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 🏈👍