There’s a new wrinkle to the Chiefs’ point of emphasis this training camp
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Chiefs offense emphasizes deep passing game to address 2024 scoring decline.
- Defense allowed 52 explosive passes in 2024, up from 39 in 2023.
- Training camp offers live reps to strengthen coverage, pressure and tackling.
By the time Patrick Mahomes reared back to throw the football, his receiver, Hollywood Brown, must have been 40 yards downfield.
Mahomes hardly looked before he recoiled and fired, a purposefully trained response: Hey, when nothing is open during this edition of Chiefs training camp, might as well look to throw the ball deep. It’s all part of push from the team’s offensive coaches to, well, push the envelope and push the issue.
But let me share the remainder of that play Thursday morning at Missouri Western’s practice fields here in St. Joseph, because Brown wasn’t the only one sprinting through the middle of the field while the ball was in flight.
Not one but two Chiefs defensive backs were running along with him, and a third player, safety Bryan Cook, read the play early and retreated in time to make a play on the football. In fact, Cook got his hands on the ball first, although he dropped it.
The pass attempt is key.
The pass breakup? Just as much so.
See, for all of the work the offense is putting into its deep passing game (again) during camp, there’s a built-in though not quite as prestigious advantage to its emphasis:
The Chiefs’ defense needs this work, too.
I don’t mean that vaguely in the iron-sharpens-iron sense, because you hear that a lot this time of year — nor that a Chiefs defense that ranked fourth in the NFL in points allowed last season has some extensive catching up to do.
Instead, it’s this very subject.
The deep pass.
Kansas City’s defense was productive a year ago — more productive than the offense, for the second straight year — but it did sprout a weakness. The Chiefs allowed 52 explosive passes in 2024 — passing plays that totaled at least 20-yard gains — a year after giving up the fewest in the league at 39.
If you’re investigating how they dropped from second in yards allowed in 2023 to ninth in 2024, this would be a really good place to start the examination. The big play. They were susceptible to it, more than all but eight teams, and it didn’t matter the opponent. Heck, the Las Vegas Raiders marched into GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium and tallied seven passing plays that gained at least 25 yards.
By year’s end, the Chiefs allowed the sixth most yards in the NFL on passes thrown downfield (884), and they faced the seventh most attempts.
But it’s nowhere near the amount of air traffic they’ve seen during the opening week of training camp, which features non-padded practices that basically turn each drill into a pass-heavy affair.
“I don’t like them when they happen ... but hopefully it makes us better at eliminating those,” Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo said. “Because those will kill you in the game.”
That’s the very point. For a defense that exhibited relatively few weaknesses and compiled a lot more positives than otherwise — they even finally shored up the run defense — it might seem like nitpicking to zero in on one of the few they struggled to execute well.
But the impact of those explosive plays was just so significant. They will, as Spagnuolo said this week, kill you.
A 2022 Pro Football Focus study showed that offensive drives including an explosive play nearly quadrupled the expected points for that drive. A spike is logical, but quadruple? That’s pretty remarkable, and it makes it critical for the Chiefs to devote some attention to it.
On both sides of the ball.
There’s a reason the Chiefs’ offense has put so much time and effort into it, rather than throw up their hands after last year’s time and effort bore little fruit. They managed 42 explosive plays a year ago, 27th in the league.
It can be quite difficult to march down the field. A chunk play changes everything. Well, or it’s four times more likely to change some things.
Spagnuolo is an aggressive coordinator — his blitz rate of 34.0% is higher than all but four teams, per NFL-Plus data. That makes the Chiefs more likely to generate big plays, but it also makes them more susceptible to giving them up — though, I’ll note once more than they allowed the fewest in the league in 2023.
The difference? They covered better on the back end in 2023 — or covered for one another. The Chiefs didn’t receive enough help from their safeties last year, and offenses found a couple of spots they preferred to target. Safety Nazeeh Johnson’s WAR on downfield shots (essentially his value on those plays) was -0.3, per Sports Info Solutions, tied for worst in the league among cornerbacks. That’s one way to allow chunk yardage.
And here’s another: Safety Chamarri Conner missed the third most tackles after the catch, per PFF. That’s just about the easiest path to turning small gains into big ones: missed tackles.
It would be far easier, or at least simpler, to find one cover-all solution. It doesn’t typically work that way, and it certainly doesn’t work that way here.
Individual play can improve the bigger picture, particularly given the fact that those two guys — Johnson and Conner — are a couple of this defense’s younger players. Assignments can change to account for it, too. And if the Chiefs can better generate pressure with rushing only four — an objective that star defensive end Chris Jones mentioned this week — that can go a long way to ensuring an opposing quarterback doesn’t have enough time to throw a football a long way.
It all can be part of the resolution.
So can just plain practicing it.
The offense is providing the Chiefs’ defense that chance after chance — even if the defense isn’t generating the attention for it.
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 6:30 AM.