only failed to reach the 20-point mark six times total. 

While it’s impossible to deny the drop-off in offensive firepower, the advanced analytics show a friendlier story as to how sizable that drop-off has been. Per DVOA, they’re the 8th-ranked offense with the 8th-best passing attack and the 17th-best rushing attack. In terms of expected points per play, they’re ranked 11th. The offense has also played better as of late as they’ve found their identity in the back quarter of the season.

All metrics (advanced or otherwise) aside, this is a Chiefs offense that is worse than we’re used to, but there’s no way to enter a game without feeling anxious when you’re facing a HOF coach, quarterback, and tight end coming off of two weeks of preparation, especially with how our defense has performed in these playoffs.

Regular Season Warriors Syndrome. Any Warriors fan can tell you that RSWS—aka the plague that destroyed the NBA regular season—is very much a thing, but whether or not it’s a thing that happens in the NFL (and with this Chiefs team) is another story. 

NBA seasons are long. Teams play 82 games and players sitting out (or getting bored early in the year) are enough of an issue that the league had to install both a mid-season tournament and a 65-game cut-off for awards as a means to incentivize NBA players to actually play. Load management and sitting out games isn’t really a thing in the NFL because it’s not possible. The seasons are too short. Each game is too important. And yes—while the Chiefs were lucky in that the AFC West was so trash in the early going that they were never really threatened with not winning their division—you can’t take plays off in football for the same reason tanking on a player-coach level isn’t feasible. The game is too violent and your body takes too much of a beating to “go through the numbers” without physical consequence.

I do believe that a team like the Chiefs which has had so much success could find a new level of focus in the playoffs (even if no dynastic team in NFL history has operated that way), but the “flicking a switch” argument is likely more a result of the Chiefs figuring out what their offensive identity is while coming upon some fortunate matchups in their playoff bracket.

Yes, the Chiefs put up 400+ yards on a Dolphins defense that was playing well down the stretch and was ranked 10th against the pass, but that team was ranked 19th in defensive DVOA and was down its top three(!) edge rushers, its top coverage safety, and one of the better corners in football, and all five of those guys went down between weeks 17 and 18–meaning their losses were not properly accounted for in either the defense’s raw or advanced stats. Likewise, the Chiefs rushed for 146 yards on the Bills in Buffalo the week after, but the Bills were ranked 12th in defensive DVOA and were down two of their top three corners (with another hobbled), one of their starting safeties, and all of their starting linebackers. While Buffalo lives in nickel and rarely plays more than two linebackers, they quite literally ran out of LBs in this game after Terrell Bernard went down. These matchups were not particularly intimidating and injuries made them even more favorable. 

When the Chiefs went up against the Ravens—the very clear No.1 defense in the NFL—they were lights out in the first quarter, churning for 161 yards and 14 points in two opening drives that totaled a whopping 26 plays. The Mahomes and Kelce mindmeld was back and both were making exceptional off-script plays and catches to grind their way to an early lead. But their remaining nine drives resulted in 158 yards, 3 points, and four three-and-outs. While I believe the idea that this KC offense has improved over the course of the year and is playing its best ball right now, I think that’s more due to them finding an identity versus “flipping a switch.” 

Again, the coaching staff and the core players make KC a dangerous opponent—and one that should always be respected—but this is not the Chiefs offense of old.

The Three (by default) Musketeers. The Chiefs began this season with a heavy rotation of wideouts, likely in hopes that the younger players and imported veterans would develop and come into their own as the season went on. But by the back quarter of the season, they’d been burned so often that the rotation tightened up tremendously, and the direction of Mahomes’ targets shrunk mostly to three trusted confidants: Travis Kelce, Rashee Rice, and Isiah Pacheco.

Since Week 12, that trio has accounted for approximately 50% of the Chiefs’ targets. Through three games of the playoffs, that number has increased to 64%. It’s not a bad strategy. Per PFF, each of those skill players is ranked in the top 8 at their respective positions. But it’s also a clear statement to the lack of faith they have in the rest of their receiving options. 

Mahomes will still throw to the open guy, but he and the Chiefs clearly had enough of the mental errors and miscommunications that plagued them throughout much of the regular season and decided to just take most everyone else out of the offense. The craziest thing about that target stat is that Pacheco isn’t like CMC or Alvin Kamara. He’s not a speedy space player lining up in the slot and running option routes and wheels down the field. He’s an inside runner who is just corralling a ton of swing routes and screens. But that’s a testament to the trust he’s endeared to Mahomes and the coaching staff, to the lack of options at receiver, and to a Chiefs offense that looks considerably different than the ones of years past.

Wide Load. When you want to take as many wideouts off the field as possible, you have to replace them with someone, and the result is a Chiefs offense that runs the third-most multiple-tight end sets in the NFL. While this is in stark contrast to Mahomes offenses of years past, it makes sense for this unit for a couple of reasons:

(1) You get to play fewer receivers; (2) You can sell play action better and more frequently, which means more routes where your receivers have the inherent advantage of a play fake and slightly more time for Mahomes to push the ball further down the field without a pass rush teeing off on him; (3) It lets your tight ends help your tackles in the run and pass game and your ball carriers in the screen game; and (4) it widens out defenses with more gaps so that your power running back and elite interior offensive line are set-up well to plug away with inside runs.

The Chiefs have had about a 3-to-2 ratio of zone-to-gap runs this season, but they are primarily an inside zone team. They prefer to run inside and they do better running right. That probably won’t change with LG Joe Thuney potentially out for the Super Bowl. 166 of Pacheco’s 266 carries (62.4%) were between the tackles. 99 of those (37.2%) were between the A gaps. They rarely run off-tackle but they can absolutely have success getting outside on defenses with pulling linemen and a creative array of sweeps and end-arounds. And while their efficiency as a run game is just okay, they break a decent amount of big runs via gadget-like schemes and Pacheco breaking tackles inside.

In years past, the running game was an afterthought that punctured holes in defenses when they overplayed the pass. That’s not the case this year. The Chiefs want to get Pacheco involved early and often and are committed enough to that goal that they even run a variety of wildcat looks–an idea that would have sounded insane in the past as it takes Mahomes off the field.

Short Kings. If you thought running the ball sounded crazy, wait till you hear about… short passes! 

Deep ball maven Patrick Mahomes sat at 7.0 yards/pass attempt this season, a figure that ranked 19th in the league and was his worst mark ever by a considerable margin. That’s a full yard-and-a-half shy of his mark from last year and ~2 or more yards under his “deep balls every down cause fuck it still they’re playing one-high” era of 2018-2020. In terms of average depth of target (aDOT) Mahomes’ mark of 6.5 yards/attempt ranked 44th out of 49 qualifying quarterbacks. 

This team dinks and dunks. If you don’t believe me, look at Mahomes’ passing chart for the season.

Now, with the lesser target distance has come a sizable uptick in YAC yardage. The Chiefs are second (only to us, of course) in yards after catch, but they get there in a much different way. While we’re all about opening up slants and quick-ins and burning poor linebackers with CMC option routes, the Chiefs run a ton of spacing, sticks, triangle concepts, and boundary hi-lows. Not exactly concepts that would scream YAC yardage. Where the YAC shows up is in their robust and diverse set of screen passes, which they regularly spring for big gains. 

But their bread-and-butter is attacking the short-to-intermediate zones in the middle of the field. When the protection is right (and/or the zones are soft enough) they will chip you to death with sit routes and button hooks. The Chiefs love these concepts because they allow Mahomes to meander in and out of the pocket enough for someone to find a soft spot in the zone and for Mahomes to find a good angle to throw to him. If you play man, they’ll shift more to a series of shallows and crossers from all over the field. The Chiefs are at their best and most efficient when they’re grinding defenses down with these short-to-intermediate completions. 

When they’re throwing outside it is likely with hi-low/triangle quick-outs, a fake screen with a vertical route down the sideline, or the occasional corner when they get a matchup they like with Kelce. But I can’t stress enough how much the Chiefs want to and need to have success in the short-middle of the field to move the ball consistently. Travis Kelce has 86 targets in the middle of the field and 54 everywhere else. He has nine deep targets all season. Rashee Rice only has 4 deep targets this year (none of them completed), 20 targets between 11-19 yards, and 96(!) under ten yards. Those are splits that would make Deebo Samuel blush. 

Any offense with Mahomes can pop the occasional big play–especially when he has the time to run around and extend plays–but underneath efficiency is what makes this iteration of the Chiefs offense go.

You may remember him from lining up offsides and false-starting on every single play. The Chiefs’ receiving corps is a very public weakness, but the play of their tackles is a more hidden shortcoming. 

Jawaan Taylor was their high-priced free-agent acquisition at left tackle–and an $80M replacement for the departed Orlando Brown Jr–but his 24 penalties not only lead the league but are the most in a single season since 2015. It’s also worth noting that he and right tackle Donovan Smith are the 73rd and 61st-rated tackles in the NFL (out of 81 eligible) per PFF and, together, the two have combined for 101 allowed pressures this season, marks that put them at 6th- and 12th-worst in the league. To be fair, Colton McKivitz is 5th-worst in that category with 55 pressures allowed, but Taylor and Smith have basically equated to two Colton McKivitz’s bookending the Chiefs line. And their run-blocking grades are considerably worse than their pass pro ones. This has led the Chiefs to lean more on inside running–where the tackles’ blocks are less important–and short passes to the middle–where outside pressure isn’t as detrimental. 

PFF is not an exact science and their grading gets fuzzier the more complex teamwork is involved (aka along the offensive line), but the tape follows the grades. These tackles are a liability. 

POTENTIAL DEFENSIVE KEYS

Running on Empty. The Chiefs are more committed to running the ball than ever, but despite Pacheco and their elite interior line, they’re more of a quantity-based run game than a quality one. While their 4.3 yards/carry is good for 8th-best in the league, the rest of their raw (and advanced) numbers aren’t nearly as kind. They finished the season 19th in rushing yards, 17th in rushing DVOA, and 27th(!) in EPA/rush. They are a plodding interior running team and our defensive struggles against the run have come primarily against outside runs–where our defensive ends get pinned and/or our pursuit angles and tackling becomes suspect. 

Now, Andy Reid’s greatest strength as an offensive mind is creativity and adaptability, so–after seeing our outside run defense get gashed the past two weeks–I fully expect him to have some designer runs dialed up to get to the edge. Whether that’s pin-and-pulls with their many tight ends cracking down, Pacheco out of the wildcat, or Mecole Hardman on jet sweeps (they spammed this against us two years ago), the Chiefs will try their hand at testing our outside run defense. As noted before, they can break big runs off missed tackles or schemes, but as long as we stop their designers and tackle, their outside rushing success can only go so far when the core of their rushing attack is on the inside. If there were ever a game for our rushing defense to come back to life, this would be it. 

Squishin and Scrunchin. This is a heavy, heavy screen team and–due in part to that–an excellent YAC yardage offense. So pursuit angles, open-field tackling, squeezing down running lanes with a strong force defender and backside flow to ball, and all those other issues that we’ve had as of late will be under the microscope. The Chiefs are as good as anyone at designing their screens to get the ball to a variety of people all over the field with blockers set up in enough different ways to constantly challenge defenders’ recognition skills and pursuit angles on every single snap. 

If the Chiefs can’t test our pursuit angles and open-field tackling through outside rushes, they will be more than happy to rely on their screen game as an extension of their gun game. If their screen game is consistently popping off for 5+ yards, everything else in their offense opens up and we will be in for a world of hurt. But if the run and screen game are limited, things become tougher for this Chiefs team than past units. While typically known for the explosive downfield passing game and ability to convert on any down and distance, this year’s Chiefs are only 21st in the league on third-and-longs.

Pick on Someone Your Own Size. The Chiefs may have found their comfort zone operating out of a healthy dose of 12 and 13 personnel, but that’s mostly come bullying nickel defenses. The idea is that the Chiefs can run better out of these tight end heavy sets but that defenses will still try and run nickel to protect themselves from Mahomes’ passing ability. The Bills–a defense that lives in nickel that was also missing all its linebackers–showed us the most obvious example of what the Chiefs can exploit in their heavy sets, but what will they do against a team that has two excellent linebackers and has no problem putting a solid third on the field in Oren Burks when teams go heavy?

In 12 personnel against nickel, the Chiefs have averaged 6.1 yards/play and +25% DVOA (or 25% better than an average offense). But in 12 personnel against base defenses, they average 4.4 yards/play and -8% DVOA. Once again, our linebacker range and coverage ability will present a unique challenge for these Chiefs. Do they continue with the personnel groupings that got them to this point or will they dare go lighter while losing heft in the run game (and extra pass pro help) and having to trust more of their wideouts?

My guess is that they’ll try to start the game with plenty of 12 and 13 personnel to establish the run and will split their tight ends out wide early as blockers in the passing game to support the screen game and other quick outside hitters, hoping to gain the benefit of their blocking prowess while still stretching out our defense based on alignment and making us tackle in space. If that happens, it makes it all the more important that we snuff out those screens and space plays early. We can’t let them have their cake and eat it too. 

The Mindmeld. We’ve talked about QB-receiver mind melds before when referencing Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams when they were both with the Packers, but what makes this Mahomes-Kelce connection different is that their improvisation is built into the framework of the Chiefs offense. In Green Bay, Rodgers’ ad-libbed pre-snap adjustments were an addendum to the offense, a matchup-hunting diversion that was largely effective but didn’t live in the overall offensive system. In Kansas City, Andy Reid has built an offense where Mahomes and Kelce’s flexibility is allowed post-snap within the structure of the play. So instead of Mahomes checking into something he prefers which then isolates his options and throws off the flow of the offense if he hasn’t guessed the right coverage, the Chiefs simply allow a certain level of flexibility in how their players–and in particular Mahomes and Kelce–get to where they need to be.  

Empowered by this freedom, Kelce has become one of the league’s most creative route runners, and his knack for finding open spaces in zone coverage or getting late separation versus man is unparalleled. When paired with a player like Mahomes–who can put the ball on whatever shoulder he wants from wherever he wants to–the connection has been largely unstoppable for the past half dozen years. With their improvisational ability, any called play can theoretically be open and the longer the play goes on, the more dangerous it gets. 

Once again, this matchup kind of comes back to what personnel groups the Chiefs deploy. DeMo is our nickel and has had a fantastic season, but he has a massive size disadvantage versus Kelce–who lines up more in the slot than anywhere else. If the Chiefs want to force that matchup, they could split Kelce into the slot, but they’d need to do so out of a lighter formation that pushes us into nickel personnel. Otherwise, we’d just as happily sit in base, have DeMo as an outside corner, and throw the kitchen sink at Kelce with some combination of our linebackers and safeties. Perhaps they split Kelce fully out wide (he’s lined up there about a fifth of his snaps) to get him away from the linebackers and to isolate DeMo (or Ambry Thomas if we’re in nickel), but our linebacker corps makes it a little harder to operate the rest of their offense when they do that.

Regardless, Kelce should see plenty of different looks and a lot of bracket coverage. Stopping him is always a top priority to stopping the Chiefs passing game. 

Gimme them nuggies. We talked about the issues the Chiefs have at tackle, but the strength of their offensive line is a hotly debated topic that varies greatly by what metrics you examine and the context of the offense itself.

Depending on who you ask, the Chiefs’ offensive line is either one of the best in the country or a unit that is simply good at hiding its below-average tackles. Analytics can’t seem to agree, which makes sense given how hard it is to grade OL from an outside perspective. The Chiefs are #1 in the country in ESPN’s pass block win rate–which measures how often teams can sustain their blocks for 2.5+ seconds–and are second-best in adjusted sack rate. Yet PFF ranks them as the league’s 18th-best line and they’re 24th in pressure rate allowed.

Here are my two cents. Offensive adjusted sack rate is functionally useless when grading a Patrick Mahomes-led offense due to his elusiveness and his ability to–at worst–throw incompletes that are basically intentional grounding but not technically intentional grounding right before getting sacked. While Andy Reid has long been a great OL coach, the Chiefs always have a great adjusted sack rate. Even in the year when their offensive line got absolutely demolished by Tampa Bay in the Super Bowl, they were a top 5 team in adjusted sack rate. But while their adjusted sack rate is likely inflated, their pressure rate allowed is likely overexaggerated because Mahomes’ penchant for holding the ball long and scrambling invites some amount of pressure–even if those pressures don’t result in sacks. It’s also worth noting that Mahomes is still holding the ball long despite his yards per attempt plummeting. This points in part to receivers not getting open deep, which must be taken into account when evaluating an offensive line.  

With all the statistical discrepancies I decided to just watch more film of them, and my takeaway is that this offensive line is generally overrated. The interior is strong and the line as a whole gets into their pass sets quickly, but after their tackles are beatable. Getting pressure will be vitally important because the most shocking stat of all is that Mahomes is 29th in success rate–with the second-most interceptions in the league–when under pressure this year. Even blitzing–which used to be a complete no-go against Mahomes–has been effective this season, which points to his lack of trust in his wideouts and their inability to get early open. 

Once again, this is a great great great opportunity for our expensive defensive line to prove their worth. Some would argue, there is NO better opportunity considering, you know… it’s the Super Bowl and all. 

Uh… Man Coverage? It’s not so easy to just flip from being one of the most zone-heavy teams in all of football to man coverage overnight. There’s a lot more nuance than “cover yo man!” in man coverage and since we’re typically such a zone-dominant team that means we also will have far fewer checks, mix-ups, and answers for little intricacies like stack formations and specific motions and downs and distances, etc. etc. And fewer looks is the last thing you want to give someone like Mahomes and Andy Reid, who have made a living out of “figuring it out eventually” when given enough reps against a limited number of coverages. That said, the matchups look really nice in man.

We have an All-Pro corner in Charvarius Ward shadowing Rashee Rice, their only consistent wideout. We have two of the best coverage linebackers in the game plus our crew of safeties helping on Travis Kelce–with plenty of bracket coverage I’m sure–and those same guys keying Pacheco for screens and dump-offs. Yes, if we play a ton of man the Chiefs would counter with lots of creative crossers and a bunch of picks (they love downfield picks) to try to free up those crossers for big gains after the catch. Plus, there’s always an increased threat of Mahomes running against man coverage. But man coverage (with the occasional well-timed blitz) and a rotating rat defender or safety who can contact crossers and take away those sit routes while being on the lookout for a Mahomes scramble should certainly be on the table.

The stats seem to back this up. On the season, Kelce is PFF’s top tight end versus zone and 9th vs. man. Rashee Rice is its 9th-best receiver vs. zone and 63rd(!) vs. man. While Mahomes has an EPA/dropback of 0.22 vs. zone and .03 vs. man. Like blitzing, man coverage used to be a massive gamble against the Chiefs—and one that would get punished routinely—but, once again, this is a different Chiefs offense than we’re accustomed to.

You always need a variety of looks against Mahomes and Andy Reid, and we can’t become a man-dominant team overnight, but I would expect more man coverage in the Super Bowl than we’ve shown recently. I’d also expect more deployment of (at least half-field) Cover 2 and other zone coverages that clog the short-middle area of the field. The Raiders–whose defense was highly underrated all year–mixed in man coverage alongside Cover 2 and a heavy dose of DL twists to dismantle the Chiefs on Christmas day on the second-to-last meaningful regular season game the Chiefs played this season. Regardless, I’d expect us to be playing the short stuff a bit more aggressively than the past two outings because if we just sit in soft zones as we did in the first half of the Lions game, they’ll chip us to death with hi-low quick outs and sit routes between our linebackers just as St. Brown and LaPorta did through the first two quarters of the NFC Championship.

The Mahomies in Black and White. The NFL’s preferential refereeing for the Chiefs has become a joke at this point, but–like many jokes–it is rooted in reality. Those who try to say it’s not true like to point to single instances of a bad call going against the Chiefs or a supposedly suspect call being correct, but that’s the sports fan equivalent of saying “I’m not racist, check out my black friend.” The argument isn’t that the Chiefs don’t get calls against them–even bad ones. The argument is that they get WAY more suspect calls in their favor, especially late in games and especially when on offense. And unless you’re also one of those people who think Brady and LeBron don’t get more calls either, I don’t know how you can argue that the “Mahomes effect” isn’t alive and well. If you don’t believe the Chiefs benefit from calls, ask yourself if there is any set of circumstances in the world where the uncalled helmet-to-helmet hit Purdy received while on the ground in the fourth quarter against the Lions (a penalty that if called gives us a new set of downs around the ten-yard line) is missed if it were Mahomes at quarterback instead. I’ll wait as you try and scroll Twitter to defend your incorrect opinion.

Compounding overall ref anxiety is the fact that Bill fucking Vinovich is reffing this Super Bowl. Remember Bill? He’s the guy who thinks this, this, and this aren’t holds.

Not a hold if it’s also a cute prom photo

ref trying not to make eye contact like the dude at Chipotle who rips your burrito

if it’s multiple fouls and would result in a safety, it’s actually no fouls

That’s right. In addition to being the asshole who has got me riled up enough to be taking screenshots of GIFs like it’s the fucking Zapruder film, he’s also the asshole who reffed our last Super Bowl and whose refusal to call a single hold directly led to the Chiefs’ comeback and indirectly led to the NFL’s unofficial shift away from calling holding to generate more offense, larger comebacks, and directly benefit Mahomes and the new wave of scrambling quarterbacks (Lamar, Josh Allen) who were at that time taking over the league. If you think I’m kidding, this conspiracy theory is statistically proven. In 2019, the NFL threw 582 flags for offensive holding, capping a four-year average of 544 holding calls/year. In 2020–the season right after our Super Bowl loss–the NFL threw 365(!) flags for offensive holding, averaging 463 holding calls over the next four years that followed that Super Bowl. This shift away from holding and toward defensive PI encouraged scrambling big-armed quarterbacks and in part led us to trade three first-round picks to draft Trey Lance. I’m sure I could also tie 9/11 and that time you sharted in front of your crush in second grade to this asshole with enough time, push pins, and strings of yarn, but, in summary, fuck Bill Vinovich. 

Hopefully, Vinovich’s presence and the Chiefs logo opposite us won’t mean we’ll be getting absolutely railed again by the officials. Super Bowl referees are an “all-star squad” rather than the team of officials head refs usually operate alongside, which–when you think about it–might be very stupid, but it does mean it’s largely impossible to tell how many flags will be called and of what variety. Regardless, it’s worth noting that Vinovich is the head ref and that the Chiefs start one of the all-time most penalized players at right tackle and were the second-most called team for offensive holding in the entire NFL this year. To the point where when Bosa was asked this week about the Chiefs tackles his response was “They hold a lot.” By any measure, we should be able to draw some holding flags this game. But should and will are very different potential outcomes. The belligerent blog post threat level is officially at midnight.

OVERALL

So much of this game–but in particular the matchup on this side of the ball–is about recency bias, playoff momentum, and determining whether the last two weeks or the 19 before are a better indicator of each team’s true ability. Has the Chiefs’ offense really gotten that much better? Has the Niners’ defense really gotten that much worse? Or are the past two weeks more the product of outliers and a few favorable and unfavorable matchups? History doesn’t really help in clarifying anything. There is plenty of anecdotal evidence supporting either claim.

If you asked me two weeks ago, I would have loved this matchup. Now, I still like it, but not without hesitation. That said, I would like to state my case against a few tropes that are basically dominating the news cycle leading up to this game.

While I certainly believe in gameday momentum (sorry analytics), I’m not sure I believe in playoff momentum. The Super Bowl is a weird beast, with weird schedules, tons of media appearances, and a bye week lead-in for each team. It’s hard to say how much “momentum” really carries into the big game as any team that makes it has to have won–at the very least–their last two games. So are we talking records over the past x weeks? The Chiefs’ is no better than ours. Margin of victory? Excluding the wild card round we didn’t play in, both teams have won two back-to-back single-possession ball games. Or are we simply relying on the ever-present-but-never-remotely-accurate “eyeball test?” 

The two most likely reasons you’ll hear for the Chiefs winning (and it seems like everyone other than Vegas is picking the Chiefs) is some combination of “I’m not betting against Mahomes again” and “The Chiefs will win because they have Patrick Mahomes.” 

Mahomes is 10-3 as an underdog in his career, which makes for an incredibly impressive 76.9% winning percentage. His overall winning percentage? 77%. Not counting Mahomes out as an underdog seems like a better conclusion than him rising to the occasion beyond his normal level of play and being unbeatable after Vegas nerds set a pre-game line. 

As for the better quarterback = Super Bowl winner equation? If you look at the past ten years–so well into the “protect quarterbacks and pump up their stats at any cost” era of the NFL–the “better” quarterback has won exactly half of the time. This is a team sport, despite every effort to make it about only one position.

All-in-all, I know this Chiefs offense has improved in the last month of play, but as to exactly how much, I’m not certain. But I am confident in saying that despite this being the best coach, best quarterback, and best skill player we’ve faced this post-season, it’s also the worst offensive line and the worst offense. That’s not to say they aren’t good or that our defense–which has had a rough go of it these playoffs–will rebound and play to their full potential in the Super Bowl. But the Lions and the Packers were top-five offensive lines and top-five offenses. These Chiefs are not that. Will that help you sleep better at night? Probably not. 

Go Niners 🏈👍

Preview: Detroit

this is the most recent photo of us playing the Lions in the playoffs

Opponent: vs. Detroit Lions
Where: Levi’s Stadium (Santa Clara, CA)
When: Sunday, January 28th , 3:30 PM PT
Weather: Better not be goddamn rain, sheeeeeit

In September of 2021, Dan Campbell opened his first season as head coach of the Detroit Lions against the 49ers. I was in Nashville at the time—sweating alcohol and hungover out of my mind—and I’d wandered into what ended up being a Lions bar. With the Niners up huge in the second half, a man—a regular based on his reception—entered the bar in a custom-made authentic Lions jersey. His jersey number and name? #69, Bukkake. The very next play Jason Verrett blew out his knee to be lost for the season, Shanahan pulled all the starters, and the Lions staged a massive comeback that included fumbles, muffed onside kicks, and nearly the worst blown lead in franchise history. All through this comeback, the Lions faithful gave credit to one thing and one thing only: the jersey and the man who wore it. As the chants of “Bukkake! Bukkake!” rang through the bar and the vacant space where my brain once resided, I contemplated hell and thought it was probably more pleasant (and less hot) than the nightmare I was currently living.

The Niners were able to hold on for an ugly win that day. Now—three years later—we play the fully actualized version of those Detroit Lions. No longer a scrappy underdog but a bonafide contender, they’re competing for their first-ever Super Bowl appearance, while we’re in our third straight NFC championship game and fourth in the past five years.

Health Check

Lions: WR Kalif Raymond seems like a game-time decision, but since he’s yet to practice this week I would say he’s doubtful at best. C Frank Ragnow hasn’t practiced either, but given how banged up he is, I’m going to guess these are more veteran rest days than anything else. I’d be shocked if he doesn’t play. The one player it seems the Lions will definitely be without is starting LG Jonah Jackson, who had a minor knee procedure this week.

Niners: The big question is WR Deebo Samuel, and right now his status is very much in the air. He practiced in limited fashion on Thursday—which is the Niners’ heaviest practice of the week—so he feels like a game-time decision.

OFFENSE

All due credit to Dan Campbell. My undeniable biases led me to believe that Michigan native Robert Saleh should have been hired by the Lions back in 2020, but after Campbell’s amazing intro press conference about biting off kneecaps and hearing his psychopathic coffee order, I quickly came to believe this guy would either be the best or the worst coach ever. As far as instilling a culture and an identity, he’s been much closer to the former, but he’s also had the intelligence to step back, hire well, and let his coordinators handle the X’s and O’s. On offense, that coordinator is Ben Johnson—a mathematics and computer science double major—who has quickly become the league’s most highly sought-after head coaching candidate after building one of the league’s most potent and versatile attacks.

This Lions offense is legit. They’re a top-five unit in the passing game and the running game, are excellent along the line of scrimmage and do as good a job as anyone of shaping their offensive scheme to the strengths of their personnel. That starts up front.

S-Tier Fatties. Dan Campbell’s dictate when he took over in Detroit was installing a culture of physicality and their offense shows that best in their dominance up front. According to both PFF and adjusted line yards, this is the best offensive line in football, and their play in the trenches allows them to run a style of offense that relies on a power running game and longer developing passing plays. 

Frank Ragnow has a legitimate claim to being the best center in football while Penei Sewell is probably the closest thing to a young Trent Williams in the NFL. Both are ranked 1st at their positions by PFF. While they’re the headliners, this line has four of their five starting linemen ranked in the top 10(!) or better at their respective positions, so there are no real weaknesses upfront. That is, until this week.

Starting left guard Jonah Jackson—who was already the team’s “weak” spot—got hurt midway through the Buccaneers game. They replaced him with Kayode Awosiki, who—on 28 pass protection snaps—allowed a team-high seven pressures. That is decidedly NOT elite, and while it’s hard to target a single lineman in a unit that is so strong as a whole, we’re certain to try just that—particularly in the passing game.

The Lions are so O-line friendly that they even play Dan Skipper—a sixth offensive lineman—with decent regularity when they want extra heft in short-yardage and goal-line situations. He was the subject of the declaring eligible snafu at the end of the Cowboys game, so he does go out for the occasional route out of unbalanced sets.

[Trope about a hard hat or something]. On the back of their talented offensive line, the Lions have what is probably the most diverse running game in football. While we have a ton of different ways to get into a relatively small number of actual run game concepts, the Lions could have double-digit rushing concepts that they use to deploy their running back duo of David Montgomery and Jahmyr Gibbs.

Committe RBs are almost always called thunder and lightning, even if they often feature two backs whose skill sets have more overlap than that nickname would imply. But Detroit’s duo lives up to that moniker. Montgomery is their bigger power back and Gibbs is their speedier outside threat and space player. Yes, both guys can run inside or out, but if you want to see how they typically deploy them, look no further than the run charts of Gibbs vs Montgomery in weeks 16 and 17, respectively.

The Lions are an aggressive team—both in play-calling and in 4th down decisions—but the run game is their comfort food. When things are going awry or they start to believe they’re drifting too far from their identity, they’ll lean heavily on the run game to get their offense right and reassert their personality.

Leverage and Long-developers. When Ben Johnson took over as OC, one of the first things he did was sit down with Jared Goff, determine which throws he was the most comfortable making, and shape the playbook around those concepts. This led to an offense that loves crossers, vertical stems, and bending routes inside or out underneath deep coverage—i.e. long-developing routes that attack the second level.

To get their wideouts vertical and horizontal without impediment, the Lions love stacked and bunch formations, switch releases to confuse coverage responsibilities, and pre-snap motion to further stress man responsibilities and to get their smaller-framed wideouts away from press coverage. These motions also lead to a ton of extra blockers in the run game, as tight ends and wideouts will quite often be tasked with kicking out edge players or leading up to the second level off of pre-snap motion.

The result is a bunch of pass concepts that use built-in leverage and long swooping routes to stress coverages horizontally and vertically, which opens up big spaces in the middle of the field and on the second level. Despite the constant vertical stems, this is a team that lives in the intermediate zones. They love shallows, crossers, digs, and options (a Cooper Kupp holdover). They can throw the quick game but prefer to get bigger chunks out of their pass attempts. But not TOO big. They throw deep balls at a lower rate than any other team in the NFL. 

The Goffaissance. Turns out a guy plays a lot better when the fans are supporting him and chanting his name instead of blaming him for every single loss while giving his head coach all the credit for his successes. Who knew?

Once considered a salary dump who the Rams basically paid the Lions in draft picks to include in the Matt Stafford trade like some sort of Brock Osweiler-level cap burden, Goff has thrived in the system that Ben Johnson built around him and the culture that Dan Campbell fostered in this locker room. 

Goff has always been one of the better pure throwers in football. When in rhythm, he throws as nice a ball as anyone. It’s when shit gets hectic—when defenders get into his body or he has to move off his spot—when the valleys would come. In Los Angeles, those valleys were low enough and regular enough that they shipped him out of town. In Detroit, they’ve raised his floor tremendously by helping him reach a new level of comfort and confidence—thus heightening his ceiling.

Inside Out. It’s at least worth noting the difference in the Lions’ offensive output when they play outside vs. inside because the drop-off is—as much as anything can be with such a small sample size—statistically notable. Over the past two years—including their two post-season games this season—here are the Lions’ inside and outside scoring and yardage splits, including where those figures would rank nationwide:

There’s some obvious statistical noise in these figures due to scheduling variance, because the Lions were bad for the first half of 2022, and since they play their home games in a dome and usually teams score more points at home. Plus, the average NFL game played inside scores four more points than one played outside so you can basically spot all teams ~2 points when they’re inside. But even if we give the Lions an additional two-point bonus when indoors, they’re still putting up about a touchdown less when playing in the elements. 

To be clear, their yardage numbers when playing outside this year are still quite potent, and I’m not saying this is an offense we should expect to whither in the oppressive 70-degree weather of Santa Clara, but the scoring figures had enough of a difference that it was worth mentioning. In both 2022 and 2023, four of the Lions’ six lowest-scoring games were played outside. 

POTENTIAL DEFENSIVE KEYS

Yes, we looked far from elite against the Packers, but I flip back and forth between how much that game was indicative of our defense’s ability versus a specifically bad outing. The run defense is certainly a concern—and one that was lingering all season—and there was always a baseline level of anxiety about Ambry Thomas’ deep ball ability and a pass rush that sometimes struggles to convert pressures into sacks. Those are all things that stick out due to the overall strength of our defense, but also problems that we’ve seen enough that we can call them repeatable issues. 

But at the same time, pass interference calls and defensive players slipping led to at least four of the Packers’ seven successful third down conversions and one of their three offensive touchdowns. Our defense gave up a ton of yards but also stiffened up and allowed just six points in three tries inside our own 15-yard line, picked off Jordan Love twice as many times as he’d been intercepted in the eleven games before, and held the Packers scoreless on their last four offensive possessions.

Are there concerns? Absolutely. There have to be after any performance that was as dicey as last weekend’s. But there are also reasons for optimism. And a date with one of the best offenses (and running games) in the NFL will be a tremendous proving ground for a unit that hasn’t been questioned much over the past few years.

Once More, With Feeling. Stopping the run was a priority last week, and our inability to do so was one of the many reasons why that game was as close as it was. This weekend, stopping the run is even more important. While the Packers were adamant they stay balanced to establish the run and open up the passing game, the Lions are fine with just pounding the rock if we can’t slow it down. This is a team that’s rushed for 200+ yards three times this season and has only been held under 100 four times all year. You’d better believe that after our performance last weekend Dan Campbell is gonna have his guys fired up to play bully on the ground while Ben Johnson is finding all sorts of ways to gash us inside with Montgomery and pin in our defensive ends with wideouts and tight ends to get the edge with Gibbs.

Teams run the ball best against us when their scheme is made to attack our aggressive upfield nature, and the Lions are probably the single best team at attacking defenses in different ways on the ground. Given that, I’d be wary of the many types of traps the Lions employ. And after the success the Packers had crack blocking our defensive ends and how our non-Bosa edges have struggled to set in the run game all year, I would expect to see plenty crack tosses and pin-and-pulls until we prove we can stop it. All that seems to point to this being more of a Gibbs game than a Montgomery game, which means setting the edge, taking better pursuit angles, and tackling in space will be at a premium.

While our 51-game streak of holding an opposing rusher under 100 yards was snapped last week, on a per-play basis, we haven’t done a great job of stopping the run all year. That needs to be more of a focus on Sunday, both to get them out of the run but also to force them into more quick game concepts—an area where they’re certainly capable but less comfortable throwing the ball.

Muddy the Middle. Stacks and bunches are a great way to create issues in man coverage and—when deployed tight enough to the formation—advantageous angles for crack blocks in the run game. However, receivers who are close to one another tighten up spaces pre-snap and allow the defense to play a wider variety of coverages as a result. In short, a defensive back or linebacker can better hide their coverage intentions when they aren’t forced out of the box by wide and spread-out receiver alignments. Given the Lions’ use of these formations and the strengths and weaknesses of Goff and this passing game, hiding and deploying edge blitzes, rotating safeties unexpectedly, and—in general—changing the picture pre- and post-snap will be key.

When kept clean, given time to see the field clearly, and able to operate on script, Goff is as good as any quarterback in the league. But while he’s made strides in the department, he’s never been an elite quick-trigger processor, and if you can speed up his process while muddying the picture pre-snap, his efficiency drops off. The Lions want to throw long-developing intermediate passes because they’re the hardest to guard when they can protect it. The first step to slowing down their passing attack is knowing that and forcing them to do anything but. That means deep linebacker drops, a variety of looks and techniques to wall crossers, and late safety rotations to try and passes attacking the middle of the field.

The Lions throw to the middle of the field more than any other team in football, and they’re damn good at it. However, our middle-of-the-field pass defense is the best in the NFL by a very large margin. That’s what happens when you have the best coverage linebacker duo in the history of football. Something’s gotta give.

Ambry Anxiety. Ambry Thomas probably had his worst game of the year last weekend, but—as a whole—he’s been playing the best ball of his career this season. I’m fascinated to see whether Ben Johnson sticks to what got the Lions here (and what Goff is best at) and goes strength-on-strength targeting the middle of the field against our linebackers or whether he tries to attack us outside. Given one of our cornerbacks is a second-team All-Pro who leads the league in pass deflections and the other is coming off a bad coverage and tackling game last week, you can bet who they’ll be attacking if throwing deep outside the hashes becomes a big part of their gameplan. If that’s the case, Thomas has gotta trust his technique, stay in phase, and not panic when the ball is in the air.

Amon-Ra is a genuine alpha and not a guy who is easily shadowed because he motions a lot and plays many snaps out of the slot. If attacking outside is a big part of their gameplan, I’m sure they will try and do so in ways that force Thomas to guard Amon-Ra. Sam LaPorta is a great underneath safety blanket but will be the problem of the linebackers and safeties. Their supporting receivers are more specialty guys. Some have speed, some have size. All are dangerous when deployed in this system but none are a genuine matchup problem against Ambry as long as he plays clean and controlled.

Earn The Big Bucks. In both draft capital and money spent, we have the most expensive defensive line in football. This is the exact type of matchup where they need to earn that money. We don’t need to have a dominant performance (although it would be a lot cooler if we did), but we need our defensive line to at least fight to a standstill. Given how much this Lions offense relies on their offensive line, that would go a long way to slowing down this attack.

Once again, if there’s a weakness along this offensive line it would be at guard, where injury replacement Kayode Awosika has had major problems in pass protection and Graham Glasgow—while a dominant run blocker—is not as strong in the passing game. Both players have an elite center and a good-to-elite tackle helping them on either side, but everyone can’t have double team help forever, and we have to win those matchups when their guards are unprotected. 

While Goff is a much more mature, confident, and better player than he was in Los Angeles, he isn’t without warts. He’s improved when under pressure, but getting defenders into his body and moving him off his spot is still the best way to cause his efficiency to plummet. Among players with at least 100 dropbacks, PFF has Goff graded as the 11th-best quarterback in football this season. When pressured, his ranking drops to 24th, sandwiched between Mason Rudolph and Joshua Dobbs. Coming out of their bye week, the Lions had a five-game stretch where Goff’s QBR under pressure was 0.6(!) out of 100. That was, unsurprisingly, the worst mark in the league. He’s rebounded since then—and I do think he’s better versus pressure than he’s ever been in his career—but if you are looking for random stats to show Goff’s drop-off under pressure, well… they’re not too hard to find.

Jared Goff's splits from a clean pocket this year:

* 75.9% completion (4th)
* 8.3 YPA (9th)
* 2nd EPA/play
* 25 TD (4th)

Under pressure:

* 50.7% cmp (14th)
* 6.3 YPA (13th)
* 18th EPA/play
* 6 TD (14th)

No indoor and outdoor splits, or whether he's on the road or at home.…

— John Daigle (@notJDaigle) January 22, 2024

Making Goff move off his spot and messing up his timing is the best way to force Goff into turnovers, and when those turnovers come, they can come in bunches. Goff has four multiple-turnover games this season.

DEFENSE

The second of the Lions’ impressive coordinators is Aaron Glenn, who was just voted by players as the NFL’s top defensive coordinator by a weird NFLPA poll that only let players who were playing for a specific coordinator vote for them. Basically, this just means Glenn’s approval rating on his team is through the roof. That’s not nothing, but it also doesn’t equate to him being the “best” defensive coordinator. Meaningless polls aside, Glenn has done a good job instilling a grittiness and aggressiveness in a unit that has some holes in terms of personnel, which is why he’s getting so many head coaching looks this off-season despite the Lions having more of a middle-of-the-pack defense.

Once Again, The Run Game. Just as on offense, the Lions prioritize stopping the run game over everything else, and they’ve done an excellent job of doing just that throughout the season. This unit is well-coached, excellent in their run fits, and they fill aggressively all over the field. But what puts this unit over the top is that they rarely allow big plays. You may be able to move them and grind out tough yardage, but they’ve only allowed 11 runs of 15+ yards all season. All this adds up to DVOA’s #1-ranked rushing defense.

Solving Problems With Aggression. The Lions have basically dominated every imaginable pass rush stat this season, leading the league in pressure % and hurry % and finishing second in knockdown %. The one stat they haven’t done well at is—oddly enough—sacks, where their mark of 41 is the 10th-worst in the league. 

The best player along their defensive line is Aidan Hutchinson, aka Maxx Crosby 2.0. He’s a relentless motor, insane endurance type who never comes off the field, and he’s registered at least a sack and three QB hits in each of his past four games. His 11.5 sacks are more than double that of the second-best on their team, but the guy who holds that mark (Alim McNeil) has had an excellent all-around season in his own right at defensive tackle. Everyone along their DL is solid or better against the run, but the rest of their dudes—save for maybe reserve DE Romeo Okwara—are better run-stoppers than pass rushers.

So how do the Lions get so many pressures with only two defensive linemen who are plus pass rushers? Blitzing. While the Lions aren’t at Brian Flores/Wink Martindale levels when it comes to sending extra bodies, they blitz on 35.4% of downs, which is the 4th-highest mark in the league.

All of their safeties and slot corners are excellent blitzers, but safety Ifeatu Melifonwu is their best overall player in the secondary, and he—alongside rookie nickel Brian Branch—gives Glenn a pair of movable pieces on the back end. Melifonwu basically plays everything from deep safety to slot corner to a rolled-up linebacker and edge blitzer while Branch is their full-time nickel and their best coverage man down the field.

The aggressiveness aligns with Campbell’s very public persona, and my hunch is that the Lions’ blitz-lean is in part because they’d rather be charging forward and ensuring that they stop the run rather than risk hesitation and reactive play defensively. But I also think that aggression and blitz rate are in part because they know their secondary can’t hold up long in coverage.

Dat Forward Pass Doe. After watching some of their film, I came away feeling their pass defense was better than their numbers. I think that’s because their aggressiveness makes them a high-variance pass defense. They’re either forcing incompletions and mistakes with their pressure or they’re kind of getting diced. That said, the numbers aren’t great. The Lions have the 5th-worst play-action defense in the league, are second-worst in yards gained per pass attempt, and third-worst in expected points added per pass attempt. Per DVOA, their pass defense is ranked right in the middle at 16th, but that’s mostly because of the negative plays their pass rush can generate.

To be fair, they’ve gotten a key reinforcement back from injury in safety C.J. Gardner-Johnson, a big play guy and an absolutely notorious shit talker and secondary pest who went out of his way to pick a fight with Deebo on IG Live while he was healing up on the IR earlier this year. Deebo may not play this game but few people in the world play better when they’re pissed than our lovable open-field bowling ball of death. Nevertheless, Gardner-Johnson is a boost to their secondary. It’s just worth wondering how much that offsets their absolute lack of talent at outside cornerback. 

Starting outside corners Cameron Sutton and Kindle Vildor have been liabilities all season. Over the past four games alone (vs. Dallas, Minnesota, LA Rams, and Bucs) Sutton is credited by PFF as allowing 26 grabs on 32 targets (81.3%) for 467 yards (17.9 ypc) and three touchdowns while Vildor has allowed 13 catches on 21 targets (61.9%) for 342 yards (26.3 ypc) and three touchdowns. Per PFF, they are the 100th and 105th ranked cornerbacks out of 129 qualifiers. And Vildor replaced the now-injured Jerry Jacobs in the starting lineup after he was pulled due to play. For reference, over the 14 games he’s played this season, our much-critiqued corner Ambry Thomas has allowed 44 grabs on 61 targets (72.1%) for 421 yards (9.6 ypc) and three scores. That’s right, Ambry has allowed fewer yards and just as many touchdowns all season as the Lions’ top cornerback has allowed in just the past four games.

Despite their problems outside, the Lions run the 10th-most man coverage in the league, which makes me think that if Glenn had better outside corners (like if Emmanuel Moseley wasn’t hurt) their rate of man coverage would be in the top 5. Regardless, there are matchups to be had outside.

Play-action passes have also been an issue for the Lions—in large part because their linebackers are so aggressive fitting the run. Alex Anzalone has long been an underappreciated player, and he’s their best linebacker vs the pass, but I’m not sure the Lions are particularly confident in any of their other LBs in coverage. First-rounder Jack Campbell has slotted in nicely as a solid tackler and run stuffer, but he’s a part-time player—their third linebacker—and is one of the single worst coverage linebackers in the entire league.

It’s not as easy as looking at PFF numbers in a vacuum and deciphering exactly where you want to target a defense, but—in the Lions’ case—it kind of is. 

POTENTIAL OFFENSIVE KEYS

Misdirection and Play Action. Given the Lions’ offensive ability and the clear strengths and weaknesses of their defense, we are going to need to throw the ball well in this game. That doesn’t mean abandoning the run (I can’t imagine when I could ever pitch doing that given our offense and personnel), but success on the ground may look more like four- and five-yard gains rather than the big gains we’ve come to expect. We’re much more likely to find chunk plays through the air, particularly off of play action.

This is a Lions defense that is aggressive and well-coached and is always flying downhill, but I think they’re at their best when their keys are clear and they can simply sprint and effort their way to the ball. They’ve held strong against teams like the Cowboys—who have less motion and more static looks—but have allowed 400+ yards in three straight games against teams who employ some amount of the misdirection and complex looks that have become a staple of our offense. 

There are personnel wins to be had in this game, but if we can pepper the defense with misdirection and confusion early then we have a better chance of slowing down their front seven, which would in turn let us matchup hunt in the passing game. Against a defense as aggressive as the Lions, slowing up their read-and-react is incredibly important.

Prepare to Pivot. The worst possible scenario is that we game plan with the assumption Deebo can play and we learn in pregame or early in the first quarter that he can’t. While the splits of our offense with and without Deebo are a testament to his ability, we struggle the most when he’s knocked out of a game early. For all the benefits of Shanahan’s scheme and his horde of Swiss-army knife players, relying so heavily on guys like CMC and Deebo—who are equally important to the rushing and passing game—means when one of them goes down… we lose a big chunk of both our rushing and passing game. 

Since Deebo seems like a true game-time decision we need to enter with a gameplan that both utilizes his abilities if he can play and doesn’t hamstring us if he doesn’t. That’s certainly easier said than done, but I’d expect packages with both Elijah Mitchell and CMC to be on the play sheet in case Deebo can’t go, more creative uses for Kittle as a motion guy, and potentially an influx of the two-way versatility of Ray-Ray McCloud on sweep looks and space plays (if Shanahan has forgiven him for messing up that deep route against the Packers). Perhaps we’ll even see a run game that’s a bit of a Shanahan throwback, with deeper under center play actions sprinkled in to really open those spaces behind the linebackers. Whatever the solution may be, Shanahan has to be prepared for a world where Deebo plays and another where he doesn’t. While that may mean our game plan isn’t as meticulously detailed as usual, we can’t risk having as many issues as we did last weekend when he went down.

Always Open. If Deebo doesn’t play it will be harder to force-feed Aiyuk in the passing game, but my god is this a juicy matchup outside. The Lions guard tight ends well—having a strong nickel corner and a good crop of safeties will often do that—but are highly susceptible to outside wideouts and running backs.

If Deebo is out I would assume the Lions shift coverage and safety help toward Aiyuk whenever they can, but there are still ways to get him into solo coverage based on formations and motions and run action away. Due in no small part to the weather and Purdy’s play because of it, Aiyuk had a much quieter game last weekend than he should have. Unless the Lions shift over so much coverage to Aiyuk that everyone else becomes wide open, we can’t have that happen again. 

Efficiency > Flashy. The Lions’ blitz-heavy nature has helped them pressure QBs better than anyone else in the league, but—despite the assumption of Purdy haters—the Niners are actually the best blitz-beating offense in the league. Unless you can send extras AND confuse Purdy with underneath coverages, our slants and quick-ins are built to punish extra rushers with YAC yards.

I expect we’ll have some screens and CMC swing pass equivalents ready when they blitz, but—extra rushers or not—our offensive line needs to do a better job in pass pro this week than last. This Lions’ defense lives off of limiting yardage on the ground and creating negatives via their pass rush so that they have a better chance of getting off the field or taking away the ball on long downs and distances. We can have success against a scheme like that when we stay efficient in the passing game, but if the Lions can get home with four and don’t NEED to send extras, we start making things more difficult than they need to be. 

As for Purdy? Last week the Packers were dropping deep into the dig areas in an attempt to stop our second-level throws, but in doing so they left the checkdowns wide open. If the Lions do something similar and vacate their linebackers against dropback passing, then Purdy needs to just be smart and take the underneath throw. Staying on schedule and avoiding negatives is how you put up points on this defense, and a checkdown to CMC or Kittle with room to run can easily lead to sizeable gains.

Starting a Change.org Campaign to Reinstate the Drought. How a four-year starter playing out of Ames, Iowa could have so many problems with a wet ball is beyond me, but it’s impossible to argue how a soaked football affects Purdy’s throwing ability. Last week, against Cleveland earlier this year, and in the first half against the Seahawks last post-season were the rainiest games Purdy has played in, and it’s not a coincidence that he was at his most inaccurate in those two-and-a-half contests. As of this writing, there was a 25% chance for rain on Saturday but a 0% chance of rain on Sunday. If there’s a god, the sun will be shining bright.

SPECIAL TEAMS + OTHER SHIT

1-31. If you thought the stat that “Kyle Shanahan is 0-30 in games when his team is down 5+ points entering the fourth quarter” screamed sampling bias, well then… you were right. 

If we exclude games not started or finished (due to injury) by Jimmy G or Brock (aka games piloted by an NFL backup) and take out games where we’re down 14+ entering the fourth because no one wins those games (I’m not scrubbing the data to make this point into a neat statistic but the Cowboys were 195-0 as a franchise with a 14-point lead entering the fourth quarter until last year), the stat is much more reasonable and representative of what it implies.

So… in games where we have an actual starting quarterback and are down 5-13 points entering the fourth quarter, our Shanahan-era record is:

Brock Purdy: 1-2
Jimmy G: 0-3

To Jimmy’s credit, one of those losses includes an 11-point comeback against Seattle where our backup kicker missed a would-be game-winner in overtime back in 2019.

Just like teams who live and die by the three-ball in the NBA, teams built off explosive dropback passing are more likely to come back when down in the fourth quarter. But those teams are—on average—also more likely to be in those positions to begin with because of a lack of defense or complementary football. It’s fun to see a gunslinger take a team back from down big in the fourth quarter, but it’s even more fun to just not be down big in the fourth quarter.

Your everyday key to special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights instead of outside of them; (2) just put that shit in the endzone on kickoffs.

TLDR

Coaching is about more than X’s and O’s. Dan Campbell understood that and focused his energy on instilling a culture and an identity in a franchise that had been sorely lacking both for decades. But coaching is also about X’s and O’s, so while Campbell built the team’s identity, he brought in top-tier coordinators to run the show on offense and defense. The only stipulation? They had to be physical and—whether on offense or defense—they had to win in the run game.

If we can slow down the Lions’ run game on Sunday, we win this game. While their passing attack is built to accent the strengths of their personnel and their quarterback, those strengths just so happen to butt up against where our defense is at its best: defending the middle of the field. Those passes get Goff in a rhythm, unlock Sam LaPorta as an underneath safety blanket, and get the supporting receivers involved with easy completions. I just don’t think they can find the success they want through the air against our linebackers if they don’t kill it on the ground, and if that’s the case, they’ll be hard-pressed to keep up with our offense in what I expect to be a strong rebound from a subpar performance last weekend.

This Lions team is dangerous and hungry. The last time they were in this position was 1991, and—as one of four teams (the other three expansion squads) who have never had a Super Bowl appearance—they’re one win away from truly unprecedented territory. They may have left the rowdy confines of Ford Field, but they’ll be plenty prepared and motivated come Sunday. However, I don’t believe that both our offense and our defense will struggle in back-to-back games. We’ve seemed like the class of the NFC all season long, and—rather than jump to conclusions based on recency bias—I expect us to look the part on Sunday.

Go Niners 🏈👍

Preview: Green Bay

Opponent: Green Bay Packers
Where: Levi’s Stadium (Santa Clara, CA)
When: Saturday, 1/20 @ 5:15 PT
Weather: 60’s with a chance of showers + wind

In the 90’s action thriller/gay rom-com Point Break, police chief Ben Harp (Dr. Cox from Scrubs) refers to the fresh-faced and cocky Keanu Reeves as “young, dumb, and full of cum.” Like many action heroes of this time, Reeves’ character was brash, bold, and too young and stupid to know the seriousness and repercussions of his actions. This impulsive youthfulness came with some growing pains (like Gary Busey’s death, whoops), but ultimately led to the (sort of) apprehension of the bad guys. You can probably guess the analogy here.

The fifth-youngest playoff team since the merger—and the youngest since 1974—these Packers are having fun, keeping loose, and staying dangerous. They just pasted the Cowboys in Dallas—giving the Boys their first home loss since September of 2022—and are peaking on both sides of the ball at the right time. They’re so young and so unheralded that—unlike Packers teams of old—there are no expectations that they must worry to live up to. They’re just here to surf, rob banks, and develop a half-baked romantic relationship with Lori Petty that no one remembers or cares about. 

Perhaps, the young underdogs will come through in the clutch. Or perhaps they’ll be left lying on the ground, screaming and firing their gun in the air because they’re just not quite ready to seal the deal.

Health Check

Packers: As of Tuesday afternoon, the Packers’ injury report has plenty of limited and DNP designations, but since they don’t actually practice until Wednesday it’s a pretty fuzzy picture. WR Christian Watson—who played limited snaps in the wild-card round while coming back from a hamstring injury—should be expected to play, but he may still be on a snap count. DE/OLB Preston Smith and G Elgton Jenkins were both listed as DNP, but should be considered likely to play given they played all of last weekend’s game. RB AJ Dillon missed the last two weeks and is a genuine question mark for this weekend. The biggest concern is CB Jaire Alexander, who toughed through an ankle injury against the Cowboys but left the game after re-aggravating it in the second half. He was listed as a limited participant, so at this point in the week that probably means he’s playing.

Niners: The bye week has been kind to us. Except for Trent Williams (who was given a rest day), the only DNPs we registered on Tuesday were Clelin Ferrell, Logan Ryan, and Dre Greenlaw, and the last two at least should practice on Wednesday and be considered heavily likely to play on Saturday. George Odum was limited, which could give our safeties a much-needed boost of depth, and Arik Armstead—who has been sidelined with a lisfranc injury since week 13—returned to practice last week. He’s still a limited participant, but he also seems highly likely to suit up this weekend.

PACKERS OFFENSE

Matt LaFleur has impressed me this year.

Despite starting his head coaching career with a 47-19 regular season record, it was always hard to tell how much of that early success was due to the culture and offense LaFleur installed versus the schemes that Aaron Rodgers and Davante Adams were already comfortable with. The 2-3 playoff record—with each of those losses disappointing and underwhelming in their own special way—didn’t help matters.

But now that they’re free from the spectre of Aaron Rodgers, LaFleur has been able to install and pilot the offense that he likely wanted to run from the jump. The result has been a unit that may not put up as many massive individual stat lines as the MVP Rodgers years but is much more cohesive and tailor-made to opposing defenses. 

Healthier than they’ve been all season, this is a top-10 unit with a deep roster of versatile weapons, an emerging young star at quarterback, and a playcaller who knows how to play to his roster’s strengths and attack defensive weaknesses. 

Same same but different. The Redskins’ and Falcons’ QB coach under Shanahan before hopping over to be the Rams’ OC for a year, Matt LaFleur’s offense has the same bones as the one we operate—with a heavy emphasis on motion, play action, and keeping defenses guessing by making the running and passing game concepts look as similar as possible. They’re all about minimizing tells so that teams can’t key on what they’re doing, which makes it easier to call games sequentially.

Before this year, the offense was a mish-mash of LaFleur’s concepts and the more static, matchup-hunting that Rodgers had become accustomed to with Davante Adams. While the bevy of back shoulder fades and quick hitters that arose from the Rodgers/Adams mind-meld often felt unstoppable, we kind of showed in our last playoff matchup against them how their rules could be reverse-engineered to force them into disadvantageous looks. This year, the offense relies significantly less on those kinds of audibles and hot routes and more on LaFleur’s thoughtful and well-designed week-to-week game plans.

LaFleur has been vocal this year about needing to stay committed to the run, and—with Aaron Jones back healthy—he’s done that better than ever as of late. As crazy as it seems, the Dallas game marked the first time in Aaron Jones’ career that he’s had 110+ rushing yards in four straight games. Staying ahead of the sticks and up on the scoreboard was clearly a massive part of the Packers’ game plan against Dallas, as 10 of the Packers’ first 12 plays were runs or utilized run action. I would expect more of the same against us.

The run game is their best way to rack up consistent short-yardage gains, and when that’s operating smoothly it opens up time and space for Jordan Love and their passing attack to target the second-level throws that this offense feasts on.

Love at second sight. Jordan Love blasted out of the gates in his first season as a starter before cooling off tremendously in the middle of the season, but over his last nine games—seven of them Packers victories—he’s played as well as any quarterback in the league. During that time, he’s completed 70.7% of his passes for 269 yards/game while throwing for 21 touchdowns and only one pick. Those numbers aren’t a mirage.

Despite dealing with numerous injuries to skill players during this closing stretch, Love has grown tremendously throughout the season, as best evidenced by his rematch performances against the Lions and Vikings—two division foes he struggled mightily against earlier in the season. Give credit to LaFleur for adjusting game plans to put Love in advantageous situations, but the Packers seem to have found (yet another) top-tier quarterback. Turns out drafting a dude for his physical tools and letting him set behind an established veteran can still—despite media outcry—be quite an effective method of developing a young quarterback.

You’ve probably seen Love’s “fadeaway” passes on highlights or social media. Given the fact that those passes are basically all to dudes who are wide-ass open and/or are massively underthrown, I wouldn’t get too caught up in all that. People throw from different angles. That’s nothing new. But if anything, those passes off his back foot are a reminder of Love’s athleticism, the size he has that allows him to toss those balls over rushing linemen, and—most importantly—his current comfort level in this offense. This team probably throws more late-opening crossers and deep outs than any in the league, and that’s a testament to Love’s ability to buy time in the pocket and make those throws under duress—whether that’s off his back foot or not.

Guys or Dudes. The Packers likely have the most diverse crop of young receivers in the country, even if none of them has cemented himself as a true alpha. Christian Watson is the dude who most looks the part—and someone who has had the most splash games over the past two years—but he’s been hurt a bunch this year. Jayden Reed is their Deebo light—a fly sweep and gadget guy who they scheme up different ways to get the ball in space. While Romeo Doubs—who just torched the Cowboys for six grabs for 151 yards—is perhaps their most consistent and well-rounded of the bunch (and their leader in receiving touchdowns). At tight end, they employ two promising rookies in Luke Musgrave and Tucker Kraft. This is a team that likes extra tight end sets, so both get plenty of run. Amazingly enough, all of these options are first- or second-year players.

Even if their only true alpha is running back Aaron Jones, the interchangeability of their wideouts and the creativity of LaFleur’s offense allows this offense to get the best of their young receivers while letting them continue to develop into the players they’ll eventually become. While it sounds counterintuitive in a time when we prioritize star talent more than anything in sports, it’s the depth of the receiving corps that is its best asset. Every good team has some weapons, and every good defense tries to take those weapons away. Few teams have a fourth- or fifth-option as good as the Packers, which is why—in any given game—any one of those options could be a featured player. 

Potential Defensive Keys

Stop the Run. Hopefully, Armstead is back for this one because stopping the run (and the pass looks off of the run) is the single most important factor in slowing down this Packers offense. It’s also where we’ve shown some weakness this season. While our raw rushing defense stats are strong, part of that is due to how quickly we’ve jumped on teams on the scoreboard. When it comes to YPC and EPA/rush, our numbers are much less pristine. Now, does that change immediately with one of the single-best run-stoppers in football back in the fold? Yes. To some extent. But we’ll need to be ready to stop the run early and often in this game.

As great as Jordan Love has looked as of late, this offense is built around balance and chunk plays off of play action. Against the Cowboys, they knew that if they could run the ball and run pass actions off of the threat of that run, they could stymy Dallas’ pass rushers. With only a single pressure on 21 passing attempts, their plan worked out better than they ever could have imagined. Given the talent and aggressive reputation of our defensive line, they’ll likely want to employ a similar game plan against us, with the run game, play action, and screens featuring heavily into their attack.

Love was 7-of-9 for 165 yards and a score off of play action against Dallas. The Packers want to get their young wideouts threatening deep then breaking into those second-level windows that open up when the run game is humming. If they can’t get those consistent short-to-medium gains on the ground then they’re not creating those passing windows behind the linebackers and they’ll have to get those short gains through drop-back passing. While Love is certainly capable in that regard, it is not the Packers’ strength, nor what they want to do. Love is at his best in deep drops where he has the time to see windows open down the field, where his athleticism can extend a play, and where his arm talent can put the ball wherever it needs to be. When we shorten down their routes and speed up that process, we have the best chance of preventing him from getting into a rhythm in the passing game. 

Bracket the Boot. Based on Love’s physical profile and how the Packers like to attack defenses, it should come as no surprise to learn that they love bootleg concepts. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen what was effectively one throwback bootleg concept work so consistently as it did against Dallas, but the Packers have been springing open receivers down the field off of their bootleg looks all year.

While I’d be shocked to see the Niners have coverage lapses on the scale of what we just saw in Dallas, I do expect the Packers to give us heavy doses of bootlegs in an attempt to get Jordan Love on the move with depth. That way they can slow up our pass rush, buy time for those second level throws, and give easy outlets in the flats to their tight ends, backs, and fly motion guys crossing Love’s face. 

We’ve seen teams spam bootlegs before—even when their run game wasn’t productive—as a means of preventing our defensive line from teeing off. So it’s important that we both have a plan to stop the run and the many looks that the Packers can deploy off of run action—regardless of their success on the ground.

Sound safeties. The Packers do a good job of targeting and attacking defensive tendencies and favorable matchups. Against the Cowboys, it seemed like they wanted to avoid their outside corners and target the slots. That led to route trees like this one, from Romeo Doubs.

Romeo Doubs caught all 6 of his targets for 151 yards & a TD, generating a career-high +60 receiving yards over expected.

Doubs had most of his production come between the numbers, catching all 5 of targets for 112 yards & a TD.#GBvsDAL | #GoPackGo pic.twitter.com/9iPzwDnHgJ

— Next Gen Stats (@NextGenStats) January 15, 2024

Here, you can see the multiple throwback bootlegs they completed to Doubs as well as the emphasis on the sort of deep in-breaking routes that avoid outside corners who are playing deep thirds/quarters while out-leveraging them when in man based on where their coverage help is likely to be. 

Since we have the best coverage linebackers in the NFL, I expect the Packers will avoid testing Warner and Greenlaw and instead lean more on trying to create one-on-one matchups with our safeties on double moves and deep crossers down the field. If they test us outside it will likely be towards Ambry Thomas, hoping to beat him off a double move or draw a flag if he initiates contact at the top of the route. Thomas has played very well for us since moving into the starting lineup, but he can get grabby on those late-breaking routes and scramble drill situations.

Having solutions and support for our backend players will be key here, but the easiest way to stop them from completing these long-developing routes is, well…

Speed up the process. It’s never a bad time for our defensive line to get in the opposing quarterback’s face, but given the time needed for the Packers’ preferred routes to get open, this would be a particularly good game for our vaunted d-line to pressure Love into getting rid of the ball earlier and less on target than he’d like.

3 < 7. Entering the Cowboys game, the Packers had only been stopped short of a touchdown once all season after getting to a first-and-goal situation—a stat that was the best mark in multiple decades. Despite that, their red zone touchdown percentage as a whole is only 17th-best in the league. So something’s going on between the 20- and 11-yard lines.

I haven’t watched enough of them to know what the problem is, but I assume it has something to do with the condensed field allowing safeties to sit on the goal line and drive on those second-level throws that they like so much. Whatever it is, it’ll be important for us to bow up once they start sniffing the red zone and force field goal attempts rather than touchdowns.

PACKERS DEFENSE

After firing then-embattled DC Mike Pettine in 2021, LaFleur went back to the Rams well with currently-embattled DC Joe Barry—who spent four years working under Wade Phillips, Brandon Staley, and Raheem Morris. 

Barry’s had his moments—including holding us to 13 points two years ago in Lambeau—but has been under heavy scrutiny for much of this season as the pilot of a defensive unit that has underperformed for most of the year. That said, the Packers finished the regular season holding the Vikings and Bears to averages of 9.5 points and 201 offensive yards before their starters kept the Cowboys to 16 points through three-and-a-half quarters. So is this a unit that has finally found its way, or have their past few opponents simply been unable to target their weaknesses? 

Not the mayor of Titletown. As recently as Christmas, Joe Barry was maybe the most hated man in Wisconsin. To the point where Packers blogs were doing shit like posting long form articles listing the many career games random players had put up against Joe Barry-led defenses. The past few games have quieted the chatter a tiny bit, but he’s still very much on the hot seat, and a bad performance against us could lead to another shuffling of DCs in the off-season. 

While I do think the Packers are playing their best defense at the exact right time, this is still a unit with major issues. Yes, they did all they needed to and more against the Cowboys but they also allowed 500+ offensive yards (even if some of that was with their backups in the game). And they’re less than a month removed from allowing 34 points and a season-high 454 yards of offense against the Bucs and 30 points and nearly 400 yards of offense to the Carolina Panthers. For anyone who has watched a second of Panthers football this year, those numbers are unfathomable. 

ROI woes. Other than Jordan Love in 2020, the Packers have used every single first-round pick since 2018 on the defensive side of the ball, so there’s no excuse for the cupboard to feel so dry. 

This is not a defense that is devoid of talent. Their front seven has players, with Kenny Clark still a disruptive force on the interior and Preston Smith and Rashan Gary making for an impressive-looking pair of book-end rushers. The front—and its ability to rush the passer—is unquestionably the strength of this defense. But there are major personnel question marks at every other level.

After Raheem Mostert gouged them to death in the 2019 playoffs, the Packers invested heavily in the linebacker position, drafting Quay Walker out of Georgia in the first round of 2022 and locking up De’Vondre Campbell on a five-year deal after his breakout 2021 season. But Quay hasn’t lived up to his draft stock and Campbell’s health and play have slowly deteriorated since signing his big deal.

In the secondary, 2021 first-rounder Darnell Savage has played well this season—his pick-six against the Cowboys basically iced that game before halftime—but that’s basically where the feel-good stories end. Jaire Alexander played in the wild card game—corralling Dak’s first interception—and when he can play it’s a huge boost for this secondary, but he’s been in and out of the lineup all season. 2019 first-round corner Eric Stokes has played two games this season—a recurring theme for a young player who hasn’t been able to kick the injury bug. Given the Packers traded veteran Rasul Douglas at the deadline—a trade that feels all the more mind-boggling now that he’s playing at a high level for the #2 seed Bills—they’ve been left with starting journeyman Corey Ballentine and 7th round rookie Carrington Valentine outside for much of the season. That’s a good blueprint to allow Baker Mayfield to drop 350 yards passing and a perfect passer rating on you. 

Ballentine and Valentine have had their moments in the past month or so, but it’s hard to tell how much of that is youthful improvement versus a pass rush that is starting to get home more often. Either way, the health of Jaire Alexander’s ankle is a major variable as we head into the weekend.

First thing’s first. So what’s gone right as of late?

The biggest change during the Packers’ late-season surge is that they’ve shown a pulse as a run defense, which has allowed them to lean into the strength of their pass rush, and—in turn—create more negative plays and takeaways. This is a team that allowed four 200+ rushing performances through week 14, including to bottom-dwelling units like the Tommy DeVito Giants and the Matt Canada-led Steelers. Even in the year of the lort 2024, if you can get road-graded on the ground it’s hard to do much of anything defensively, so the Packers adjusted heavily to stop the run in hopes that it would create a trickle-down effect of defensive success.

To key opposing running games, the Packers have leaned more into five-man fronts on early downs to clog lanes, create one-on-ones with their best players along the line of scrimmage, and generate more disruption and penetration in the run game. This has protected the Packers’ struggling linebackers from second-level blockers, given them fewer gaps to cover, and let them run and hit rather than read and stack-and-shed. To make things even simpler for those LBs (particularly Quay Walker), the Packers also started just sending them more on blitzes to muck up the works. Using blitzes to point a struggling or hesitant linebacker in the direction they have to go (rather than trusting them to read and react) is far from a long-term solution, but it can work in a pinch—especially when the linebacker is a plus athlete with minus instincts.

These five-man fronts, timely blitzes, and the friendlier downs and distances that arise from slowing down opposing rushing attacks have allowed the Packers to lean into their greatest personnel strength: their pass rush. Over their four-game winning streak, the Packers are averaging nearly four sacks a game, and—at times—the front looks more like the defense that was promised than the one that they’ve been fielding for much of the year. With their defensive line mucking up backfields and forcing quarterbacks into more hurried throws, the secondary doesn’t have to guard their men as long and the results have led to a few of the Packers’ best defensive performances to date.

Potential Offensive Keys

Take the Packers to P-Town. The Packers’ rushing defense may have bowed up as of late—holding four of their last five opponents under 100 yards rushing—but a run defense can’t be fixed overnight and it takes more than a commitment to heavier personnel to succeed against more sophisticated run games.

A five-man front can cover each gap, but it also allows for chunk yardage on the ground when runners can penetrate the first level or outflank the edges—both specialties in our scheme. While our offense is more balanced than it has ever been under Shanahan, we still hang our hat on a physical and diverse run game. That shouldn’t change in this matchup. I’m not saying we should run blindly into five-man fronts every first down, but we can and should have success on the ground in this matchup, and once that run threat is established there should be plenty of room to throw the ball via play action. The Packers’ linebackers have really struggled in coverage this season—especially off of play fakes, and that plays right into what we do best.

Sketchy math. The Packers often commit to their five-man fronts on early downs and distances and to combat 12 and 21 personnel (i.e. “rushing downs”), but—given what we specialize in offensively—I’m interested to see how much they can and will run a personnel group that intentionally takes away a linebacker or defensive back for a bigger bodied player.

As the only team who can break a huddle with 21 personnel and have our running back on an option route while our fullback runs a wheel, we can easily pop into empty sets against five-man fronts and force man coverage across the board or make one of their edge players drop into a short zone where they have to corral Deebo or Kittle in space. If you’re the Packers, how often are you comfortable with either of those situations?

The other inherent drawback of deploying these looks is that they take away a middle-of-the-field coverage option. The Packers have struggled to guard the middle of the field all year and they’ve routinely been gouged by play action, two major strengths of our offense. While committing to the run game is important, early down five-man fronts could open up opportunities for the kind of explosive first-down passing that quickly puts a defense on its heels. 

Clearing the picture. With increased pressure up front, the Packers have been able to muddy passing lanes and generate more turnovers in the past few weeks. But those complex looks are a lot easier against someone like the Cowboys than they should be against us.

While the move to a more traditional West Coast offense unlocked some of Dak’s best play this season, it also—somewhat ironically—tanked the Cowboys in a similar way that Rodgers’ commitment to static formations and matchup-hunting sunk the Packers in the 2021 playoffs. Knowing the massive personnel mismatch, Dak was clearly honed in on getting the ball to CeeDee early, but—instead of relying on pre-snap motion and scheming guys open—the Cowboys felt they could feed their elite wideout by just moving him around and hunting matchups. 

Obviously, that didn’t really work. While in theory, it made sense to have their best threat a potential target on every snap, the Cowboys struggled to get into a rhythm early without some schemed-up layups and the lack of window dressing and pre-snap movement let the Packers play aggressively downhill while deploying some trap coverages like on Dak’s pick-six near the end of the first half.

With our exotic formations and heavy use of motion, we’ll be able to create more hesitation for the defense while getting far more pre-snap keys for Purdy and force the Packers to play simpler coverages that they must declare earlier. 

Let the Boys Eat. On the simplest level, I think we just have a bunch of great matchups in the passing game. While we want to be more creative and intentional than the Cowboys were with CeeDee in creating those matchups, we also have a deeper core of weapons than Dallas and the Packers won’t be able to key any one player if they plan to slow us down.

Whether it’s motions to empty sets and overload quads, run action away to create singles on backside receivers, or any other number of tools in our toolkit, we have the means to set up mismatches up and down the field. I fully expect us to do just that.

The linebackers in particular should be in the crosshairs early and often. Their coverage issues have been harped on enough by now, but they’re also one of the league’s worst-graded units in guarding running backs in the passing game…

Which, uh… yeah. Good luck with that.

SPECIAL TEAMS + OTHER SHIT

Weather Watch. The weather report is bound to change multiple times before we get to this weekend, but at the moment there’s a chance for both rain and legitimate wind gusts on Saturday. Given we’re the team with the quarterback who had issues handling a wet ball in Cleveland and NOT the team from Wisconsin, we’d prefer those elements stay away.

Ray-Ray Returns. Ray-Ray McCloud got a bunch of run in week 18 as he returned from injury. That gives us a spark in the return game, and—most importantly—means we don’t have to rely on a rookie wideout wearing #10 to make crunch time returns during the playoffs. No offense to Ronnie Bell, who has played great as a rookie (all things considered), but that should be a relief for all of us.

Fresh fish. It is worth noting that rookie kickers are notoriously sketchy. Nick Folk and Ka’imi Fairbairn—the No.1 and No.2 top kickers in terms of field goal percentage this season—were 20th and 24th, respectively, in field goal percentage during their rookie years. Younghoe Koo, one of the league’s most handsomely paid kickers, was cut by the Chargers after making only 50% of his kicks over the first four games of his rookie season. Even Brandon Aubrey, who set the gold standard for rookie kickers this year (although he’s 28 and played professionally already so not sure if he counts as a rookie), missed two field goals in the season finale and an extra point in the wild-card round. Rookie kickers are sketchy. And this game has two of them.

Our rookie kicker is fresh off missing his first-ever field goal under 40 yards and his first-ever extra point. Not great. But the Packers’ kicking game (and their special teams in general) is even more suspect. Jake Moody has attempted fewer field goals than almost any other full-time kicker and is 20th in field goal % on the year, but Anders Carlson—who the Packers drafted in the sixth round—is 24th in field goal %, barely over .500 when kicking from 40 or more yards, and has missed an astounding six extra points this season (including one in the wild-card round).

Will this settle your nerves at all if this game comes down to a few crunch-time kicks? Probably not. But it’s worth noting.

Your everyday key to special teams: (1) kick the ball between the uprights instead of outside of them; (2) don’t allow back-breaking momentum-changing plays in coverage.

TLDR

The Packers are a young, hungry, and surging squad, which makes for a dangerous divisional-round opponent regardless of their seeding. This team is 8-3 in their last eleven games and their offense and young quarterback are near the top of the charts in nearly every offensive metric (advanced or otherwise) during that run. But the team and the young quarterback right above them in basically all of those offensive categories? The Niners and Brock Purdy.

While this Packers offense is absolutely legit, I’m not nearly as convinced that their defense has turned the corner. This seems like a unit that has improved, but whose improvements may be greatly exaggerated by the dominance they’ve displayed on the other side of the ball. I don’t think they’re as bad as the raw numbers and advanced analytics may say, but I don’t think this is a team strength. If we can simply play our game while preventing negative plays and turnovers, it’s hard for me to imagine a defense that has major issues stopping play action, defending the middle of the field, and covering running backs in the passing game slowing down our offensive attack.

Yes, the Packers can break explosive plays and score points in bunches, and if this game becomes a shootout then anything could happen. But if I had to bet on which defense will hold serve more times against elite offensive competition, I’m betting on the good guys.

Go Niners 🏈👍

NFC Playoff Preview

With a well-earned No.1 seed locked up, we now have the freedom to treat the next two weeks as byes. Shanahan has already said that they’ll be resting some guys against the Rams. Trent and CMC are the most obvious candidates, and—if there’s no Trent protecting his blindside—I would contemplate sitting Purdy as well. Regardless of how we approach it, NFL rosters are small so there will be plenty of starters suiting up. There’s a chance we practice the week with the ones to keep them sharp then roll out mostly twos. There’s a chance we treat this like a preseason game and play the majority of our starters for a few series before they give way to the backups.

Regardless of who plays, who doesn’t, and for how long, our goal in week 18 is to have a good week of practice leading up to the bye and exit the week healthy. As an added bonus, there’s not a single other team in the NFC that has the same luxury, as all will be vying for playoff entrance or seeding.

NFC

Dallas Cowboys (11-5)

With a win, the Cowboys will lock up the 2-seed and perhaps no team needs it more, as Dallas is 8-0 at home and 3-5 on the road. While that stat is skewed by the fact that they’ve played four of their top five opponents on the road, there’s no denying that this Dallas team—which relies so heavily on their explosive passing offense—prefers turf, domes, and nice weather. 

This is an offense that averages 37.4 points and 426 offensive yards per game at home—two figures that would easily be tops in the league if spread out across an entire season—and they’ve done so by unlocking Dak with the west coast offense. One fewer loss and Dak—who leads the league in passing TDs and is top five in every meaningful statistical category, from interception % to completion %—would likely be the front-runner for the MVP, and his emergence after an early season adjustment period means the Cowboys can put up points with anyone.

However, one of the main reasons Dallas struggles on the road is that their passing attack has to take on too much of their offensive burden. A year after running for nearly 2300 yards and 24 scores under Kellen Moore, the Cowboys have only scored 13 times on the ground and have yet to surpass 1800 yards rushing. Simply put, their rushing attack is a shell of what it once was, and that’s most evident on the road. In the six road games since the start of October, the Cowboys have only had a single 100-yard rushing performance, and that was when they narrowly eked out 107 yards against the NFL-worst Carolina Panthers. 

They say that defense and rushing attacks are the two things that travel in the NFL playoffs. Luckily for the Cowboys, they hold the tiebreak over both the Eagles and the Lions, so if they can win in Washington this weekend, they won’t have to do any traveling until—at earliest—the NFC Championship game.

Detroit Lions (11-5)

After the absolute shitshow that was the end to the Dallas game, the Lions need a win, a Dallas loss and an Eagles loss to secure the 2-seed. Any other outcome and they’re locked in as the 3-seed. But either way they’ve won their division and will host a playoff game in (at least) the first round, a feat that the franchise hasn’t achieved since 1993. That is absolutely insane. That fanbase promises to be rabid, and I fully expect Detroit to be an absolute nightmare for opposing teams to play in during the playoffs. 

The Lions have one of the best young play callers in the business in Ben Johnson and—when they can run the ball and protect Goff—they can score on anyone. They have a physical mindset in the trenches and—with their two-headed running back tandem—they’re fully capable of road grading teams. They’ve only failed to surpass 100 yards rushing twice this season—once in a game where they were torching the Bucs through the air and their starting RB went down in the first quarter, and again the week after when they got so far beyond the Ravens so quickly that they had to abandon the run game altogether. They’re not only committed and capable in the run game, but it’s where they hang their identity.  

When they choose to pass, Jared Goff is playing his best ball and Johnson does a great job of catering the offense to his strengths. But he’s still Goff. If you can get into his body, get him feeling pressure, and force him off his spot, he can turn over the ball in bunches. This Lions offense has five games of three or more turnovers. They’ve actually won two of those games, which is a testament to their offensive firepower and their ability to throw the ball down the field, but things can get loose in a hurry.

While Dan Campbell’s coaching style has led to an emphasis on running the ball and stopping the run, preventing rushing yardage is basically the only thing the Lions do all that well on defense. This is a bottom-ten unit in terms of points per game allowed and yards per play allowed and their takeaway numbers aren’t strong enough to offset those figures. Given the competition last week, they’re coming off one of their best defensive performances of the season, but this is a team whose defense has registered in the negatives in expected points added for eight consecutive weeks exiting their bye week. To be fair, this is far from a bottom-dwelling unit, it’s just not a strength. Its highs are solid and its lows are not great. I imagine they have another level of play that they can hit, but they might not have the talent to get there this year.

Philadelphia Eagles (11-5)

Despite losing four of their last five games—including at home to a then three-win Cardinals team who is fighting for a high draft pick—the Eagles still have a legitimate shot at the 2-seed. They just have to beat the Giants this week and have the Cowboys lose to the Commanders. I wouldn’t say it’s a likely scenario, but that’s the silver lining for an Eagles team who’d been skirting by their competition for most of the season before the wheels fell off over the past month. 

This is a team that is 8-3 in games decided by one score or less, which is a classic indicator of a team that isn’t as good as its record. While the Eagles could finish the season with the same record as us and may have the most talented roster in the league, the answers have not been there schematically after they basically tried to run it back with in-the-building promotions after losing both of their coordinators in the off-season.

Last year’s defense always felt like a mirage—buoyed by a dominant pass rush and a schedule that faced a never-ending slate of backups and below-average quarterbacks. But under Sean Desai and now Matt Patricia (lol), teams have exposed its back end and the Eagles have been getting carved up. If you include the 394 yards the Cowboys put up on them at home, this Philly defense has allowed 400+ yards on six separate occasions—including four times in its past six games—and now they no longer have their best cover man in Darius Slay. While Slay is expected to be back in time for the playoffs, there are clearly problems with this unit beyond the absence of just one man.

Offensively, the Eagles have had one of the more predictable and least creative attacks in the league. Granted, it’s still a top-ten unit. That’s what you get when the scheme was built specifically to your quarterback’s talents and you have one of the best offensive lines and set of skill players in the country. But Shane Steichen, the actual architect behind the scheme, is gone, and so too it seems is the core understanding of why the scheme was built the way it was and how to attack defenses as they adjust to it. So instead of seeing the Eagles’ offense grow and evolve in what would effectively be year two under this particular offense, the coaching staff has turtled further into its tendencies (shotgun, no motion, few personnel sets, etc) and is basically playing the tribute band version of the offense Steichen ran so well last year. This is an offense that always had things that it simply could not (or would not) do, but at least last year, the man pulling the strings knew that and called games accordingly. In 2023, those shortcomings are now just blindspots. 

This is still a team loaded with talent, and that shows in its individual highlights—be they on the defensive line, the offensive line, or in one-on-one matchups with their talented receiver corps. But they’ll need to right the ship in a hurry to be a genuine threat in the playoffs—especially if they can’t secure the 2-seed this weekend. They have the players to do so. Do they have the X’s and O’s? That remains to be seen. But their ability to hit big plays off impressive individual efforts is still around, and—as long as that remains—they’re a threat in a post-season shootout. 

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8-8)

Ah yes, the NFC South. For a while, the Bucs looked like they were going to run away with the division (which isn’t saying much) and assert themselves as a tier 2 conference contender in the process, but their four-game winning streak came to a screeching halt in an embarrassing home loss to the Saints. Now they must win their final game in order to secure the NFC South title and host a first-round playoff game. Luckily for them, their last game is against… Carolina. 

The Bucs—like the Saints team they just lost to—are very much as their .500 record would indicate. Middle-of-the-pack. Their defense has shown flashes, with points allowed and takeaway figures hovering around the top ten, but they’ve also surrendered more passing yards than any team in the country. Their offense has been buoyed by some strong play (at times) from Baker Mayfield and Rachaad White, but they rank—at best—average in most offensive metrics and they have—by far—the worst yards per carry mark in the entire league.

Perhaps the Bucs know as well as everyone else how bad their division is and have simply been sleepwalking through it? There are glimpses of a team that is better than its current 8-8 record, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pulled off a home upset over whichever NFC East team lands the five seed—especially if its a stumbling Eagles squad—but it’s hard to imagine them making a deep run in the playoffs.

Los Angeles Rams (9-7)

I always felt like Sean McVay had the youth and the energy to be a good candidate for a rebuild, and that seems to be the case in a season in which the Rams started as a top-five pick contender but have now clinched a playoff spot a week out. Yes, it took some luck for the Giants to miss that last-second field goal, but this is a Rams team that is at worst a seven-seed and—with a win against our backups this weekend—would move into the sixth spot in the conference.

Embarrassing showing against the Giants notwithstanding, I actually think this Rams team is pretty good. They’re 6-1 in their last seven games, dropping 36 on the Browns’ vaunted defense before putting up 31 on the road in Baltimore the week after. Yes, shit got ugly when they were banged up in the middle of the season, and this team definitely lacks the depth to have much success if any of their stars go down again, but at full health I think the Rams have an argument for being a top four team in the conference. That makes them especially dangerous if they can pitch an upset in the first round and force a divisional round matchup against us. 

Tired of constantly being bullied in the trenches, McVay spent the off-season shifting Los Angeles’ offense away from the wide zone tendencies of the Shanahan scheme and more towards a power-gap scheme. It was a bit clunky to start, but the change proved fruitful when the Rams fully invested in bowling ball dual-threat Kyren Williams, who—despite missing four games due to injury—is second in the NFL in rushing yardage and first in yards/game.

In the passing game, the emergence of another young skill player in Puka Nacua has greatly opened up what the Rams can accomplish through the air. The presence of a genuine second option opposite Cooper Kupp has let the Rams mix and match with their slot receivers in a way that they hadn’t been able to do in the past, and Stafford—while still turnover-happy at times—has taken to the scheme change well in a rebound from his injury-plagued 2022.

Defensively, they still have Aaron Donald, but all-in-all I’d say they just get by on that side of the ball. However, their offense is a top ten-ish unit, and that—paired with a signal caller who can play elite at times, a physical downhill running game, and a smart play-caller who attacks defense’s weaknesses—will make them a difficult out. 

Green Bay Packers (8-8)

Similar to the Rams, the Packers have had a resurgent season now that they’re out from under the shadow of Aaron Rodgers. Make no mistake, if you’re an NFL head coach you’d rather have Rodgers than not, but it seemed like things in Green Bay had gotten to a point last season where—especially once they started losing—Rodgers’ happiness or lack thereof became a specter looming over the team. While the Packers didn’t get a crazy return in exchange for their future HOF quarterback, they now get to run the offense they want with young talent that can develop alongside Jordan Love.

Offensively, this is a squad with a lot of young skill players and tremendous potential. Love has been inconsistent and at times streaky in his first year as a starter, but he’s progressed tremendously as the season has gone on and shown more than enough upside to excite the fanbase. Entering the final week of the season, his 30 passing touchdowns are third-best in the league and his physical tools stick out often when you watch their games. Surrounding him are a bunch of B-level young targets with the potential to develop into much more, making them reminiscent of watching a young basketball team go through a rebuild. You know they have solid players on rookie contracts but you wonder how many of them will develop into legitimate stars. In the NBA, a roster full of B-level talent likely gets you a top three pick in the draft. But in the NFL—which is much less star-centric and which admits players at an older age—a bunch of B-level guys working together can get you to about where the Packers are now—a win away from one of the last spots in the playoffs.

This is at least a top 15 offense, and—when Aaron Jones and more of their receiving corps are healthy—they can look more like a top 10 unit, but the defense holds them back. Their raw numbers against the pass are decent, but they have one of the worst run defenses in the league, don’t take the ball away enough, and have had some truly ugly moments on tape. While the offense seems to be cresting at exactly the right time, the defense is less than a month away from getting diced up in the fourth quarter by Tommy “Cutlets” DeVito and two weeks removed from allowing 394 yards and 30 points to the Carolina Panthers—both season highs for a Panthers team that averages 269 yards and 14.75 points scored per game.

I like their talent and love the direction that the team is going, but they’ll likely need to win some shootouts and have some positive turnover luck in order to advance further than a first round upset this year. 

NFC South Randos - Atlanta Falcons/New Orleans Saints (8-8)

These guys get clumped together because I don’t really think either of them is any good. Both have their moments defensively—but not so much to put a scare into you—and are—for 75% of the time—completely unwatchable on the other side of the ball.

If there’s something the Falcons offense does well, it’s run the ball, as they’re top ten in attempts and yardage and have one of the more exciting young running backs in the league. If there’s something the Falcons offense doesn’t do well, it’s everything else. They’re best known for not scoring points (19 ppg), murdering fantasy teams with their player usage, and having a quarterback rotation so pathetic that their team has as many interceptions thrown as passing touchdowns on the year. Three weeks ago, they lost to the Carolina Panthers 7-9 in a vintage TNF debacle. 

Meanwhile, the Saints under long-time OC Pete Carmichael are one of the few teams still running Sean Payton’s Drew Brees scheme. The only problem? Drew Brees retired three years ago. Their offense involves a lot of stick routes and slants, and—when Derek Carr is playing well—it can be decently effective. But it lacks creativity, is a tough watch, and they haven’t really sniffed any offensive success except when they’ve played a team from either the NFC South or AFC South. 

These two teams play each other this week, and—if the Packers or Bucs lose—the winner will slide into the last playoff spot in the NFC. If that happens, I would expect them to go one and done. 

Go Niners 🏈👍