How the Kansas City Chiefs are still dealing with the ghosts of the Super Bowl loss
The most consequential Chiefs play of a generation lives forever with T-shirts, a video game and even a framed picture on the general manager’s wall.
But the reverberation of Jet Chip Wasp rang much differently on the other side. The 49ers tried to put a positive spin on it, insisting the Super Bowl LIV loss would only fuel the fire for the encore. It didn’t play out that way, of course. It rarely does. They would take last in their division, and players admitted they struggled to move on from the sting of finishing runner-up.
It happens. A lot. So often that when the Chiefs were the team on the other side one year later, after they’d identified and addressed the reasons for their demolition in Tampa Bay, a key question remained.
How long would the loss linger?
Welp.
Still here. Still present.
Just like their predecessors, the Chiefs are absorbing the long-term effects of that fateful evening, even as they say it’s far from their minds.
“I feel like we still have confidence,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes says. “I mean, we understand we’re not playing football the way we want to (and) we’re not winning the games we feel like we can win. But I think we know it’s still out in front of us.”
The Super Bowl loss persists, though, in ways that stretch beyond the Chiefs’ surprising 3-4 record. To their opponents’ schemes. To the types of defenses they encounter. To individual players starting to exhibit signs of pressing.
The Super Bowl Runner-Up Jinx appears alive and well here in Kansas City, at least for the time being.
The deep shell
They’d prefer to move past all this. To never talk about that Super Bowl again. Can you blame them?
Mahomes, though, has a reminder each time he drops back in the pocket and surveys a defense. Almost like a replay in real time. You see, back in February, the Buccaneers operated with a two-deep shell — two safeties playing deep in the secondary to offset one of the Chiefs’ most valuable assets (speed). It worked. The Chiefs were held out of the end zone for the first time since Mahomes took over the starting job.
So, guess what?
“Everybody,” offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said, “is taking a look at what Tampa Bay did to us in the Super Bowl.”
It’s created this odd setting for the Chiefs. They know what defensive scheme they will encounter every Sunday. Most teams prepare for what they see on film from an opposition. The Chiefs’ opponents, though, are wiping out their own schemes in favor of following the bread crumbs left by the Bucs.
Mahomes is facing fewer blitzes than he’s ever seen in his life — only about one out of every 10 of his dropbacks includes an extra rusher. He’s also operating against more two-deep coverages than any other quarterback in football, per Pro Football Focus.
“I’ve kind of gotten the same type of coverages and schemes every single game,” Mahomes said. “It’s just been dependent on the games if we execute and make the plays happen. There’s been weeks where we’ve executed and driven the ball down field and scored touchdowns. There’s been weeks where we’ve gotten penalties and turnovers.”
It’s the Tampa Bay Super Bowl scheme.
The concept, described in its simplest form, is to force the Chiefs to nickel-and-dime their way down the field. In the first month, knowing it was coming, the Chiefs proved they could still move the ball. Lately, though, they’ve grown impatient.
Against a two-deep shell, the home run play isn’t there. When the Chiefs are willing to take their walks and play station to station, they’re fine — so long as they don’t turn the ball over along the way. Which is part of the defense’s calculus — the more times you force the Chiefs to snap the football on their path to the end zone, the more opportunities they have to make a mistake.
The Chiefs have obliged far too often. They lead the NFL with 17 turnovers, five more than any other team.
“There’s absolutely nothing fun about it,” Bieniemy said. “We have to be better. That’s all it is. It’s not very complicated. ... We’ve shown if we get out of our own way, we’re capable of accomplishing anything we want to accomplish.”
The Chiefs are pressing
The spotlight is so often on the quarterback in Kansas City, yet so rarely for this reason.
He’s not played well in the past few games. Early this week, he stood in front of his teammates and said as much. It’s not some drop in talent or ability but rather a slump in decision-making. His turnovers last weekend in Tennessee were the product of bad choices, not bad execution.
He’s pressing. The team is, too.
Mahomes finally acknowledged it last week. As the Chiefs’ season has tumbled, he’s attempting to make up all the ground with one play.
“I think that’s probably, more than anything, collectively as an offense, what we’ve been trying to do,” Bieniemy said when asked if he’d noticed players trying to do too much, adding, “We want guys to let their personalities show. Be yourselves. Relax. Go play football. This game is meant to be fun. When our guys are having fun, when they’re relaxed, when they’re playing for a purpose, when they’re accountable to one another, that’s when we’re at our best.”
In last year’s Super Bowl, the Chiefs trailed early, and Mahomes played like a man with his hair on fire because he had to play like a man with his hair on fire. The elements of that game — namely, an offensive line consistently losing at the line of scrimmage — made it necessary.
It’s not any longer.
But that style of play is still making an appearance across the offense, as if it’s still the requirement. Mahomes made plays of desperation last week. It happens over one or two games every year, he says, but man, the timing ain’t great now.
Defenses are practically begging the Chiefs to be careful, to march meticulously down field. For years, the Chiefs got away with the theatrics — with the hero plays — not only because they had the ability to make them but because those plays were there to be made.
After Tampa Bay built a game plan around stripping those highlights from the Chiefs’ reel, and most notably the quarterback’s arsenal, others have followed suit. But the Chiefs have yet to altogether abandon that home-run mode.
“Throughout my career, it seems like every single year there’s a game or two where I start doing too much,” Mahomes said. “That has nothing to do with either side of the ball — I just start doing too much, trying to make a play happen, trying to make a big play happen and spark the offense.”
The hangover theories
There are theories about the reasons for the Super Bowl Runner-Up Jinx. Only one team in the past 48 years has overcome it.
First, it’s just plain hard to get back to that game. On the other hand, we’re talking about a franchise that was good enough to play in one championship, so it stands to reason that more than just one of 48 teams should’ve actually gone ahead and won the thing the next year.
But those who have attempted it say there’s a hangover — Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner said that a year after the Rams lost in one Super Bowl, they spent the entire season thinking about the last one.
There are also roster constraints at play. Free agency. Salary cap. A late draft position. Super Bowl teams rarely have the luxury of cap space — they’re in win-now mode. In other words, when it comes to improving the roster — on fixing what went wrong — it’s often this or that, not both.
The Chiefs went all in on what got them beat in Tampa Bay. They knew all along their offensive line would demand significant attention. The Super Bowl only reinforced that.
And, you know what, that part has actually been a success — they have the 11th-best pass-blocking line in the NFL and the second-best run-blocking unit, per Pro Football Focus.
By collateral damage, in part, the weight of the attention provided to the offensive line left issues on the defensive line, particularly at edge rusher. They were unable to land a wide receiver they coveted to provide better depth behind Tyreek Hill. Those are two upgrades they could still use today.
Yet, the Chiefs thought they’d be different than their Super Bowl runner-up predecessors. After all, they do have an element that should separate them. Their core remains in place. This is the primary group that just nine months ago was good enough to not only play for a Super Bowl but be favored in the game.
Here they sit, though, with a 3-4 record, still feeling the consequences of a Super Bowl hangover. Still talking every week as though this is the week to recapture the magic that got them to that championship game.
Ten weeks to go.
“We’ve got good players and good coaches — we just need to do it,” coach Andy Reid said. “I’ve done a lot of talking, and we haven’t had the results that we need. So there’s not a lot I can say that I haven’t said — we just need to get it done.”