The Chiefs ran the football more than they have in a long time. Is this a new trend?
In one of the quieter games of his career, a night in which his propensity for the deep ball served secondary to efficiency, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes still managed to do something more often than he’d ever done it before. Something that contributed to removing him from the spotlight rather than placing himself directly in it.
He handed it off.
Thirty-four times, to be exact.
Before the Chiefs’ season-opening 34-20 victory against Houston last week, Mahomes had never nudged the football into the gut of a running back more often than he released a pass. And in 36 previous NFL regular season and playoff games, he’d never handed it off 34 times, either.
But he didn’t just fulfill some request in the opener — he requested it himself.
“He was like, ‘Hey, Coach, call it. Call it. Run it again. Run it again,’” Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said.
And they obliged. The Chiefs ran the ball 34 times. Mahomes dropped back just 33, resulting in 32 pass attempts and one sack.
So consider Week 1 another first for a 25-year-old quarterback who has spent his first two-plus seasons establishing new personal, franchise and league firsts. This is just a different kind of new, one that’s less about personal success.
But one that leaves a larger question.
Are these the new Chiefs? They run first, pass second?
Well, let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Establish the run
The game plans derive, at least in part, from knowledge — an understanding of your own strengths and weaknesses coupled with what you’ve seen from the opponent. In Week 1, absent preseason games, the Chiefs reverted back to last season, when they played the Texans twice. Had plenty of film on them.
But Houston arrived with a change in defensive strategy. Erase the deep ball. Be content with everything underneath.
“They’ve been a man (to man) team against us in the past, but they kind of mixed it up with a bunch of different coverages,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said.
The Chiefs wanted to establish the run. They always want to establish the run, even if they believe they’ve got the best passing quarterback in football.
But those numbers you heard — 34 carries, 32 pass attempts — weren’t necessarily the plan heading into Week 1. The Texans made their defensive tweaks after giving up 51 points in the final three quarters of the AFC Divisional Round game last season. The Chiefs adjusted back, and it showed in multiple forms. Mahomes remained content with the underneath routes.
And then they ran.
And ran.
And ran.
It all culminated in a 91-yard touchdown drive in the second quarter. The Chiefs used 16 plays on the drive — none of them gaining more than nine yards, a slow, methodical march down the field. The Texans wouldn’t budge from their deep shell, almost as if they were thinking, Surely they will take a shot sooner rather than later, right? Right?
Nope. Mahomes to Travis Kelce for five yards. Darrel Williams up the middle for seven. Clyde Edwards-Helaire for nine. Edwards-Helaire for nine more. Edwards-Helaire for six. Mahomes to Demarcus Robinson for four. Edwards-Helaire for eight. Edwards-Helaire for eight more. Williams for four. Williams for four again. Sammy Watkins on the end-around for three. Mahomes to Robinson for nine. Mahomes to Watkins for nine. Mahomes to Watson for two.
Touchdown.
“You go into each game preparing for any situation that could present itself,” Bieniemy said. “They started playing a little bit more from the top down, giving us a clean box, playing deep in coverage. We were like, hey, you know what? We need to pound it a little bit and make these guys come up and play and be aggressive in the run game. It just opened up everything.”
Read: The rush-pass mix was more about the Texans than it was the Chiefs.
But there is one other factor at play. A new factor.
Clyde Edwards-Helaire.
The rookie: As advertised
The league’s leading rusher after one week is a 5-foot-7 rookie whom the Chiefs took at least a little heat over expending a first round pick to select.
Edwards-Helaire ran for 138 yards in the win against the Texans, though he was offered an opportunity that no Chiefs running back received last season.
A heavy workload. Edwards-Helaire rushed 25 times. No Chiefs running back carried the ball even 20 times in any game in 2019.
“Especially with a younger back, I think that was important to get him used to the speed of the game,” Reid said. “But at the same time, you want production — you’re striving to put points on the board. So a little bit of everything. Yeah, part of it was we got in there, and it was working, so we stuck with it. On the other hand, it was also good to get our young back some carries and experience.”
So while the rush-pass balance was more about Texans, it wasn’t all about the Texans.
The Chiefs have a new toy, and they plan to use it. They saw this coming after weeks in training camp. Running backs coach Deland McCullough said he wasn’t surprised with how the debut unfolded. Called Edwards-Helaire simply “as advertised.”
It doesn’t mean the Chiefs will carry the football 34 times in Week 2, when they head to Los Angeles to face the Chargers, but they’re perhaps more willing to do so than they were a year ago — if the defensive looks demand it.
And they might.
“When you’re trying to find all those weapons, you gotta give up something,” Chargers coach Anthony Lynn said. “Sometimes that’s the running game. You give them a lighter box.”
Edwards-Helaire, in other words, could face advantageous situations. Could see fewer men crowding the line of scrimmage than most other teams — you know, the ones absent Mahomes, Kelce, Hill and Watkins. And that could keep the run calls enticing — for the coordinator, for the coach and for the quarterback.
Even if the new-look Chiefs might not be sticking around permanently — even if the ratio in the opener was dictated more by the flow of the game — some version of them will be permanent.
The running back, at least.
“Just the amount of growth that happens from your first full game to your second, that’s the part that I’m excited about,” McCullough said. “Man, he had some hiccups in the first game, which, that’s to be expected, but here you’re coming into the second game (and) he’s really grown a lot. You’re talking about just from last game to the next practice that we had a few days ago, just learning and being able to see on tape, ‘Wow, I didn’t do this. I should have (done) this. I can’t do this.’
“It’s going to be — I would expect there to be some bigger steps coming in this game, too.”