NFL Analysis
1/22/24
8 min read
Patrick Mahomes, Kansas City Chiefs Offense Hitting Their Stride At Perfect Time
No obstacle is enough to stop Patrick Mahomes from reaching the AFC Championship Game. They had offensive tackle woes, endless mistakes from wide receivers and an embarrassing upset loss to the Las Vegas Raiders on Christmas morning. It made 2023 feel like the year things would all unravel in Kansas City. Yet, it's still Mahomes at the end of the road.
The man is inevitable — the gatekeeper of the AFC. Mahomes is the only certainty in a sport that doesn't deal in certainty.
On Sunday night, Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs reminded a football-obsessed nation why they can not be denied. Mahomes went blow for blow with Josh Allen and the Buffalo Bills, another classic in a rivalry that already burns as bright as any before it. Both quarterbacks deserved the win, and both teams would be worthy AFC title contenders, but it was the Chiefs who finished the job, advancing with a 27-24 victory.
A Winning Mentality
So many things went right for the Chiefs. Mahomes going berserk for four quarters did a lot of the heavy lifting, but it was more than that. The Chiefs ran the football with great success all night. The offensive line held the fort down. Most of Kansas City's bumbling receiving corps even got their act together, a miracle best evidenced by Marquez Valdes-Scantling securing two game-swinging passes in traffic down the field.
OKAY MVS 🫡 pic.twitter.com/PLFB8ZrE0j
— Kansas City Chiefs (@Chiefs) January 22, 2024
The glue that held it all together was no one player or unit. It was a mentality, a concerted effort to be bigger, stronger and meaner than the 11 men across from them. The Chiefs went to Buffalo to play bully ball and couldn't have done it any better.
Building a Formation Advantage
The Chiefs played more than half of their offensive snaps with two or three tight ends on the field — 57.4 percent of the time. It was the first time they had done that all season and only the third time ever in the Mahomes era.
Leaning into heavier personnel is something the Chiefs have done each of the past two seasons, but rarely to this degree. The Bills didn't have an answer for any of it.
When the Chiefs wanted to run the ball, they did so unrelentingly. The Chiefs were successful on 70 percent of their runs and produced 0.21 EPA per attempt with two or three tight ends on the field, per TruMedia. Those were the best and third-best marks of the season for the Chiefs out of those personnel groupings. Most of their explosive runs came with lighter personnel on the field, including Clyde Edwards-Helaire's surprising 28-yarder on a center pull play.
Still, the Chiefs were grinding the Bills defensive front to dust in heavier formations to keep the chains moving.
Run and Pass, Hand-in-Hand
While running the ball is what heavier formations are meant to do at their core, the Chiefs also found a handful of their best passes of the day from those same looks. Travis Kelce's touchdowns, for instance, were from 12 or 13 personnel formations.
Mahomes to Kelce. Bread and butter. Chiefs take the lead! #ChiefsKingdom
— NFL (@NFL) January 22, 2024
📺: #KCvsBUF on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/FR6a2VkD33 pic.twitter.com/5jUdWWbtF2
It doesn't show in the clip, but wide receiver Mecole Hardman motions from right to left before the snap to create a bunch formation with two Chiefs tight ends, Kelce and Noah Gray. Hardman's out-breaking route to the flat catches the cornerback's eye and draws him low and outside the numbers. Safety Jordan Poyer, playing the strong hook in Cover 3, expects he will have deep help to that side of the field and lets Kelce run by him on a corner route. There was, of course, no deep help, and Kelce jogged right into the end zone.
Later in the game, the Chiefs loaded up even more with a three tight end look inside the 5-yard line. As enticing a run look as it may have been, it was not a run play.
Chiefs start the 2nd half strong. @tkelce has another TD to give KC the lead!
— NFL (@NFL) January 22, 2024
📺: #KCvsBUF on CBS
📱: Stream on #NFLPlus https://t.co/FR6a2VkD33 pic.twitter.com/Yv4IlHu0Zm
With three tight ends packed onto the left side of the formation, the Chiefs flipped a quick screen to Kelce as the outermost tight end. You don't usually see many tight end screens, especially this close to the goal line — no, I am not counting the shovel passes — but Andy Reid is a tight end screen savant and found the right call for the right moment. After swerving his way around a little traffic, Kelce barrelled into the end zone again.
Looking Ahead to Baltimore
This might seem like a niche, perhaps one-off, game plan designed to attack the Bills specifically. That's not the case. It shouldn't be, anyway. The Chiefs can use this formula again next week against the Baltimore Ravens, a much more formidable defense.
While the Ravens may be the best defense in football, no unit is perfect. Great units are often great because they can dictate the game to their opponents and get into the calls they want.
For the Ravens, everything is about getting into passing situations and blurring the lines for the quarterbacks. How they package their pressures, true blitzes and simulated pressures, and how they mix up their coverage rotations in the back end make them a Rubik's Cube of a defense that quarterbacks must solve in two, maybe two and a half seconds. Precious few quarterbacks have been able to solve the puzzle enough times this year to beat the Baltimore defense.
The Ravens want to be in passing downs to get into those calls, though. They want offenses to be in lighter personnel so they can match with their nickel package. Ravens defensive coordinator Mike McDonald can and will call some of that stuff on early downs and against heavier personnel, too. Still, it's generally tougher to get away with when the offense has more of the playbook available.
Stripping the Defense's Creativity
Even more straightforward than that, think of all the Ravens' best defenders. Safety Kyle Hamilton and linebacker Roquan Smith are unique coverage weapons over the middle of the field. Defensive tackle Justin Maduibuike and outside linebacker Jadevon Clowney have terrorized quarterbacks all year. Baltimore built this defense to shut down the pass, and they have a coach hitting all the right buttons to make it happen.
However, Baltimore’s defense has not been as good when offenses put bigger bodies on the field. They rank 13th in success rate and 15th in EPA per dropback against 12 and 13 personnel, according to TruMedia. That’s still solid, to be sure, but not dominant the way they are otherwise. Against the run, the Ravens fall even further to 12th in success rate and 19th in EPA per rush. Again, they are not terrible, but worse than they generally are.
That's where the Chiefs' two and three tight end approach can benefit greatly. Being in heavier formations, especially under center, strips the defense of its creativity. The defense is far more likely to be in base personnel and play safer coverages than give them sound run fits. The more the offense can stay in those formations, typically by running the ball well and picking their spots for play action, the better off they will be. It's why the Ravens are worse against those formations than they are against lighter formations and when presented with pass-first situations.
We've seen the Chiefs take the heavy personnel approach several times this season. The Chiefs' wins over the Minnesota Vikings and Cincinnati Bengals were some of the "heaviest" game plans they have rolled out this season, largely because those teams thrive when they can go crazy on passing downs.
Even last year's Week 1 blowout over Vance Joseph's blitz-heavy Arizona Cardinals defense fits the bill here. This week's Bills game may have been the most extreme version, but the Chiefs have shown before that they can play this way.
All OVer Again
It's almost exhausting to believe, but the Chiefs are here again. They're headed to the AFC Championship with (still) the best quarterback in the league and a level of adaptability on offense that would have seemed impossible for this team back in October.
The Ravens are the better team and should be favored in the AFC Championship. But games like this from the Chiefs allow for doubt to creep in.
They make you think, "Do I want to fade the best player in the sport, the one who gets to the end of the road more than anybody else? Are the Chiefs really going to do it again?"
