Mellinger Minutes: Mahomes’ MVP case and the problem with scheming against the Chiefs
This is a place for sports and nonsense, and triple pinky swear we’ll get to all that soon but literally at this very moment I’ve gone from reading about this incredible progress with a COVID-19 vaccine.
Many steps remain. Many days. Weeks. Cases. Deaths.
But something about this news just hit me with an optimism I did not expect to feel today.
Because this can feel like it’ll never end, right? The masks, the protocols, the inability to go out to dinner with friends, the uncertainty about when schools might close or open. Eight months is a blink in our lives, except when they feel like eight years.
You give in a little. We all do. We have to. We can find small wins. We can spend more time at the lake in the summer, or enjoy the outdoors more. We can do more fires on the patio, beers in the driveway, catch in the yard. Those are wins.
But you give in, too. You can’t go to as many games. Can’t go out to dinner with friends in the same way. Can’t go inside a store without a mask that’s both uncomfortable and blocks simple human interaction. That stuff takes a toll, and with the holidays coming up we’re only going to feel that even more.
Maybe that’s why the vaccine news lifted me. It won’t be here in time for my mother-in-law to do her usual big Thanksgiving, and it won’t be here in time for my kids to spend part of Christmas with their California cousins. It won’t be here in time for those big New Year’s parties. It might not even be here in time to keep the open schools from closing, or to help the closed schools open.
But it’s on the way. It’s being produced. And more will come after that.
The best scientists in the world have been working like never before, and pushing a boulder uphill is brutal work but eventually you can see the top. Bless them all.
Like a lot of people, I’ve spent chunks of the last eight months wondering how we’ll remember this. Our national response has been often incoherent, with contradicting messaging made worse by folks with an agenda to push. That’s a failure that will be examined for years, and studied in schools.
We’ve had bursts of success, too. Good for professional sports saying yes, and accepting the challenge with imperfect but mostly positive results. Good for schools who’ve worked to stay open to give kids — particularly young kids — the structure, class, supervision and nourishment they need.
There are times it feels like this will never end — the uncertainty, the stress, the mask orders. In real ways, we’re never going back to March 12 again. The way we interact and gather and travel will be changed for years.
I have no illusions that a vaccine will fix our problems. The political divide isn’t shrinking, for instance. Many will chose not to get a vaccine. Those who do won’t be guaranteed immunity.
But this is something. A big something. It means freer minds if a family wants to go to a baseball game next spring, less stress about schools staying open, fewer restrictions on crowds at football games or tables at restaurants. It means real trick-or-treating next year, and big Thanksgivings, and bigger Christmases.
Again: this is all far away. The vaccine can’t even be presented to the FDA yet. Even if we assume approval, the process of production and distribution and then a two-dose vaccine will take into the spring, at least. Even then we’ll have aftershocks.
This is not spiking the ball into the end zone. But other than moments with my family, and the first time since March that I heard a crowd spontaneously applause, this is the happiest I’ve been in months. For the first time, it feels like something close to an exit from this is closer than the beginning.
This week’s eating recommendation is the chicken at Poi-O, and the reading recommendation is Gene Weingarten in search of healing.
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I’m with Seth on this. A lot of the initial reaction to the win was about it being ugly or unimpressive. More negative than positive. The Chiefs are substantially better than the Panthers, and the Panthers still had a chance to win at the end, so something had to go wrong.
I’m looking at this differently.
The Panthers played great. They had a sound plan on both sides of the ball. They executed those plans well. Individually, they had guys make tremendous plays. Matt Rhule and the coaching staff were aggressive, presumably knowing they’d have to steal a few extra opportunities.
I believe the Panthers would’ve beat the Steelers yesterday, for instance.
The win on Sunday is illustrative of a few things we’ve been talking about consistently this season.
One is this idea that the Chiefs are not playing a particular opponent as much as they’re playing themselves. The opponent can do certain things to make it more difficult on the Chiefs, but at some point that becomes like locking your doors when a hurricane is coming. If the Chiefs do what they can do — and do it adequately, not perfectly — then the opponent doesn’t matter.
The other is that the Chiefs have all the answers to the test. We’ve seen them win with patience. We’ve seen them win with guts. We’ve seen them win with speed, with strength, with the run, with the pass, with defense, with special teams.
We’ve seen them win with 30 yards on 10 called rushes, and we’ve seen them win with 209 on 36. We’ve seen them win while giving up 479 yards on defense, and we’ve seen them win with just 286 yards on offense.
We spend a lot of time talking about the blueprint to beat the Chiefs, but the truth is this team cannot be typecast. They can be beat, obviously, but there is no secret path. You probably need to create pressure without blitzing, and you definitely need touchdowns and not field goals, and it would probably help if you can come up with a big play on defense or special teams.
But you can’t assume you’ll beat these guys with strength, or with speed, or with possession, or with blitzes, or with deep coverages, or any other gimmick, because whatever plan you come up with might whack the mole in front of you but will leave two others unwhacked.
That sentence got away from me a little bit. Thanks for sticking with me.
The point is that the rules of the NFL don’t often allow for a team like this, with such diverse strengths. It’s a gorgeous thing to watch.
Andy Reid would rather go vegan than show emotion during press conferences. This is an intentional act he plays, by the way. Away from media, he is hilarious. He can speak on any number of topics at length, and intelligently. He’s a treasure.
But when the cameras are on, with few exceptions, he goes into character. His body stiffens. He does not turn his head. He does not raise his voice. He speaks only loud enough to be heard. That disconnect is only amplified right now, with all interviews done through video conferencing.
All of that is true but so is this: I can tell with 100% certainty that Reid has never enjoyed coaching more than he does right now, with this team.
What I’m saying here is that it would not surprise me to hear that Reid sleeps with that windshield on, or that he has a personal fumigator who sprays down his Jack Stack takeout on the way home from work.
Yes.
In fact, I believe it’s more likely that they’ll three than just one.
Their offense is not explosive. Their last three wins have come by a combined 12 points, including one in which they were outgained 2-to-1. They will have played 13 consecutive weeks by the end of the regular season.
Their schedule is pretty soft. The Bengals are getting better, the Ravens outplayed them two weeks ago, the Bills can be dangerous on the right day, and you can squint a little to make the Colts and Browns interesting. Their remaining schedule ranks 20th.
So they’ll probably be favored every week, at least until they lose, but football seasons often look a lot different in November and December than in September and October. This time last year the Patriots were 8-1. They lost five of nine games once the calendar hit November.
I’m not saying that’s how it will go for the Steelers. What I’m saying is they’ll lose at least a game, and if I was doing the guessing I’d say two or three.
We haven’t seen a lot from any of the running backs the last three weeks. Bell’s first game was against the Broncos. He’s had six, six, and four carries. In those same games, Clyde Edwards-Helaire has had eight, six, and five.
I do think there’s some of what you’re talking about here. Guys take entire offseasons to absorb playbooks. Bell has had three games, and let’s remember that he’s going from a rickshaw with the Jets to a Ferrari (right)* with the Chiefs.
*The audience for that joke is small, but I expect them to appreciate it.
But in some ways Le’Veon Bell’s name and considerable accomplishments are a distraction to his purpose with the Chiefs. They do not see him as the guy from 2014, or even 2017. They do not need a lead back. Clyde Edwards-Helaire is their lead back.
But the Chiefs also don’t want a workhorse running back. They thought Edwards-Helaire would be the lead in a partnership with Damien Williams. When Williams opted out, they pursued Adrian Peterson.
When the Chiefs signed Bell, Edwards-Helaire was fourth in the league in touches. The Chiefs were not confident that would be sustainable long term.
Bell is here to make Edwards-Helaire’s life simpler. To make his Mondays less painful.
It’s coincidental that his arrival lined up with the three games the Chiefs ran less than they have all season, but those things are heavily dictated by the opponent.
Bell is a good backup running back. That’s what the Chiefs hoped when they signed him. That’s what they expect him to be the rest of the way.
Pretty small?
Steve Spagnuolo has been a revelation (along with improved personnel) and is a former head coach who’s been public about his desire to have another chance. But his teams went 10-38, the Rams improved by 5 1/2 games the season after he was fired, and the league is so offense and quarterback heavy that there aren’t a lot of spots for head coaches with backgrounds on defense.
Dave Toub has been mentioned for jobs in the past, but has never seemed particularly close, and at least so far his special teams aren’t providing the best platform for his candidacy.
Assuming Eric Bieniemy is hired, there’s always the chance that he’d take some guys with him. But the Reid assistants who’ve been hired as head coaches don’t typically do that. Reid could also block, say, Mike Kafka from leaving to be an offensive coordinator somewhere by giving him that title here.
It’s a natural thing to ask, but Toub has been adamant on this point — even calling Tommy Townsend’s holds “perfect.” I’ll take his word on that.
This is mental. I don’t like to play armchair psychologist, but it’s hard to come to any other conclusion. He’s hitting 55-yarders through swirling winds, and 58-yarders with the game on the line, but has missed twice as many extra points as anyone else in the league?
This is an example of a spot where our understanding is limited without locker room access. In normal times, we’d be talking to Butker and Townsend every week. In these unprecedented times*, we’re essentially limited to Toub once a week.
*Not to mention in this economy, with this new normal.
The problem seems to be that Butker is taking different swings on extra points. That he’s guiding it more, kicking it less. The attempted solution has been to make him think of extra points like field goals. That’s why he’s alternated the hash marks.
The wind was howling on Sunday, but that missed extra point never had a chance. That’s as bad a kick as we’ve seen from him, which is a sign that the problem might be getting worse, not better.
He’s got the yips. That’s what it looks like, anyway, and this is a difficult thing to solve. The yips have ruined baseball careers. I’m not saying it’ll get that bad here, but once the mind is infected the solution can be difficult.
The good news is that Butker is equipped for this physically. He prepares as hard as anyone. He studies. He works.
He’s said his mission is to turn himself into a robot. At the moment, he’s short circuiting on the easiest kicks. He is in a potential danger zone right now. But the Chiefs believe in him, and for good reason.
You’d have to assume he’ll get through this, and that it’ll turn into one of those weird historical tics, like that time the Chiefs went an entire season without a wide receiver catching a touchdown.
But we need to see it to know for sure.
The pressure isn’t as consistent as they’d like, but it’s there.
The Chiefs pressured Teddy Bridgewater on exactly half of his 52 drop backs, according to Pro Football Focus. Official stats are kept differently, but the Chiefs were credited for nine hits (including five by Chris Jones) on Bridgewater.
The PFF numbers were higher than I expected, but overall the Chiefs are creating pressure on 23.3% of pass rushes, which ranks eighth according to Pro Football Reference.
I’m assuming we’ll talk more about this next week, but the schedule presents an interesting opportunity. The Chiefs have a bye week and then the revenge game against the Raiders, which is a revenge game in no small part because the Chiefs had their worst game with pressure — Derek Carr was 18 of 22 for 219 yards and two touchdowns with no pressure.
We know Reid’s record off bye weeks is incredible, and we know this particular bye week comes with extra motivation.
I’m expecting a borderline bloodbath, to be honest.
Well, I think he’s the MVP. I actually don’t think it should be close with Russell Wilson.
I get that Wilson is having a big year, but Tyreek Hill is right — he won’t get the opportunity to make the DK Metcalf rundown tackle because Mahomes doesn’t throw that interception.
I just looked this up, but would you believe that Mahomes has only thrown two red zone interceptions in his career?
Mahomes’ stats are outrageous. He is pacing for 4,777 yards, 44 touchdowns and two interceptions. He’s scrambled for eight third-down conversions, which is one fewer than Lamar Jackson.
Wilson has the funner case, but he also has 10 turnovers. That’s a lot for halfway through an MVP season.
I’m glad you brought up Aaron Rodgers. He is, in some ways, Mahomes’ statistical mirror. He’s completing 67.5% (0.6 more than Mahomes) with 24 touchdowns (one fewer) and two interceptions (one more) and an 87.6 QBR (0.6 more).
If there’s a tiebreaker it’s probably Rodgers’, with an average defense and less talent around him. The Rodgers F You tour after the Packers drafted Jordan Love would make for a little extra sauce on the case.
We still have half a season to go, and the second half will be more determinative than the first half for the MVP race.
But at the moment, Mahomes is basically providing the same fireworks as Wilson with a fraction of the turnovers, and out-Rodgersing Rodgers.
That’s MVP stuff.
You asked about Tyreek Hill, and I’m not ignoring that. I just think that with how the NFL is played in 2020 a quarterback is going to be the MVP.
I’m assuming Max said dunk intentionally, which is a good enough line that I’m not going to make the obligatory joke about him getting flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct. Oops.
I don’t have a vote, but for me Kelce went from borderline to nearly certain Hall of Famer last season.
That’s when he had his fourth consecutive 1,000-yard season, continued to move up the list in career statistics, and was a critical part of a Super Bowl champion.
He already has more catches and yards than Kellen Winslow Sr., and just two fewer touchdowns. We all understand the difference in how the game is played now, but tight end has had a five-year run quite like what Kelce is doing — 426 catches for 5,497 yards and 33 touchdowns with seven more games to go.
Actually, forget tight ends. Here is the complete list of human football players with more catches or yards than Kelce since 2016:
Michael Thomas, DeAndre Hopkins and Julio Jones.
That’s it.
That’s the list.
The rest of the top 10 in catches and yards is a list of the game’s best: Davante Adams, Tyreek Hill, Stefon Diggs, Mike Evans, Larry Fitzgerald.
The blocking thing is played out, too. It’s true that Kelce is not as forceful of a blocker as George Kittle, but it doesn’t take a lot of film to see that Kelce is highly effective, and that the Chiefs trust him with key blocks in space in both the run and screen game.
For most of the last five or six seasons, Kelce has been widely considered the second best tight end behind Rob Gronkowski. Now it’s generally him and Kittle, in whichever order, and there’s no compelling reason to believe Kelce won’t continue to be at that level for the next few years.
So, what we’re talking about here is a guy who will have a decade’s worth of work in which he was considered the best or near the best at his position, a critical part of a consistent winner and a Super Bowl champion.
That’s the kind of resume that jumps to the front of the Hall of Fame line.
The Chiefs are not a run team. They haven’t been since Andy Reid was hired eight seasons ago, and they will not be as long as Patrick Mahomes remains employed.
Everything the Chiefs do is, in ways direct or otherwise, intended to build on the strengths of Mahomes and Reid. That means a priority on skill position talent. The Chiefs have spent big on tackles, but the interior of the line has consistently been low capital and athletic. These are not hogs to run behind.
That’s even truer when Austin Reiter is at center rather than Daniel Kilgore, which is how the Chiefs did it against the Panthers. My assumption is that the Chiefs figured this would be a pass-heavy game, so they doubled down on their biggest strength.
This is pretty remarkable: the Chiefs have rushed for just 181 yards combined the last three games, and outscored their opponents by an average of 18 points.
They just don’t need it. They can do it — we saw that against the Texans, and the Chargers, and especially the Bills — but that’s not what they’d rather do.
I know I’m extreme on this, but I’d be OK with the Chiefs throwing it on 80% of their snaps. Reid is so good at designing short passes that work like runs, except in more open spaces.
The old football line is you run to set up the pass. But I think the Chiefs can pass short and quick to set up their passes long and deep.
You lose the effectiveness of play-action with that, but no offense puts more pre-snap and assignment stress on defenses than the Chiefs, which ends up having a similar impact.
Run the ball against light boxes, sometimes. Otherwise let it eat.
I wrote about the Royals recently, but there’s a difference between where the Royals believe they are in the process and where they’d need to be to believe they’re a player away.
This is a fascinating moment in their development. Like all teams — all businesses, really, except for Clorox and Zoom — they’re operating with suboptimal financials.
A year ago, they had internal discussions about whether they could and should sign both Sal Perez and Jorge Soler to long-term contracts. Now, they’ll likely non-tender Maikel Franco and will have discussions about what to do with Soler, who would likely be in line for around $9 million through arbitration.
But you’re making a good point. The Royals play toward the bottom of the market. But if the top of the market falls, at what point is it smart business to invest?
We’re continuing to learn about John Sherman. He has generally talked of spending over budget when the time is right, which isn’t far from how David Glass operated.
But does that mean now, after he and his investment group have presumably lost millions in their first year in charge?
Sherman’s directive to everyone who works for him is to make sure the Royals come out of the pandemic better than they entered. Mostly, that’s referring to infrastructure and processes and building out efforts with behavioral science.
At this point, I’d be surprised if the Royals spent big on a free agent.
But I also think 2020 is the worst time in human history to have certainty in a prediction.
Speaking of that...
Consider this a big ol’ shrug emoji, and an opportunity to make an adjacent point.
The return of sports has been a joy. I understand many are watching less sports* but for me and I now others the games have been more important than would be sensibly recommended.
*More on that in a minute.
The NBA and MLB playoffs were terrific. This NFL season has been wild already. College football had its first real moment the other night when Notre Dame beat Clemson. Man, it’s been fun.
There is no escape quite like sports, but until we have a vaccine there is no real escape from COVID-19. That needs to be front of mind. We’re not entitled to these games, same as we’re not entitled to schools being open, or indoor seating at restaurants, or anything else.
The NBA and MLB helped mitigate risk by creating bubbles. The NBA’s worked nearly flawlessly, even as the mental stress of being away from home and family should not be overlooked. Baseball checked the box, and crowned a champion, but Justin Turner’s positive test while in the bubble and the Dodgers’ subsequent outbreak is unneeded proof that nothing is 100%.
Which brings us to MLS. The league generally and Sporting Kansas City specifically have fared well. There have been positive tests, and scares, and isolation. But generally, they’ve done pretty well.
That guarantees nothing, and we are now at the phase that doctors and scientists have for months told us would be the hardest and worst. Think about that: the easy part is over.
Now we’re in flu season, and with the weather cooling we have fewer outdoor options. The holidays will make it even more difficult to be away from friends and families, and we all have different tolerances for the distance.
MLS teams and players are living in the same reality. You can argue they have more reasons to stay safe, and that’s probably true, but I’d also argue that a family with two or three kids in school and some grandparents who’d like to have Thanksgiving dinner has compelling reasons to stay safe, too.
My point: nobody knows what will happen, and nobody can say that delaying a game after or even to prevent an outbreak will work.
MLS’ season is already too long. They shouldn’t be playing into December. Further delays might not make sense.
I’m reminded of a conversation with a football person before the season started. He was referring to the old line about how games are often won away from the field. That line was developed by coaches trying to emphasize the importance of film study, physical condition, preparation.
But he made the point: at no time in history has the point been truer that games are being won and lost away from the field.
Maybe we’ll see that in the MLS playoffs. We all hope not. But we’ve been lucky to have as few disruptions as we’ve had so far. That good luck is being tested more and more each day.
Well, hopefully it means that people can work together for a common goal despite differing political views. My goodness, I hope that’s the case.
If we can only work with people who believe what we believe, then what’s the point?
It’s also worth noting here that Gundy and Brees each had lots of conversations after saying (or wearing) things that created some tension. I’m less familiar with Del Rio’s body of work, but those conversations are how progress is made.
There is a certain number of athletes who don’t care about politics, same as there is a certain number of coaches who don’t care about politics, same as there is a certain number of teachers, business owners, mechanics, lawyers, journalists, whatever.
But I would guess that more athletes are thinking about politics now than any other moment of my lifetime, and I think most of us would agree that athletes have never had this much power.
That doesn’t mean they get whatever they want. Hopefully, it just means there’s a conversation. That’s what we’ve seen with the Chiefs, for instance.
Either way, I don’t take any of this to mean athletes don’t care. I take it to mean that Americans can work together even if they disagree politically.
Gotcha.
Traditionally, I’d argue that TV ratings have served as a weird sort of gossip. It’s interesting to know how many people spent their time watching a specific game, and there can be a sort of civic pride that comes when you see a huge number from your hometown or team.
But you’re right: tangibly, what does it matter?
But, like virtually everything else in the world, TV ratings have now been sort of hijacked to fit a prebuilt narrative. They’re a way into a political conversation that’s almost always one way.
Athletes are speaking out politically more, and if TV ratings are down, that must be the reason. Or that’s the theory from some, anyway.
Nothing’s that simple, of course. No league has been as outspoken as the WNBA, and that league’s Finals ratings were way up. Golf has been relatively quiet socially, and its ratings are all over the place.
I have no doubt that some people — many people, even — aren’t watching because they’re turned off by leagues’ support of social justice. But I also wonder how much those people would be watching anyway. I also think the lack of crowds and the energy fans bring to games makes for a less aesthetically pleasing product.
I also wonder how much of this is that people created new habits while sports went away, and how many people just find it impossible to care about sports when they’ve lost a job or someone they love.
I also think that the traditional sports calendar has been built over time with massive amounts of data to maximize the number of people who will watch. COVID-19 blew that calendar to bits, so now you have the NBA Finals competing with the NFL,
But, anyway, thinking and talking about any of that takes more time than just blaming something you don’t agree with.
This week, I’m particularly grateful for every time our 6 year old asks if we can play catch. Yes. Of course. The answer will always be yes.
This story was originally published November 10, 2020 at 5:00 AM.