Why the KC Chiefs should ask Patrick Mahomes to do less and their run game to do more
Patrick Mahomes spotted the football sitting idly on the end zone grass, and he grabbed it immediately. Nestled between his left hip and wrist, the ball joined his jog to the sideline, where he would preserve the keepsake for a teammate.
After the Chiefs’ longest touchdown drive in their 20-17 win Monday night against the Giants, it’s ironic the ball wound up in his hands.
After all, he’d seen so little of it along the way.
Yes, the most fluid drive the Chiefs produced Monday came when they used their MVP quarterback the least. For seven plays on the 11-play march, the ball instead tucked neatly into the belly of running back Derrick Gore. Play after play after play. He totaled 41 yards and his first-career touchdown on that drive. (Hence Mahomes alertly saving the football.)
“When you have guys that work that hard and they’re about to get in that end zone for the first time, you’re happy for them,” Mahomes said.
But this isn’t a Derrick Gore story.
It’s a broader look at that final possession.
Are these the types of drives the Chiefs, at 4-4, should embrace? More run calls, fewer dropbacks?
No, this isn’t an indictment on the quarterback, even if he’s uncharacteristically slumped over the past month. Mahomes remains the Chiefs’ best player, their best weapon and their best path toward a return to contention. A few off-weeks doesn’t change any of that.
But taking the ball out of his hands, at least right now, is a way to make it easier on him.
Don’t agree? Ask him.
“I mean, when defenses are playing a lot of shell coverages like they are, you have to run the ball,” Mahomes said. “I think we know that. That drive was kind of our way of doing that.”
This is not a story we expected to write this season, and as those tasked to document the unique, that demands all the Patrick Mahomes plays the Chiefs are willing to offer us.
But is it time the Chiefs invoke the less beautiful, the less theatrical and the less entertaining brand of football? Is it time they use power in the trenches and ride the brute strength of a vastly improved offensive line?
The Chiefs have played eight games this season, and they’re perhaps the only one of the NFL’s 32 teams who can say this: They’ve seen the same defensive scheme all eight weeks. We’ll keep mentioning it as long as the Chiefs keep it relevant, but the opposition’s objective is to play two deep safeties in order to negate the Chiefs’ speed over the top.
As a counter, the Chiefs have talked about needing to settle for short and intermediate passing routes. And they were better in that area Monday. But there’s one more avenue to beating the deep shells.
Just run, baby.
“If the defense is going to give us an opportunity to do something, we take advantage of that and at least try to come out on the right end of it,” coach Andy Reid said.
Reid did not say those words this week. He said them last month. And something quite similar the month before. And something quite similar back in training camp. He even started the most recent version with, “I’ve mentioned before ...”
So what are defenses giving the Chiefs the opportunity to do? They’re practically begging them take advantage of light boxes and dominate the game the old-fashioned way.
Darrel Williams and Gore combined for 24 carries Monday. In those 24 designed run plays, they saw eight-man boxes on none of them. None. For comparison’s sake, Patriots running back Damien Harris carried 23 times last weekend, and nine of those carries were against eight-man boxes, per NextGenStats.
Nobody in football sees fewer eight-man fronts than the Chiefs, their running attack’s luxury of having Mahomes at quarterback.
“There are lanes to be found,” offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said.
If the Chiefs demonstrate a willingness to stick with it — something they did on that 11-play drive Monday against the Giants — they might just force defenses out of the deep shell that recently has given them fits.
A defense might have to creep a safety toward the line of scrimmage rather than immediately breaking back at the snap. The Chiefs might force another linebacker on the field at the expense of a faster defensive back. Or, at minimum, maybe opposing pass rushers won’t feel so comfortable just teeing off on Mahomes.
It’s a tad easier to pass-block when the opposing defense fears the threat of the run, even a little bit.
In other words, if the Chiefs increase their quantity of run plays, maybe it could be temporary.
“If we keep being able to run the ball, I think it will help the offense, obviously, but at the same time, we have to execute,” Mahomes said.
Just prove they can do it, you know? Or prove they’re willing to do it.
Because they can. The Chiefs are actually quite good at running the football. No one is requesting they embrace a fault. No one is requesting they jump head-first into a weakness.
The Chiefs are averaging 4.8 yards per carry, even while playing without their top running back, Clyde Edwards-Helaire. That ranks sixth in the NFL, five spots better than they were one year earlier, when they averaged 4.5.
The league-average success rate on running plays is 49.5%, per Sharp Football Stats, which rates the Chiefs well above that at 60.1%. Even more noticeable, they are good almost no matter where and when they run it.
There are seven running lanes identified by Sharp Football Stats — the left sideline, behind the left tackle, left guard, center, right guard, right tackle and the right sideline. In 2020, the Chiefs were 4% above league average when running the ball in only two of those seven directions.
After overhauling their offensive line in the offseason, the Chiefs are at least 9% better than league average in six of the seven lanes — all but behind left tackle Orlando Brown.
That’s not a small margin. Pro Football Focus ranks the Chiefs’ offensive line as the second-best run-blocking unit in the league.
“Our O-line is doing a heck of a job in the run game, and our guys are doing a great job of finding the seams,” offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy said. “We just need to continue building off that.”
Three days before the season opener, Bieniemy telegraphed that the Chiefs might run the ball more often this season. Actually, he said they might have to run the ball more.
The latter has proven true — the space at the line of scrimmage is undeniable, and it only grows as safeties backpedal at the snap. The former, though, hasn’t changed. The Chiefs are actually calling running plays less often than they did a year ago — only 35.2% of their snaps this season result in a rush, and that includes 35 carries from Mahomes that were largely scripted to be pass plays. They were at 38.1% in 2020.
Yes, the Chiefs played from behind this season, and those situations necessitate a higher volume of throws. But they haven’t often just stuck with the ground game, either. They haven’t attempted to rely on it. Who wants to take the ball out of Patrick Mahomes’ hands?
Right now, though, it’s what’s available. Add to that, the Chiefs are successful when doing it. And add to that, the long-term effects could prove most beneficial. This space isn’t advocating that the Chiefs run the ball more than they pass it. Just narrow that 65-35 margin. If they do, they could offer a quarterback currently facing the most unappetizing pass defenses in the league some easier throws.
It will be uncomfortable at first. Unfamiliar.
But if it’s successful — and if later it offers their quarterback some more space in the defensive secondary — who cares?
“We go into a game plan with (the thought that) we want to do whatever is best to help us win,” Bieniemy said. “So the thing that we want to do is make sure that we’re putting our guys in the right situation.
“It may be running it 30 times. Or it may be throwing it 50 times. At the end of the day, we don’t care. We just want to do what is best to help our guys win.”
This story was originally published November 5, 2021 at 5:00 AM.