How Patrick Mahomes — with just his eyes — sprang Travis Kelce open on key Chiefs TD
The older brother rose to his feet, bare-chested inside a Highmark Stadium suite, and he outstretched his arms before releasing a scream that, at least by appearances, required every muscle in his upper body.
The younger brother reared back and launched a football deep into the seats before molding his hands into the shape of a heart, which prompted some to suspect it just might be a message to his girlfriend occupying the same suite.
That’s what came after the first touchdown that Travis Kelce had caught in nearly two months — and it was his first of two scores in the Chiefs’ 27-24 win Sunday against the Bills in the AFC Divisional Round.
That aftermath, nods to Jason Kelce and Taylor Swift, would draw plenty of attention over the ensuing 24 hours.
But everything before the play? Turns out, the tiniest of movements set it all up.
Kelce has shown some burst over two postseason games — something resembling the return of his old burst. His decision to sit out the Week 18 finale has provided evident benefit, an effect sustained longer than one week.
But that’s not why he was open for a touchdown. In fact, he’s not even the reason he was open.
To be sure, he was completely uncovered by the time a Patrick Mahomes throw reached him, so all by his lonesome that you couldn’t help but say the obvious out loud: How do you leave that guy that open?
Because the Chiefs’ play design trapped the defense. And then Mahomes fooled the secondary.
With his eyes.
The Chiefs sent three options to the left side of their offensive line — Kelce, Noah Gray and a late-arriving Mecole Hardman after pre-snap motion. They ran a snag concept, hoping the congestion would deceive the Bills’ secondary. Gray ran a five-yard hitch to occupy one defender; Hardman ran an eight-yard out route; Kelce took the deep corner.
The Bills, whether the result of a miscommunication in coverage or just subjected to the perfect play call to beat their coverage, were left with one defender deep along the sideline — and that defender, Dane Jackson, was forced to choose between the Hardman route or the deep corner to Kelce. Mahomes tried to influence the decision and locked his eyes on Hardman as he dropped into the pocket.
Until the final split-second.
The eyes pulled Jackson toward Hardman’s shorter route, and Mahomes spotted the hesitation and sent the throw toward Kelce.
Touchdown.
“He’s gotta let it sort out — just a tick,” Chiefs coach Andy Reid said of the quarterback’s role on that play. “And he did that. He’s very patient with it, and then obviously very accurate with the throw.”
That time he was.
The previous chances? He missed.
Mahomes had a near-perfect day against the Bills, a sentence that came as no surprise to those paying attention all week. Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Rashee Rice noticed in the first walk-through of the week that their quarterback was a tad amped to play a road playoff game. His completion percentage was 7.6% above expectation, per Next Gen Stats, his best mark of the season. He was great.
But he whiffed on a couple of early chances. One on the same throw, no less. And, in one instance, to the same receiver.
Mahomes had Kelce on a first-quarter corner route but overthrew him. Two plays later, he had Valdes-Scantling in the opposite corner and overshot that one, too. Preceding those throws, he had used a pump-fake toward shorter routes to try to draw the coverage in before throwing behind it.
On the touchdown, he opted for a different method of deception.
His eyes.
“I thought that was going to really hurt us with how their offense was playing,” Mahomes said of the initial two chances. “But we were able to get back to it.”
After noting the touchdown throw might’ve come on the same route but against different coverage, Mahomes noted the similarity, “Wide open. I knew I couldn’t miss that one. I threw it right at his face.”
The play’s history actually predates the misses. Predates anything we saw Sunday.
The Chiefs ran a similar concept against the Dolphins just a week earlier, and Mahomes hit Gray for 20 yards.
Predates that too, though.
Back in 2021, on a Sunday afternoon against the Cowboys, the Chiefs ran a similar concept, down to the pre-snap motion. A hitch route. An out. And a deep corner. The latter two options, same as they did Sunday in Buffalo, trapped a cornerback into making a a decision on the fly: Which route should he defend? Dallas cornerback Trevon Diggs went toward the out route because, well, Mahomes’ eyes took him there.
His arm took the ball to Byron Pringle. That gained 37 yards.
And it probably gave Mahomes an idea of how to best execute the gained seven points two-plus years later.
There are more pieces to that sequence of plays, spread across three seasons, worth noting. The Chiefs intentionally overload three receivers to the left side of Mahomes. In the examples I covered, Kelce has occupied a different role each time. And in the first two, the defense made darn sure they had No. 87 covered.
A bit ironic, in that case, that the Bills left him open on the deep route — the one that could hurt them most.
Except he wasn’t really left open. He was drawn open.
By the eye movement of a quarterback — and one who had seen that play before.
This story was originally published January 23, 2024 at 7:00 AM.