Chiefs

Chiefs film review: Will NFL defenses catch up to Patrick Mahomes and Co.?

By Lynn Worthy

Updated October 25, 2018 4:26 PM

And now it gets interesting.

This week’s game against the Denver Broncos will be the Chiefs’ first against an opponent for the second time this season. The Chiefs rallied from a 10-point fourth-quarter deficit to defeat the Broncos on Monday Night Football earlier this month.

This weekend will also mark quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ third game against the Broncos, including a Week 17 matchup last season in Denver. In theory, divisional opponents should have the inside track on coming up with a plan to confuse and/or stifle Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense.

Of course, that’s in theory. The Chiefs don’t make it easy on any defense because of the decisions they force a defense to make, the way they’ll move their personnel around and line players up in different places and the various ways they can attack safeties and linebackers in the passing game.

Let’s take a look at some examples of how the offense did it last Sunday against the Bengals. We’ll also see how the defense improved its play against the run.

The coaches’ film is courtesy of NFL Game Pass. The game-day television broadcasts, a condensed 45-minute version of every game and the coaches’ film are available with an account at www.nfl.com/gamepass.

Options

It only makes sense to start with the run-pass option (RPO) play as Exhibit A of how the Chiefs’ offense gives Mahomes choices on how to hurt a defense.

While this didn’t go for the same huge chunk of yardage that Mahomes and Tyreek Hill connected for in the season opener against the Chargers, it’s still a fairly simple concept that gets the ball to a playmaker in space, where he can do damage.

Situation: First and 10, ball on KC 5-yard line, 13:26 remaining in the first quarter.

Alignment: Chiefs are in their “11” personnel grouping, with one back (Kareem Hunt) and one tight end (Travis Kelce) on the field. Three wide receivers (Sammy Watkins, Chris Conley and Hill) joined them. Hunt started off to the right of Mahomes, who was in the shotgun, but slid over to the left before the snap. Kelce split wide left outside the numbers, with Hill on the line at the top of the numbers. Conley split wide right just outside the numbers with Watkins a few steps wide of the hash mark.

When Hunt shifts to the right of Mahomes, the defense adjusted by sliding linebacker Vontaze Burfict (55) from just outside the tackle box and shaded toward Hill to inside the box and almost mirroring Hunt. The deep safety to that side, Shawn Williams (36), was in the process of moving closer to the line of scrimmage in man-to-man coverage of Hill when the ball was snapped.

At the snap: Hunt comes across Mahomes’ face for the handoff mesh. Mahomes has the option to hand it to Hunt or pull the ball back out and make this a pass play. Mahomes has a clear passing lane to Hill on the slant route thanks to the late movement and the run action, which pulls Burfict both more toward the middle of the field as well as to the closer to the line of scrimmage.

Mahomes delivered the ball to Hill between the numbers and the hash mark, which gave Hill the chance to catch and run with defenders having to make a tackle in space on the quickest player on the Chiefs’ roster.

Decisive and immediate

Situation: Third and 3 at the KC 29-yard line with 2:36 remaining in the first quarter.

Alignment: The Chiefs again break the huddle with the one running back, one tight end and three wide receiver personnel group. Mahomes lined up in the shotgun with Hill on his right in what’s typically the running back’s position. However, the Chiefs have lined Hill up in the backfield and both handed off to him and thrown to him out of the backfield.

Hunt splits out wide to the right as a split end/wide receiver. Conley is wide left outside the numbers, with Watkins a step and a half inside the numbers and Kelce in the short slot just outside the hash mark.

The defense keeps both safeties deep in the middle of the field, with just two defensive backs to the wide side within 10 yards of the ball. The corner on the outside gives a large cushion.

At the snap: Watkins ran at the outside shoulder of the slot defender and continued up the seam. Watkins occupied the defender just enough, coupled with the defender’s alignment, to assure no play could be made on the throw to Kelce. Conley ran downfield toward the corner playing well off in what ended up amounting to a stalk block, where Conley kept himself between the defender and Kelce. Conley’s downfield blocks have helped spring big catch-and-run opportunities throughout the season.

Mahomes didn’t hesitate. He got the ball into Kelce’s hands quickly with the slot defender closing in. Of course, Kelce’s size and athleticism make him a tough one-on-one tackle for smaller defensive backs, and the deep safety reacted right away to the quick throw by flying up and leaving himself a bad pursuit angle. The slot defender basically screened out and left him to chase as Kelce turned the shot catch into a 43-yard gain.

In case anyone thinks the Chiefs limit themselves by what they can run out of formations with non-traditional alignments for wide receivers or running backs, they lined up in almost the same formation with Demarcus Robinson ending up in the backfield (where Hill had been earlier) and Hunt again split wide opposite the three-receiver side (two WRs and Kelce). All five eligible receivers went out into the pattern, with four flooding the wide side of the field. One linebacker sprinted to cover the speedy wide receiver (Robinson) to the flat, while the other linebacker rushed to undercut Kelce’s route with a safety over the top.

That completely opened up the middle of the field for Hunt, who ran a drag across the field and made the catch with the closer defender still more than five yards away. This also gives Hunt, one of the NFL’s leaders in yards after contact, the ball at a point where he’s already into the second level of the defense, with space to turn and run. He picked up 13 yards.

Pressure on middle of field

So much of what the Chiefs do puts pressure on linebackers and safeties to either make decisions on who to cover, who to leave locked man-to-man, whether they can break on a route or when to pass a receiver off to another defender. They excel at capitalizing when a defender makes the wrong choice, falls victim to miscommunication or gets caught up in the speed of things and gets outside of the coverage rules/responsibilities of the defense.

Situation: First and 10 from the Cincinnati 31 with 48 seconds remaining in the second quarter.

Alignment: The Chiefs again remain in a personnel group with one running back (Spencer Ware), one tight end (Demetrius Harris) and three wide receivers. Harris lined up tight to the formation next to right tackle Mitchell Schwartz in a three-point stance. Hill started wide right off the line outside the numbers, but he went in motion pre-snap. Ware lined up to Mahomes’ left, with Mahomes in the shotgun. Conley and Watkins lined up wide left, with Watkins between the numbers and the hash mark and Conley just outside the numbers.

Hill’s motion — behind the quarterback — affected the cornerback on the right side, Dre Kirkpatrick (27), as well as the linebacker, Burfict (55), in the middle of the field. Kirkpatrick ran across the formation with Hill as if locked in man-to-man coverage, which makes sense. However, at the snap Kirkpatrick was still at the hash mark on the short side, while Hill was at the far hash mark in the backfield.

At the snap: Hill ran a swing route, with Kirkpatrick sprinting in an attempt to get in position to defend the pass to Hill. Burfict sees Hill swing and flattens out down the line of scrimmage in case the ball is thrown to Hill. The slot defender ran with Watkins, and the outside defender ran with Conley.

However, when Burfict flattened out and stayed with Hill, the team’s leader in receiving yards, and Kirkpatrick ran in pursuit of the same route, they left Ware to run up the seam uncovered.

The safety in the middle of the field’s job was to play deep center field, which he did. Burfict’s decision to stay wide and keep eyes on Hill gave Mahomes an easy throw to Ware, who ran between the numbers and the hash mark for a gain of 22 yards.

The first play of the second half also showed how safeties and linebackers are under attack. The play-fake froze the linebackers and allowed Kelce to run free and draw the attention of the deep safety on the side of the field where Watkins ran against a cornerback, who maintained outside leverage and expected safety help. Instead, the corner was hung out to dry and Mahomes stepped up away from pressure to complete this pass over the head of the safety scrambling from the other side of the field.

Defense

The Chiefs’ issues stopping the run — dating back to last season — have hardly been a secret to folks who’ve followed the team. One of the primary thrusts of their offseason overhaul on defense was improving their toughness against the run. Inside linebackers Reggie Ragland and Anthony Hitchens, both added to the defense after Brett Veach took over as general manager, have been the subject of much consternation.

However, this season they’ve had inconsistent (at best) results in that regard. Their last game against the Broncos provided a perfect example. They allowed an average of 7.2 yards per carry in that game.

Getting off blocks: Yeah, it may seem like an oversimplification or too basic an element of defense to serve as an explanation, but Sunday’s game against the Bengals showed just how much of a difference it makes when Hitchens and Ragland are able to get off blocks and deliver a blow to a ball carrier.

Disengaging with blockers quickly allowed both to stop runs within three or four yards of the line of scrimmage as opposed to getting gashed for large runs, as they had earlier in the season.

Edge help: While it may often sound like deflecting whenever either defensive players or coaches talk about the onus falling on more than just the inside linebackers to stop the run, it makes a difference when edge guys like Dee Ford and Breeland Speaks take on a pulling blocker — even if they don’t “blow up” the play with a big collision in the backfield.

They force the running back to take an angle where the pursuit angles of Hitchens and Ragland minimize gains.

The Chiefs held the Bengals to 65 total rushing yards, and the Bengals didn’t have a rush for more than six yards in the first half. They finished the game averaging less than 4 yards per carry.