Chiefs’ Tyvon Branch changes game with alert play

As a dozen or so players converged into a typical postplay mosh pit early in the Chiefs game against Baltimore on Sunday at M&T Bank Stadium, the play by all appearances was dead.

On the sideline, quarterback Alex Smith glanced away. Out on the field a few steps away from the fray, cornerback Sean Smith saw nothing but a play simmering to a close.

Linebacker Dee Ford was on his way up out of the heap, “kind of getting ready for the next play,” as he put it.

Then, next thing you know, there was safety Tyvon Branch somehow unearthing a hidden, bouncing ball from the pile and skedaddling 73 yards for a game-altering touchdown in the Chiefs’ 34-14 romp.

For all the quirkiness of the play, it also represented a microcosm of how the Chiefs have morphed from a 1-5 start into a team that has won eight games in a row.

Time after time after time since the mind-boggling miscues that tarnished the early part of their season, it’s been the other team that blinks and makes ruinous mistakes that the Chiefs simply don’t.

“It was like, ‘Freebie!’ ” Branch said, laughing.

Time after time after time, it’s exasperated opponents having to say things like Baltimore coach John Harbaugh did about the Javorius Allen fumble that Branch converted into a touchdown with the score tied 7-7 and the Ravens on the move.

“That football belongs to everybody in the organization, every fan, everybody that cares about the Ravens, and it’s a precious commodity,” Harbaugh said. “You don’t win football games when you turn the ball over.”

Time after time after time, the Chiefs pounce on those gaffes and exploit them for all they are worth — as they did further in a victory whose exclamation point was Marcus Peters’ 90-yard TD interception return with 4 minutes, 36 seconds left.

This isn’t coincidence or luck.

It’s a signature, one that reflects a holistic approach that at times almost renders the offense defensive — refusing to be reckless and valuing the ball more than dynamism — but also typically seeks to put the defense on the offensive.

“You never know what’s going on in those piles,” Ford said, smiling and speaking simply but eloquently to the style. “Just keep going; you’ll find something.”

There probably are a lot of reasons Branch had the awareness and athleticism to make a play on which he was so abandoned it conjured thoughts of the old fumblerooski, or maybe something you’d see on a sandlot with the ball hidden up someone’s shirt.

“It looked like a game of rugby almost,” linebacker Frank Zombo said. “All of a sudden, you’ve got a guy sprinting out of a pile.”

For starters, Branch is conditioned to navigating his way through and out of clumps: After all, he was one of 10 children growing up in upstate New York, so one way or another he had to be resourceful and alert.

“Hey, man, yeah,” he said, laughing. “Survival of the fittest.”

Perhaps underappreciated now in his first year as a Chief at his relatively advanced NFL age of 29, part of being the fittest apparently also was being the fastest.

In 2004, Branch won the 60-meter dash in 6.82 seconds at the National Indoor Track Championship. He went on to win New York state championships in the 100- and 200-meter races as a senior in high school, and he ran a 4.31 40 at the 2008 NFL Combine.

No wonder he easily ditched one of the few Ravens to initially recognize he had the ball, quarterback Jimmy Clausen, and he was in zero danger of being caught by speedy receivers Kamar Aiken and Jeremy Butler.

The play also was helped, Branch said, by the fact he perhaps has “a little savviness in me” after eight years in the NFL — a fact touted by Peters, an Oakland native who grew up admiring Branch.

After seven years, Peters reckoned, the game just “slows down a hell of a lot, so it allows you to play a lot faster.”

What made this play more than anything else, though, was how it reflected an emphasis of defensive coordinator Bob Sutton — and a unit that buys into it: Hustle to the ball and make something happen.

Now, that doesn’t look so great, for instance, when Peters overplays trying to strip a ball and whiffs on a tackle, as he’s been prone to do in an otherwise remarkable rookie season.

But in the longer view, the relentless practice of what Sutton preaches has distinguished the Chiefs’ defense and is a key part of what makes them an intriguing playoff team.

And the philosophy sure is fulfilling on plays like the one made by Branch, who had just one touchdown in seven years with the Raiders and now has his second in three games, including his 38-yard interception return at Oakland.

The touchdown, of course, wouldn’t have happened without linebacker Derrick Johnson thumping the ball loose.

As Johnson described it, he felt the “boom” of hitting Allen, then heard him go “oh” — presumably a gasp or groan at being hit and maybe the noise someone makes when they lose a ball, too.

Even sensing the ball was loose, though, Johnson couldn’t find it.

He didn’t really figure out where it was until Branch was running down the field, his reward — and the Chiefs’ — for continuing to move toward the play even as it was ebbing out.

“ ‘See ball, get ball,’ ” Branch said, laughing. “That’s the name of the game, isn’t it?”

One that apparently rattled the Ravens, 4-10, who trailed only by a touchdown but seemed to feel as if it were a lot more and unraveled.

A series later, they unfathomably attempted a fake punt from their own 17, only to see it fall short and set up another Chiefs touchdown.

Afterward, Harbaugh twice said the Chiefs led by 14 when the Ravens tried the ill-considered fake.

After it, they really did, enabling the Chiefs to play to formula and put the game in hibernation mode.

All because of a play that already seemed over, made by a team that apparently never thinks it is.

This story was originally published December 20, 2015 at 7:53 PM with the headline "Chiefs’ Tyvon Branch changes game with alert play."