Mellinger Minutes: Chiefs deserve (need) rest, Mahomes’ struggles (?) and a 14-1 team
Stop it with the rust stuff. Just stop. You’re chasing ghosts. Talking about a boogeyman that exists only in your illogical fears.
The Kansas City Chiefs have a makeshift offensive line doing its best to protect a $503 million quarterback whose best two pass catchers include an insanely fast human man a hamstring injury and a Hall of Fame tight end who is grinding through the wear and tear of a brutal season at 31 years old.
The rest of the roster includes another receiver with both a calf injury and a history of calf injuries, a running back who was inactive with an ankle and hip injury last week, a backup running back who limped through the most recent game, and a linebacker group with two healthy humans.
Don’t make this more complicated than it is. These guys need to heal.
The Chiefs, by virtue of being the NFL’s best team and owners of a 14-1 record, secured the AFC’s No. 1 seed and only first-round playoff bye with a (choppy) win over the Falcons on Sunday.
Before taking his first question postgame, coach Andy Reid preempted the curiosity he knows will fill the week by saying he did not know how he would approach the final regular season game against the Chargers on Sunday. On Monday, he said that everyone would be ready to play but that “certain guys” would rest.
It’s worth noting that Reid said that publicly before going over the plan in detail with his assistants. Reid is careful and organized, so this is a sign he feels comfortable that everyone is in agreement in general and they only need to work through the specifics.
This doesn’t have to be a hard choice. Football, like life, is about weighing risks against rewards. This one is clear.
The Chiefs have played the last 10 games without Mitchell Schwartz, their best lineman. We know the Chiefs are not counting on him for the playoffs. Why would they risk further downgrading Mahomes’ protection with no tangible benefit available? We can make the same point all over the roster.
Football is an inherently dangerous sport, and no roster decision can completely protect against injury. Every week, across the league, guys miss games because of injuries sustained in practice. Games are the only live action available, and players need a certain level of exposure to retain sharpness.
Or, at least, that’s a theory.
But there is no evidence to back this up. You can mention teams like the 2011 Packers or 2010 Patriots, which lost to lower seeded (and inferior) teams after resting late in the regular season. But NFL history also includes the 2012 Ravens and 2009 Saints and others that won the Super Bowl after resting starters.
There is no clear line of causation either way. Some teams that don’t rest starters fail in the playoffs. Some teams that do rest find the same bad ending. Football is too complicated for one-size-fits-all solutions.
Which means the best approach is to look at each situation differently.
The Chiefs have both the means and motive to rest, and specific reasons to believe the potential harm is diminished.
We’ve been over the means and motive. The Chiefs are the league’s best team even with these injuries. The last thing a playoff opponent wants is to play the Chiefs at full strength. Remember a year ago, how differently Patrick Mahomes and Frank Clark moved after a first round bye?
The downsides would seem to be relatively small here, too. If you were to create a team that could be trusted to use extra time productively it would look a lot like the 2020 Chiefs — accomplished but ambitious, experienced already in maximizing rest, with a coaching staff uniquely proven in emerging as their best selves with extra preparation.
Because the choice is not on the extremes. There’s a productive middle ground here, one in which Reid and his assistants trust men who’ve earned it, and give them enough in the next few weeks of practice to avoid atrophy but also not so much as to prevent regeneration.
The Chiefs earned this choice with the best regular season in franchise history. This is a gift, not a problem, and the team is smart to approach it as such.
This week’s eating recommendation is the queso fundido at El Patron and the reading recommendation is this excerpt from John Thompson’s autobiography about his closed door meeting with a drug kingpin.
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Well, nobody should care about this but the week off was not for the remodel (which isn’t quite done). The week off was because of Christmas, and the kids being out of school.
We usually wait until toward the end of this timesuck to go here, but I can’t stop thinking about how precious these moments are. I don’t know how many more Santa Christmases we’ll have, or how many more weeks I can take off from work and the kids will be excited to spend some time with me.
The other day, my world rocked when I realized our 6 year old is halfway done with first grade. Our 4 year old will be in kindergarten next year, and he’s going to kill it, and I’m excited for him, but I will forever miss him as a preschooler. COVID-19 has frozen a lot of our lives in some ways, but time marches on. I’ll be sick if I look back in 20 years and feel like I took any of this for granted, or didn’t appreciate these moments that aren’t coming back.
So, yeah. I took the week. Wasn’t totally unplugged, but I smiled the other day when the notification came that my screen time was down 21 percent, expecially because a lot of the 79 was going through old pictures or playing Christmas music.
But, anyway — gets back in character — I’m looking forward to the challenge of answering your questions. I understand these are well thought out questions, and I need to be prepared for not just what I’ve seen on tape but the unscouted looks you guys always give me.
This is a privilege to do this, to compete, especially this time of year. So with that time’s yours.
Parry, I appreciate your sound, logical comment here.
Parry, you should know you’re not alone. But you’re not exactly in a big crowd, either.
This is a great question because it properly frames what we’re going through here.
For many years, the Chiefs trained their fans to expect to worst. It became a parlor game: What hijinks will ensue to break your heart this time?
It could be a kicker missing three times. Or a home playoff loss without punting, because the guy who never fumbles fumbled. It could be one of the biggest playoff collapses in league history. Or a lame duck referee inexplicably calling forward progress, which people would talk more about if the other team’s quarterback didn’t throw himself a touchdown pass and the Chiefs didn’t line up an undersized defensive back at defensive end on a crucial snap against the baddest mf on the planet.
But, hey, there was also the time they lost a home playoff game without giving up a touchdown, and the time they lost because a guy lined up four inches offsides and they lost the coin flip.
Now, yes, the world has flipped upside down and Chiefs fans are sort of subconsciously ranking the DISAPPOINTING WINS DURING A 14-1 START.
We’ve talked about this before, but a chunk of the current mood depends on whether you see the Chiefs’ unprecedented run of one-score victory margins as a feature or a bug.
Whatever it’s worth, I’ve been on Team Feature. The easy thing is to get caught up in the shiny objects, and the Chiefs have enough to blow anybody out on the right day, but the glittery highlights are enforced by a toughness and resiliency that serves as a separater with championship teams.
All that said, I do view the most recent game as a bug.
Not because the Falcons aren’t better than a 4-11 record, but the Chiefs had too many opportunities unfulfilled to feel great about them in the moment.
This is a weird thing to say but Mahomes has not been that good the last month or so.
I’m planning on spending some of the week trying to figure out the reasons, but my hunch is that the protection issues behind a makeshift line have been amplified by his inconsistent pocket presence and a general lack of sharpness with timing and accuracy.
It’s also worth remembering that as we’ve played this weekly game of Is This Mahomes’ Worst Performance Of 2021 he’s averaged more than 300 yards and made all the important plays, including a win at New Orleans that stands as the Chiefs’ most impressive of the season.
The Chiefs haven’t been perfect recently, and we can find ways to knock them. But they’re No. 2 in Football Outsiders’ DVOA with wins over each of the other teams in the top four. They’ve won 23 of their last 24, with a win on the road against the only team that beat them.
They’re not blowing teams out, but they are winning, and they’re doing it with less than their best selves. There is value in that. We shouldn’t forget that, or how good the defense was against the Falcons.
So, anyway, I keep coming back to this thought:
The Chiefs are flawed, and if they are to lose in the playoffs we probably wouldn’t need too many guesses to find the right answer. But they’re still the best team in the league, and 31 other teams (with the possible exception of the Packers) would trade problems.
Probably, yeah. That’s a good way to put it. His bad days — and that’s how he described the Falcons game — are still pretty good.
I believe he played his worst game of the season against the Falcons, and came up with some luck when A.J. Terrell couldn’t finish the interception in the end zone late in the fourth quarter.
But how many guys can say their worst game included 278 yards passing with two touchdowns, including the late winner?
There are quarterbacks you wouldn’t trust in this situation. You’d wonder about their confidence, or their ability to inventory the issues and work effectively for solutions.
Mahomes ain’t that guy. His talent sometimes covers his intelligence, which is substantial. It’s easier to have the intangibles when you’re as gifted as he is, I suppose, but his smarts and diligence and preparation are good enough that he’d be an excellent quarterback even with more normal talent.
A fuller picture of Mahomes will develop over time. His seasons won’t always include a league MVP or Super Bowl championship. He will fail. He will struggle. And who he is in those moments will tell us more than who he’s been on this incredible ascent.
But all we know is what we’ve seen so far, and what we’ve seen is a man with immense confidence in himself and others, paired with a natural humility that drives the work.
You’ve probably heard me say that if your biggest concern about the Chiefs is the offense then you don’t have an enormous concern.
I still believe that, even with the injuries across the line shrinking the margins, and I believe it because Mahomes is different. Normal rules don’t apply, or at least they haven’t yet.
You can believe that Mahomes forgot how to be great.
But I’m going to trust what we’ve seen before these last four games, and even what we’ve seen in bursts during these last four games.
There was a time the defense would have been a bigger part of this, and perhaps I’m putting too much thought into the most recent game (and the first three quarters of the four or five games before that).
But the standards for the defense are just different, and the NFL is so tilted toward offense that the priorities have to reflect reality.
1. Offensive line. I would like to be clear: the line isn’t the disaster that a lot of fans seem to think. Pro Football Focus ranks the Chiefs No. 7 in pass blocking, and Pro Football Reference has them No. 17 in pressure percentage surrendered. No lines are going to be perfect, and there is a natural human tendency to remember the pressures and not the successes, particularly when you follow one team closely.
All that said, Schwartz’s expected unavailability for the postseason is a major blow. The Chiefs are down to their third choice at left guard (fourth if you count third round pick Lucas Niang’s opt out) and backup at right tackle. Their left tackle has worked with a back injury, and the other two spots have flipped.
They’re doing the best they can, and actually have performed admirably considering the circumstance. But this isn’t the way you want to go into the postseason.
2. Mahomes’ consistency. This is somewhat tied to No. 1, and I mentioned earlier that I’m planning on spending some of the week trying to better understand the issues here.
But something isn’t right with this offense. We can put it all on the offensive line if we want, or we can believe that a $503 million quarterback shouldn’t require perfect protection to be more effective.
After the Falcons game, Mahomes was proactive in claiming mistakes before the snap with protection calls and reads. We have no way of knowing the intricacies there, but we do know those things are typically one of his greatest strengths. Is this simply him holding himself to an unrealistic standard? Were the Falcons doing something he wasn’t prepared for?
Or was he just off, the way a great hitter can go 0-for-4 with two strikeouts?
We don’t know. Can’t know. But this offense tends to operate with a bit of a snowball effect, good or bad. They stress defenses from so many directions that when they’re able to tilt the matchups past a certain threshold, all heck breaks loose and they appear unstoppable.
When they’re unable to achieve that same tilt, they can look something closer to pedestrian, which is frustrating because we know what it looks like when it’s right.
My assumption has been that all these issues we talk about have been amplified by a concerted effort to prepare for the postseason, but there is no version of reality in which the Chiefs believe everything is on schedule right now.
3. Pass rush. This would’ve been higher on the list before the Falcons game, which is the first in a while in which Chris Jones and Frank Clark appeared to be working in tandem, wrecking different parts of the offensive line with pressures that made the other man better.
This is an oversimplification, but everything the Chiefs do defensively depends on that pass rush.
We can talk about the injured linebackers and faulty run defense and coverage breakdowns, but in virtually every way — coaching philosophy, salary cap, personnel, everything — the Chiefs are all-in on pressuring quarterbacks.
That’s where they’ve spent the bulk of their capital, and that’s how their defensive play calls are made. We saw that show up inarguable ways last postseason, most notably in the Super Bowl.
The Chiefs have not created enough pressure (though only the Steelers have knocked quarterbacks down more often) but we saw a similar trend line last year, where the best pressure came at the end.
They have to be the most obnoxious opponent in the league. They are great, and know it, and know that you know it. They can be reduced to mediocrity for stretches, and then wreck your dreams with one unstoppable quarter.
You can have them beat in virtually every way, a game plan efficiently executed, but then none of it matters because Chris Jones just pansted your interior line and Mahomes broke the pocket and whoops there goes Kelce getting behind your linebacker again.
There is a football mantra that you stay true to who you are, and I get that. But I don’t believe a smart football team approaches the Chiefs the same way they would approach a normal team (like the Vikings, say) or even a good one (like the Bills).
I believe you need to be more aggressive on fourth down, and prioritize coverage over pressure, and run the ball more than you normally would — not because it controls the clock, but because it’s the most effective path.
I also believe you can do all of that right, and even get lucky with a turnover or red zone results or a fluky play and still find yourself trying to explain a loss.
The NFL is brutal business, but it’s usually true that when you win you can clearly explain why and when you lose you can easily come up with the answers.
The Chiefs change all that. Must be aggravating.
There is some honestly mixed with the intentional vagueness when Andy Reid talks about “we all have a piece of this, and that starts with me.”
But this offense’s highs have been driven by the unique talents and undeniable mind meld of Reid and Mahomes, so when it’s not as sharp as it needs to be they should be at the front of the line for the blame.
Reid goes through slumps, same as anyone else. Mahomes doesn’t make every throw, or make the right call on every protection. In the best of times, one man can lift the other.
There are at least two reasons to believe this will all be forgotten in a month, though.
The first is that, like we mentioned before, Mahomes walked into the postgame Zoom and immediately diagnosed and took ownership of mistakes.
How many times have we heard coaches and quarterbacks talk about needing to see the film first? Mahomes knows right away, and owns it. His brain works differently, and you have to believe he’ll be able to sift through the issues effectively.
The second is that the defense may be getting its — *Tyrann Mathieu voice* — championship swagger back at the right time. They’ve been steadily improving, similar to last year, but some fourth quarter slips have muddied the waters.
They played one of their best games of the season against the Falcons, and they did it when the offense made it necessary. If that’s a trend, then this is an even more dangerous team.
Speaking of the defense...
Yes, he really is something.
Sometimes it feels like Mahomes locally and Aaron Donald nationally can hide just how good Jones is, but it shows up routinely on tape. He’s a mismatch for the guy in front of him, and often for the two guys in front of him. This is just one example:
But perhaps the most important development on the defense came with Frank Clark. He has not looked like the same player who dominated last year’s postseason, and this was his most disruptive and effective game.
Again, just one example:
This is critical, because Jones and Clark have always been at their best when they work in tandem. They are different types of rushers, and come at the quarterback from different angles.
Jones is more effective when Clark is forcing extra attention on the edge; Clark is better when Jones requires the blockers in the middle. Each man has had sort of vulture sacks, where they take the quarterback down after the other’s pressure forced an attempted escape.
Of all the players who are likely to benefit from the time off, I would put Clark near or at the top of the list.
History is written after small margins are determined.
Sometimes I think about the fact that if Dee Ford was onsides, or if the Chiefs won that overtime coin flip, they probably would have beaten the Patriots in the 2018 AFC Championship and then the Rams in the Super Bowl. They’d already be working on a three peat.
Other times I think about the fact that if Bill O’Brien was better with a lead, or if the Titans could have closed the deal, or if the 49ers didn’t abandon the run or if Jimmy Garoppolo hit Emmanuel Sanders deep in the Super Bowl we’d still be talking about a team that can’t succeed in the playoffs.
The margins are tiny, and once the results come we tend to treat them as absolute.
I know that’s how the world works, especially in a business that is so fundamentally results-oriented as professional sports, but the point is that because of the life they’ve chosen everything from budding dynasty to objective failure is still on the table for the 2020 Chiefs.
Nobody remembers how bad the 2014 Royals were into July, and nobody remembers all the criticism the 2019 Chiefs defense took or the uncertainty of Mahomes’ return from that dislocated kneecap. The results shape memories, and often retroactively.
I don’t have any useful way to compare this team to the 1969 champions, and I’m not sure anyone else does, either. But I do think this is the best team in the league, and I also believe that doesn’t matter nearly as much as what they do in the most important moments next month (and perhaps the month after).
Three weeks is a long time to heal, so we’ll see what that looks like. The more interesting and immediate question to me is what the Chiefs do with Willie Gay.
He was pressed into a season-high 49 snaps against the Falcons, and he was often terrific, with a few examples of the rough edges that have kept him off the field.
His speed and agility give the Chiefs some juice at that position that they would otherwise lack, but he’s also relatively inexperienced and the lack of an offseason did him no favors in catching up.
Craig Stout has a great breakdown of Gay’s performance here, and I always feel good when I agree with him.
Gay’s snaps can generally be described as energetic and effective, but there were moments where he appeared to not get to the right place at the right time, creating opportunities for the Falcons.
The question for Steve Spagnuolo has always been how much of the latter is he willing to take for the former, and the question for Gay has always been how quickly he can correct those mistakes and amplify his strengths.
Spagnuolo and linebackers coach Matt House are good at what they do, and my expectation is that they’re able to help Gay find the right situations and reads in the playoffs.
But I do think they’ll continue to be choosy about the quantity of those situations, because they don’t have a track record of enormous personnel shifts like this.
I don’t like to use screenshots of plays because they are usually misleading, so I’m pausing this video a moment before Watkins risks it all for his quarterback:
It does appear that Kelce is a big target at the 15, and Darrel Williams is beginning to break wide open for a first down around the 25.
But, like you said, hard to knock Watkins. He’s a wide receiver, and Mahomes mentioned that he put it in Watkins’ head to throw no matter what because it was fourth down.
But, anyway, speaking of the trick plays...
They did convert a 4th and 1 with a traditional run up the middle, with Williams going for 11 on this play:
But I look at this a little differently. I don’t see the trick plays as being too full of themselves — I see it as a humility, that they know the conventional stuff doesn’t work as well.
Even at full strength this offensive line is not great at point-of-attack run stuff, of moving the large man on the other side back in obvious run downs. The injuries — particularly to Kelechi Osemele — have accentuated the issue.
And if you watch that 4th and 1 run by Williams again, you’ll notice even then the Chiefs faked a jet sweep handoff to Mecole Hardman. Maybe that mattered, maybe it didn’t, but even one defender leaning the wrong way can make a difference.
This is who the Chiefs are. This is part of their identity. They are faster than they are strong, so in these tight spots they want to stretch the defense horizontally as much as possible.
When it works, we talk a lot about the 1948 Rose Bowl. When it doesn’t, it looks disjointed.
They have to live with it, because it’s the best way.
Great, thank you!
Played catch with the kids, read books, laughed. Did some sort of exercise every day except Christmas. The only thing I didn’t do that I wanted was more cooking, especially with the grill/smoker.
Life is a wild ride. There have been times I’ve wanted every second of my time off to be active, often with travel. There have been times I’ve wanted every second of my time off to be inactive, often with movies or video games.
It feels like I’ve found this nice middle ground now, not obsessed with creating Instagram-able travel pictures and not content with staying on the couch.
I hope you all had a great week, and celebrated whatever holiday you celebrate with happiness.
Speaking of...
This week, I don’t know if it was the week off or the end of the year here, but I’m particularly grateful for you. I’ve had this job 10 years now, which feels weird to type out loud, and I am beyond appreciative of your time and grace and interest. I sometimes joke about all the bosses I have at The Star, but the truth is you are the only bosses who matter. You’re the ones who ultimately decide whether I’m worth the time, and enough of you have answered yes that my life has changed for the better.
Thank you thank you thank you, a million times thank you.
This story was originally published December 29, 2020 at 5:00 AM.