How Kansas City Chiefs stole a play from the Bills — then won two Super Bowls with it
Joe Bleymaier earmarked the touchdown clip, making sure he could find it again a few months later when he had more time to study.
This wasn’t a happy occasion. It was October 2021, and the Buffalo Bills had just beaten the Chiefs by 18 during a Week 5 game in Kansas City.
As the Chiefs’ receivers coach then, Bleymaier remained intrigued by something he’d seen on the other side. The Bills’ last score with six minutes left — an exclamation point for the resounding win — had a funky movement.
And also an effective one as well.
Bills receiver Isaiah McKenzie had moved in motion toward quarterback Josh Allen before the snap. Just as he started, though, he reversed course, heading again back toward the sideline.
The Chiefs’ zone defenders struggled to sort it all out. Allen found a wide-open Emmanuel Sanders in the end zone for a touchdown, with the Bills celebrating their road victory.
The Bills, who will play the Chiefs in Sunday’s AFC Championship Game, had no way of knowing it, but their actions had just changed the course of two upcoming Super Bowls.
For the team, that is, they were going against.
The birth of Chiefs’ ‘Shuttle’
Matt Nagy said Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo couldn’t be in on the secret. It was the only way to evaluate what was next.
Nagy — the Chiefs quarterbacks coach in 2022 — arrived at training camp that year ready to experiment with all sorts of new plays the Chiefs had brainstormed during the offseason.
And that included a new wrinkle for the red zone: “Shuttle” motion.
The inspiration was the Buffalo Bills.
Bleymaier had studied the Sanders touchdown after the season, then consulted with then-pass-game analyst David Girardi, whose specialty was crafting red zone plays. They implemented “shuttle” motion — a receiver running toward the QB before reversing course — while believing it could be a counter to the typical motion defenses usually see.
Now, it was the time to test things. KC’s offensive coaches — without telling Spagnuolo — inserted some shuttle motion plays into the training camp offense, just to see how they worked.
The results surprised even them.
That Chiefs receiver on the move kept getting wide open — even as coaches circled through seven different players taking that particular path.
“After that,” Nagy told The Star, “it was like, ‘OK, well, let’s keep this in mind, and let’s try to use it as we go.’”
And what better time to pull it out than when 115 million people were watching?
On top of the play sheet
Girardi and then-running backs coach Greg Lewis noted in their preparation for Super Bowl LVII a few months later that the Philadelphia Eagles loved to play man defense in the red zone. And if they did, the “Shuttle” motion would be a perfect way to exploit that tendency.
Nagy remembers that play getting put toward the top of the team’s Red Zone play sheet, with coaches believing it had “a real shot” to work.
They ended up being right.
Receiver Kadarius Toney — after slipping on the turf in practice during Super Bowl week when attempting the shuttle motion — executed it perfectly when it mattered.
And the play, now affectionately known as “Corn Dog,” was a walk-in touchdown for Toney — all because the “shuttle” motion confused the Eagles defenders.
The Chiefs even went back to it again.
This play — “Tent” — called for receiver Skyy Moore to shuttle back and forth. It was even more effective, as Moore had 13.1 yards of separation for his touchdown catch after the Eagles failed to pass off coverage properly.
The motion returns
The Chiefs won 38-35, and once the team advanced to Super Bowl LVIII the following year, KC’s coaches figured the San Francisco 49ers would be ready for the “shuttle” motion to make a return.
So their idea? Use it as a decoy. The Chiefs crafted a red-zone play to have receiver Mecole Hardman use the motion as part of an inside shovel pass intended for running back Jerick McKinnon. That way, the defense would have something else to think about.
Except a funny thing happened when the Chiefs dialed up the call in overtime: The 49ers basically ignored Hardman.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes did his magic from there. Though that throw to Hardman wasn’t supposed to be available as a late read, Mahomes made it anyway, completing the three-yard touchdown for a walk-off touchdown in the Chiefs’ 25-22 victory.
“I think last year was the one that, you look at it, we thought, ‘They’re never gonna let us get that type of motion again,’” Nagy said. “And we put something in off of it, and it happened to be open to Mecole.”
What the Bills think about it
This means Bills coach Sean McDermott and his staff — unwittingly — have contributed to each of the Chiefs’ last two Super Bowl titles.
And when alerted that “Corn Dog” was based on his own team’s play at the 2023 NFL Combine, McDermott let out a wry smile — even if he didn’t seem overly thrilled about it.
“That’s nice for however that came out for them to compliment us,” McDermott said. “But the NFL, to some extent, is a copycat league.”
To be clear: An NFL team taking ideas from others is somewhat commonplace — especially when discussing two teams like the Bills and Chiefs who have frequently been atop the AFC. Now the Chiefs offensive coordinator, Nagy says both teams often naturally have a “What are they doing?” mindset when reviewing the other team’s film.
It’s still not always easy to steal directly from the other. Nagy has seen plenty of instances where a particular scheme works in September but then a copied version doesn’t in November, all because defenses constantly adjust.
Which makes this particular KC postseason narrative all the more compelling.
The Chiefs, in the last two Super Bowls, have been shaped by a motion that’s continued to work.
Much like the first time they saw it from the Bills.
This story was originally published January 24, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
