The Chiefs’ biggest playoff concern has emerged. Can you guess what it might be?
The goal here is to diagnose as best we can the reasons Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs’ offense are not operating at maximum efficiency. The process involves watching every snap of the Falcons game at least three times, studying data and coming to the most logical conclusions possible.
Even with all of that, a paragraph of disclaimers is appropriate. We do not know the calls or assignments. We can’t be 100 percent sure whether a pass was inaccurate or a receiver was in the wrong spot. Also, we are critiquing decisions made in milliseconds with the comfort of time, replays, slow motion and a lounge chair.
All of that said, we do start to see similar issues stack together. Trends develop. A fuzzy picture clears.
The simplest way to say it is that a battered offensive line is giving up too much pressure, and Mahomes is not handling it well enough. A gap exists, and the Chiefs’ ability to close it from either direction will have an outsized impact on their playoff success.
In the last three weeks, no quarterback faced pressure on dropbacks more than Mahomes.
This is sometimes where his best moments come from, but against the Falcons he completed just four of 17 passes for 37 yards against pressure, according to Pro Football Focus. That’s a 39.6 passer rating, almost exactly half of his season average.
This mirrors a trend over the last month: Mahomes is facing more pressure ... and doing less against it. Advanced metrics like EPA — expected points added, which measures the value of each play — show Mahomes’ production the last four games to be near or even below league average.
In each of his last three games, Mahomes’ performance against pressure has been below his season average.
Football is too complicated for simple explanations like this to cover everything. And indeed, a closer look at the Falcons game shows some snaps where receivers don’t create separation, others where Mahomes makes it harder by breaking the pocket early, and some where he appears to make the wrong read or simply throw inaccurately.
Let’s look at some examples, focusing on plays that prove the point particularly well and helped shift the game.
First, the interception. It is hard to quantify all the ways this snap appears to be out of character for Mahomes. Among his great strengths are pre-snap diagnoses and moving defenders with his eyes, but here he never looks away from Kelce and does not see the linebacker sitting in basic zone coverage at the goal line.
That’s an interception we see every week around the league — the lurking linebacker over the middle — but rarely from Mahomes.
The better read may have been to Hill flashing for an instant on a slant, or to hit Bell or Robinson in the flat with a chance to beat a tackler for a score, or a scramble. He had plenty of time.
We also saw several throws where the receiver had no shot. Some of them are fairly straightforward, like this one where Mahomes has protection, gets his feet set, aims at an open receiver and ... just misfires.
Mecole Hardman had a step — or two — on the defender and enough space to turn up field. Mahomes’ throw just didn’t give him a chance.
Now, the Chiefs’ offense is different than most in the amount of freedom given to receivers. They are trusted to not only read the way defenders are playing and respond in real-time accordingly, but to read it the same way as Mahomes.
When it works, the routes are almost literally unstoppable, because there is no problem for which the Chiefs do not own a solution. But we’ve also seen some examples where a seemingly inaccurate pass is actually an accurate pass to a spot Mahomes expected the receiver to be.
The most memorable of these might be the interception on the throw to Demarcus Robinson in Las Vegas, but we saw one just as notable against the Falcons. Watch Kelce on this play. He makes a double move, first faking the defender toward the middle of the field, then breaking back toward the sideline.
Mahomes expects Kelce to continue to the corner, but Kelce keeps it shallower toward the goal line. The truth is that Kelce won the route convincingly enough that he could’ve scored either way. It’s just that he and Mahomes had to make the same read.
It’s worth mentioning here that a similar problem showed up on the next snap, when Le’Veon Bell appeared to stop running on a screen pass. Mahomes threw the ball to an empty and wide open space. If Bell was there, it would’ve been a walk-in touchdown. Instead, it was incomplete and the next snap was the interception.
Then, there were times Mahomes was let down by the receivers or the play design. Here is a snap with four receivers attacking downfield, which is how a lot of nightmares begin for opposing defensive coordinators and safeties.
The Falcons even play press-man at the line of scrimmage against Hill and Kelce, so Mahomes likely expected an enticing option. The protection is good enough, too, giving the quarterback a full 3 seconds to look before breaking the pocket. He ends up dumping it to Hardman for what would have been a minimal gain, but the ball bounced off his hands.
But, really, if the Chiefs can only fix one problem their aim will be to slow pressure. This snap in the third quarter is a good example, because the pressure comes immediately with Grady Jarrett beating Nick Allegretti.
The play needs to be abandoned immediately, which is a shame because with more time Tyreek Hill is open over the middle with perhaps enough space to make a big play. And because the pressure comes with just four rushers, there is no easy counterpunch to throw to an undefended space.
The whole thing collapses, because Jarrett won his matchup instantly.
OK, last snap here and this is a good one because it incorporates so many of the problems showing up recently that need to be solved for the playoffs.
The pressure comes from a blitzing cornerback, which appears to confuse and surprise Mahomes. This is notable because the Falcons did this consistently, more than perhaps any other game of Mahomes’ career.
Geoff Schwartz, the former Chiefs lineman and current NFL analyst, noted that an unusual look with a smart disguise led to the pressure.
It’s also true that the down linemen collapse the pocket enough to prevent Mahomes from breaking and give the blitzer a more stationary target. If Mahomes could take this snap back, he’d either hit Hill in the space vacated by the blitz or Darrel Williams as a release valve in the flat.
As it happened, he threw to a spot that Sammy Watkins did not anticipate, and it nearly led to an interception.
These are significant issues, particularly the pressures from defenses that are seeing what works to attack an offensive line that isn’t getting its best pass protector back. The trend line is going in the wrong direction, and at the worst possible time.
The issues are getting attention, though. Immediately after the Falcons game, in a moment most quarterbacks would hide under “need to see the film,” Mahomes talked about missed protection calls and reads. He vowed to get better.
Some of that is a quarterback’s burden, to be a good teammate and wear the shortcomings of others. But the film shows enough blitzes and pressures that seemed to surprise Mahomes to know he was speaking with sincerity, too.
The challenge is significant. The Chiefs are likely to enter the postseason with just two of their starting linemen from the Super Bowl, and just three from this season’s opener. Mike Remmers is in place of the Chiefs’ best pass protector at right tackle, and Allegretti is the team’s third choice at left guard (fourth if you count Laurent Duvernay-Tardif).
This is a bit of a high-wire act, then, and it would surprise nobody if a strong pass rush from an opponent ruins the Chiefs’ postseason.
The Chiefs are so good when operating at maximum precision that they become a lie. Super Bowl championships are supposed to be difficult. Last year’s required three consecutive double-digit comebacks. This year’s would, at minimum, require fixing an emerging problem with a group created by circumstance.
This story was originally published January 1, 2021 at 5:00 AM.