The Chiefs already made a key change to their playbook this season (Not on offense.)
Four days before kickoff, Chiefs players unwrap the week’s game plan, a bit of a mystery reveal that Travis Kelce calls the most enjoyable meeting of the week.
There’s an extra flare to the opener, certainly, considering it presents the first opportunity to publicize to the world some of the playbook’s offseason changes.
But without knowing a single call on Andy Reid’s laminated sheet for Thursday night against the Detroit Lions — not one option for the mystery reveal — I’ll confidently say the best change in the Chiefs’ playbook is not one within the offense. Not within the defense, either.
Instead, it’s on special teams.
A forewarning: It’s the most boring of alterations, because it is not some clever addition. This column is not about the Snow Globe huddle. It’s about the subtraction (or partial subtraction) of the simplest play.
The kickoff return.
At last. We’re here. Yes, the Chiefs appear prepared to wave the white flag on kickoff returns — or at least wave a single hand in the air.
On Monday, Dave Toub, the team’s special teams coordinator, said the Chiefs will fair-catch many kickoffs this season after all. A strategy he rebuffed only three months earlier, Toub is leaning in now, following a rule change that will give teams the ball at their own 25-yard line for the fair catch.
“You have to go back and look at it — look at the analytics of it,” Toub said. “The free yards that you get from that (are) just too big. It’s just too big.”
Precisely.
It is a complete about-face from the aftermath of the rule change this summer — when Toub was not only defiant but adamantly so, declaring to the rest of the league that he would continue to invoke an “aggressive” approach to returning kicks. Toub acknowledged it was a flip Monday, remarking, “We’re not going to return everything like I said (before).”
And you know what? Good for him. When you get to this level of coaching, there’s a lot of pride involved. Toub has two Super Bowl rings. And he had some emotion behind his original insistence to take kicks out of the end zone, past results be damned. It probably wasn’t easy to walk into the room Monday and say in 131 words what he could have shortened to about six:
“That was wrong. We’re reversing course.”
Better late than never. And in this case, it’s not really late — the Chiefs haven’t played a game that counts in the standings since the NFL’s rule change. Toub believed so strongly in one side but still listened to an honest view of the numbers and let that instead drive the bus.
It doesn’t matter how he arrived here — whether his own volition, urging from Andy Reid or elsewhere. All that matters is he’s here and on the appearance of it, readily so. And while it’s seemingly a small tweak — just a couple of yards here or there — it can have a significant impact.
Sure, the Chiefs will have bigger impact plays this season with Patrick Mahomes involved. Some of those aforementioned additions will probably prompt touchdowns. Some could win even a game. Perhaps Jet Chip Wasp or Corn Dog Shuttle resides on that sheet.
But they will not be following such clear data as to their expected output. This is not a chess match with the opposition. As of Monday, the Chiefs have already made the right play call — so long as new returner Richie James follow through, of course.
On the day Toub insisted the Chiefs would still return kickoffs, as the league dangled the new carrot for a fair catch, I rushed to research whether the Chiefs’ philosophy matched their own output.
Last year alone, the Chiefs returned 25 kickoffs from inside their own 5-yard line or deeper, and 19 were graded as a negative-outcome play in terms of expected points added (or in those cases, subtracted). And that was before they had the alternative of a fair catch for the 25-yard line. They had only one kickoff returned past midfield. The entire league ran back a mere 0.6% of kicks for touchdowns.
All the while, the Chiefs have a guy who is pretty good at scoring touchdowns. The Chiefs led the league last season in yards per drive and points per drive.
While analytics can sound like scientists in a lab, this one isn’t complicated: Just let Mahomes do his thing. Don’t add variance to the equation while he’s standing on the sideline.
If last year’s results weren’t enough, the Chiefs were terrible in a small sample size over the preseason. Six of their nine returns didn’t even make it past their own 16.
If the preseason is truly about evaluation, that evaluation should fall to more than the players. It should include the process.
The Chiefs have changed their process.
In an important year for the Chiefs’ special-teams unit — in need of a regular-season reboot after last year’s struggles (though they were better in the playoffs) — they’ve already started on the right foot.
Before kickoff Thursday.
This story was originally published September 5, 2023 at 6:00 AM.