This could be key to Chiefs’ success vs. Bills (stop us if you’ve heard this before)
At some point on an October night in Buffalo, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes had to actually tell himself not to throw the football anymore. Seems backward, right?
The Chiefs carried the ball 46 times that evening, tying the most in Andy Reid’s tenure with the team, and here’s the thing: It was working. Yes, better than the pass.
The Bills had dared them to do it, a defensive strategy that left gaping running lanes and equated to a sellout to do anything and everything to stop Mahomes. The Chiefs took the bait and used their run game as the impetus for a 26-17 win against a team that lost only three teams this season.
And yet, after the game, Bills coach Sean McDermott basically said he’d do it all over again.
No regrets.
“This is an explosive offense — mainly through the air — so you’ve got to pick your poison here,” McDermott said. “... I’m not saying that we liked what we gave up in the run game, (but) that said, toward the end of the game, we were in the game, as opposed to some people are getting blown out because the balls are flying over their head.”
It’s an interesting, if not altogether unusual, dynamic when a team allows 245 rushing yards in a loss, and its coach expresses satisfaction with the strategy that prompted it. (And keep in mind, just days ago, Chiefs coach Andy Reid said McDermott would get his vote for NFL coach of the year.)
It’s more interesting yet when that coach has the opportunity to do it all over again. Will he follow through?
The Bills are headed to Kansas City on Sunday for the AFC Championship Game, and it’s easy to wonder if the overriding storyline from the first matchup will be the overriding one of the second.
Sure, much of that certainly depends on who plays quarterback for the Chiefs on Sunday. McDermott has said Buffalo is preparing for both Mahomes and his backup, Chad Henne. But given Mahomes’ progression in the concussion protocol, it’s entirely possible McDermott will be tossing aside the Henne game plan (if it really existed).
Does the Mahomes game plan differ this time?
“We’ll see,” McDermott replied this week, refusing to tip his hand when asked a question about defensive strategy.
But he sort of did tip his hand already, earlier this season. He acknowledged the difficulty in stopping the Chiefs’ passing game — ranked first in the NFL at 303.4 yards per game in the regular season — without throwing numbers in the defensive backfield. Without throwing numbers deep into the defensive backfield.
The Chiefs completed one pass more than 22 yards that day, and it came on a scramble from Mahomes followed by a completion to Byron Pringle on an extended play out of the pocket.
For weeks, Chiefs players had been talking about seeing deep-lying safeties. But this, they said, was the extreme.
“A lot of teams try to play us (to) take away the deep ball by having their safeties back in the end zone. We’ve just got to take the underneath routes — the short, quick throws — and take advantage of the run game with a less stacked box,” Chiefs receiver Mecole Hardman said. “Hopefully we can get those guys to come up and honor our run game with the short passes and take our chances deep when we get them. We just have to keep that philosophy — don’t get greedy and keep going short, medium, intermediate, whatever it may be and (then) take our shots down the field.”
If McDermott and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier give the Chiefs similar looks — with some added wrinkles, you can bet — there’s one more thing the Chiefs must do.
Run.
It’s not often we say that. Not often the Chiefs’ rushing attack is the barometer of success. It’s probably only been the case once this season — in Buffalo. Heck, the Chiefs won five games in which they rushed for fewer than 100 yards as a team. They ran for 36 yards — 36! — and still scored 33 points in a win against Carolina ... a week after beating the Jets by four scores while rushing for 50 yards. That’s 86 rushing yards in two games in which they scored 68 points and added two marks to the win column.
But this is different. If the Bills refuse to break out of their deep shell in favor of clogging the passing lanes with pressing corners at the line followed by zone on the back end, Chiefs coach Andy Reid might feel he has no choice but to call more running plays. Mahomes, if he plays, might again be reminding himself to hand it off on run-pass option calls.
The Bills did hold Mahomes to 255 yards with that strategy in the regular season, his third lowest mark of the year. And their defense has improved. The players and coaches have mentioned that frequently early this week. The numbers show it. Over their eight-game winning streak, they’ve allowed just 17.1 points per game.
Even accounting for that late-season surge, Pro Football Focus still says the Bills have the second-worst performing run defense in the NFL. If they do nothing to help that — such as adding numbers to the box — the Chiefs might feel compelled to go against their nature. To run first, pass second. The oddity of that is it plays into the Bills hands. That’s what they want, too. Less deep shots.
Which puts the key squarely on its success.
There’s a reason the Chiefs were comfortable running the ball 46 times in that Week 6 matchup. It continued to work. The offensive line turned their numbers advantage into domination.
“We said, ‘OK, we’re going to dare them to stay with the run game,’” said Frazier, the Bills defensive coordinator, in an interview with the media Monday. “Lo and behold, they stayed with it and had a lot of success running the football. We learned a lot from that ballgame, — hopefully some lessons that will help us going forward. We’ll have to find a balance and do a better job against the run than we did in that first encounter.”