Mellinger Minutes: no parade, Spags’ genius, Chiefs’ ascension, and Super Bowl preview
You might read this as a jinx, which is fine. I’ll tell you that if jinxes existed then flight attendants wouldn’t welcome you to the destination city with the plane still thousands of feet in the air, but I can respect the stance.
So if you believe in jinxes, maybe skip down to the reading and eating recommendations.
*pauses*
OK, cool. Now that it’s just us adults can we talk about how there won’t be a parade in Kansas City, no matter which way the Super Bowl goes?
The mayor’s office, sports commission and Chiefs made that announcement jointly on Monday. This is the way it was always going to go, even with various parts of the KC metro making preemptive (and silly) pitches to host a celebration if a traditional parade down Grand wouldn’t be held.
This is one of those good problems — remember the days when the reason Kansas City couldn’t host a parade was because our teams stunk? — but it’s worth a moment to mourn.
I thought there might be a way to hold a celebration at Arrowhead, with the same screening and attendance limitations held for games this season. You could put a stage in the middle, give the players a mic, play highlights on the video board. It would’ve been fun.
Nobody is naive enough to believe celebrations won’t happen. There will be house parties, and barbecues, and probably even makeshift, DIY-type parades down neighborhood streets.
The hope is that these celebrations can be as fun and safe as possible, because the last thing we need is a Super Bowl win in Florida to turn into a super spreader back home that spikes cases and closes businesses and schools just as the vaccine is being rolled out.
Anyway, I come here not to preach, but to grieve. One of the cruelties of the last 10 months is that we don’t even know what all’s been lost from the restrictions. We can point to some things, maybe a canceled vacation or a close-family-only birthday party, or Thanksgiving with four instead of 24.
But we don’t know what the best parts of that vacation would’ve been, or what funny line we’d have remembered from the birthday party, or the conversation you would’ve had with your cousin at Thanksgiving.
I’m thinking here of the parade last February, which might actually have been the largest party in America last year. The kids went with friends, they high-fived and they sat on shoulders, and our older son still remembers seeing all those buses and trucks go by.
Travis Kelce turned into a professional wrestler, Patrick Mahomes shotgunned domestics, and someone ran dead into a parking meter. It was an afternoon without worry, except staying warm, and stands as an unquestioned civic triumph.
That’s all gone now, but I’m hoping that doesn’t mean the fun is, too. We can be creative. Driveway tailgates, FaceTime bets, group threads replacing a shared couch. We don’t know what we’ll have missed without more personal interaction, but we also have the chance to make the best memories possible with what we have.
The parade will wait. Maybe they’ll do something around the ring ceremony. Maybe we’ll have a proper parade next year.
Now how’s that for a jinx?
This week’s eating recommendation is the shrimp spiedini at Garozzo’s, and the reading recommendation is Howard Bryant on the grace of Henry Aaron (and the double meaning of dignity).
Thanks to everyone who’s listened to our Mellinger Minutes For Your Ears podcast, and here is a big warm invitation to start if you haven’t already. We’re out from behind the paywall and free on Apple or Spotify or Stitcher or wherever you get your shows.
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It’s the best time in human history to be a Chiefs fan, is what it is.
This team is a phenomenon. There have been phenomenons before, of course, from Tom Brady’s Patriots to the Greatest Show on Turf Rams to the 1990s Cowboys and beyond.
But they don’t happen all the time, and I suppose you could say this from a lot of places, but for so long here in Kansas City it felt like those teams only happened in other cities.
The teams in other places were the ones you had to beat three different ways on the field to beat them once on the scoreboard. The quarterback on the other side was the inevitable one. The other team’s receiver was the one who couldn’t be covered.
The Chiefs are that team now, and as much as it feels like they will play in every AFC Championship game and every Super Bowl from now until Patrick Mahomes’ kids are running the team that’s just not reality.
There will be a time when Travis Kelce isn’t quite as explosive, Tyreek Hill not quite as fast. Chris Jones won’t be in his peak forever. The Chiefs will have seasons ruined by injuries, or bad luck, or some other team rolling nothing but 7s.
This really could be the beginning of a dynasty. We’ve seen that possibility for a while now. But that can’t be taken for granted, or expected, because what’s the fun in that?
Enjoy these moments. Cherish them. This team is slightly different than last year’s, which was vastly different than the year before. Next year’s team will be different still.
This is the team of Travis Kelce and a constantly shifting offensive line, or a defense that’s hitting its peak late, of Mahomes wobbling after that awkward tackle and Chad Henne steadying when the Chiefs needed it most.
Even if we assume the Chiefs are on this dynastic path, with Lombardi trophies rushing this way, it is entirely possible that the Chiefs will never again have it this good.
The coaching staff has four potential head coaches — Steve Spagnuolo has done it, Dave Toub is qualified, Eric Bieniemy is overqualified, and Mike Kafka will have his turn.
The roster has five players who might give speeches in Canton — Mahomes and Kelce, plus Mathieu and Hill are interesting, and Chris Jones has a chance.
There has never been a better time to be a Chiefs fan, and enjoy it now, because you never know how long it can last.
Here’s how inevitable Mahomes and the Chiefs have become: a nine-point playoff deficit overcome is hardly mentioned in the postgame.
I can’t imagine anyone felt the Chiefs were in trouble down 9-0, and that particularly includes the Bills and their fans, which is sort of the whole point.
One of the great accomplishments of the last two seasons is that the Chiefs went from a locker room divided between offense and defense to one that works collectively.
Steve Spagnuolo and (especially) Tyrann Mathieu deserve outsized credit for that transformation, and you can see the results on the field and hear them in the way these guys talk about each other.
In 2018 and before, the defense often (and with justification) felt picked on. Everything was made to be their fault, even when it wasn’t.
In the last two seasons, the locker room has been better united. There are no longer competing factions operating with at least some level of distrust. The defense has cherished opportunities to be the reason the Chiefs win, and more times than not has taken advantage.
The Chargers win in Mexico City last season jumpstarted the run, the defense was among the stingiest in the league down the stretch, and played really well in the playoffs. Mahomes was the deserved Super Bowl MVP, but the defense won the final minutes with pass rush.
There is still some remnants of old muscle memory where the defense takes undeserved blame, but for the most part people who watch the Chiefs regularly know what they’re getting.
The Chiefs just won a playoff game while scoring only 22 points, for crying out loud, and is there anyway you would have thought that possible in 2018?
This is the Chiefs bending the rules, because 9-0 looks less like a two-score deficit and more like something that can be reversed in a few minutes time. Indeed, the Chiefs scored touchdowns less than 5 minutes apart and led by two scores the entire second half.
Which brings up a good point — how much bigger does a lead feel when the Chiefs have it, compared to when they’re chasing it?
We’ll get into this more over the next two weeks, but this is part of why the Chiefs are a deserved favorite. The Bucs are a very, very good team. You know this. Tom Brady has better weapons than he’s had at any point in his career, except for the Randy Moss years. The Bucs’ defense is terrific, particularly with the edge pass rush, which makes for a fascinating matchup with the Chiefs’ makeshift offensive line.
But the Chiefs can score so quickly, and some of their strengths in the pass game matchup well against some of the Bucs’ weaknesses.
I guess at the moment I’m thinking about it like this: if the Chiefs are up 10 or more in the second half, I’m going to start writing my Ran It Back column.
If they’re down 10 or more in the second half, I’m going to be curious to see how they comeback, and then write the Ran It Back column.
That was incredible. You make a smart point, and it’s one that people will miss because the Bills ended with 24 points and the natural momentum of narrative has now flipped against Josh Allen and also Patrick Mahomes sucks up all the energy.
Ed Werder found this stat from ESPN: the Chiefs pressured Josh Allen on 27 of 57 drop backs, which is the most pressures in a playoff game since ESPN began tracking in 2009. Ten of those pressures came on 12 third-down drop backs.
Werder made the (correct) point that pressuring Tom Brady is a key to beating the Bucs, and we’ll get more into that below and throughout the next 12 days, but for now I’d like to focus more on how the Chiefs pulled this off against the Bills.
Spagnuolo is aggressive by nature, but a fine line often exists between aggressive and reckless. The blitzes often came in big moments, and with a clear plan.
They often blitzed defensive backs, most notably L’Jarius Sneed and Tyrann Mathieu, and without charting the calls it appeared they focused largely on Allen’s arm side. If I’m right about that, the presumption would be that the Chiefs wanted to pressure Allen without letting him scramble to his right side.
That strategy — rush Allen’s arm side — wasn’t universal, but it sure looked like a pattern. Here’s L’Jarius Sneed...
... and here’s Tyrann Mathieu ...
... and here’s Daniel Sorensen ...
You get the idea. Allen is a good enough athlete that he broke through a few times anyway, and his numbers inflated late but he’s been the most dangerous player in the league over the last month or two and the Chiefs never let him get to that point.
The plan was solid from front to back, and especially since we’re quick to mention when it doesn’t happen it’s worth pointing out that Chris Jones and Frank Clark played perhaps their best game together.
Some of that is in the stats, with Jones producing seven pressures and Clark with two sacks, but more of it is in the moments they simply beat the man in front of them.
But the blitz schemes took it to another level. The Chiefs got nine pressures from five different linebackers or defensive backs, according to Pro Footballl Focus.
We talk sometimes about Mahomes being a force multiplier (and he is), but this is an example of the same effect on the other side. Those blitzes help the more conventional pass rush, and the more conventional pass rush helps the blitzes.
Pressuring Tom Brady is crucial, but pressuring Brady has to be done differently than pressuring Allen.
Some of that will be better for the Chiefs — they don’t have to favor one side or the other, because Brady isn’t beating anyone with a scramble.
Some of that will be more difficult — Brady’s pre snap reads will be better than Allen’s, so the disguises will be more important.
Again, we’ll get into this more. But it’s worth noting that Spagnuolo is one of the few defensive coordinators with some level of success against Brady.
This point was made last year, but it’s worth remembering again now:
As much as we talk about players needing to learn the scheme, it’s also true that the coaches need to learn the players.
And if that’s done in a sustainable way — no shortcuts — then the final product should be better than what it looks like early in the season.
It would stand to reason that this is especially true with a team like the Chiefs, one of the few with the luxury of treating the regular season as some extended version of the preseason.
Securing the first-round bye was important, and the Chiefs had to be consistently focused to do that. But the process was always aimed at producing the best version of themselves at the end.
Some of this is speculation, but it makes sense, for instance, that Spagnuolo how has a much better feel for exactly how to use Sneed and Tershawn Wharton than he did at the beginning of the season.
There are other factors, sure. Frank Clark is working on a second consecutive postseason that says he saves his body for the end. Mathieu’s next-level brain and study habits tend to show up best in the playoffs.
Tanoh Kpassagnon, Derrick Nnadi, Daniel Sorensen ... we have a list of guys who are rising to the moment in their own way.
I don’t know this for sure, in part because I don’t pay a lot of attention to what’s said by most national analysts*, but I’m guessing that you’ll be able to tell who’s done their homework on the Chiefs and who hasn’t by how they talk about the defense.
* I don’t mean that as a slight to anyone. There are many — from Terez to Bill Barnwell to Greg Bishop to Jenny Vrentas and many others — who are gold. But for the most part, I believe the people who know this team best are closer to Kansas City.
Because the statistics would mostly tell you the Chiefs defense is somewhere between average and good.
But if you’ve watched the arc of the last three games (throwing out week 17) along with the structure in place then you see a defense that’s capable of some game-shifting moments in the Super Bowl.
Just like last year.
Behold, in all his glory, The Petty Patrick Screw You Tour:
Also, this:
Now, I should point out here that I’m not buying the Chiefs’ official explanation here that Mahomes was saying “back to back.”
I suspect it’s something closer to mocking the fact that he and Allen were each selected second-team All-Pro — hence the two fingers on each hand — but I can’t shake the idea that there’s something else going on here too.
The point is that this is how the best often operate, and Mahomes is the best, and he’s following the script perfected by Michael Jordan many years ago.
No coach or teammate is going to make Mahomes better, but they can help keep him in top form by challenging him, by motivating him, by presenting him insults both real and imagined.
That’s what this is all about, and toward that end I suspect the people around him are reminding Mahomes of the delightfully cocky video Tom Brady posted while leaving Arrowhead after the AFC Championship game two years ago — and re-created last weekend — while hoping he forgets about the respect Brady showed by visiting him in the locker room.
One of my favorite parts of all this is that we all know it’s ridiculous, and if I had to guess I’d say that Mahomes is in on the joke, too.
The man is a league MVP, a Super Bowl champion, and he drives a $350,000 Ferrari to the job where he has a half-billion dollar contract. He is universally adored and praised. There are no haters to silence here. The doubters are gone.
But manufacturing doubters can be big business, and right now I’m not sure anyone in professional sports is better at that than Mahomes.
Yeah, so, here comes the reality.
The Chiefs will play the most important game of the season without their best two offensive linemen, and without three starters from the season opener.
An underplayed part of the team’s success this season is in how Mahomes, Reid and Bieniemy have kept the offense performing at its accustomed level despite the problems up front.
That will now be tested like never before. Because it’s not just that left tackle Eric Fisher and right tackle Mitchell Schwartz are the Chiefs’ best two pass protectors. And it’s not even just that much of what the Chiefs like to do with their line is trust the tackles to go one-on-one and expect help in the middle.
It’s that the Bucs have one of the league’s best pass rushes, and it’s built largely on Shaq Barrett coming from one edge and Jason Pierre-Paul coming from the other.
They’ll now be doing that against the Chiefs’ second choice at left tackle (Mike Remmers) and their third choice at right tackle (Andrew Wylie).
There are counters that Reid, Bieniemy and line coach Andy Heck can deploy, and this is a good spot to have two weeks of preparation. The Chiefs can use quick passes, and they can chip with running backs, or keep an extra tight end in on certain plays they want to attack downfield.
It’s also true that while Fisher and Schwartz have big contracts for a reason, Remmers and Wylie aren’t bums. They are paid professionals who’ve worked their adult lives for this situation. They will be as prepared as possible.
But a disproportionate chunk of the X-and-O breakdown will be on this cat and mouse game. The Bucs are vulnerable downfield, but for the Chiefs to attack they’ll need time at the line of scrimmage.
The Bucs are capable of beating the Chiefs, and if that happens we probably have a general idea what it would look like:
Brady’s pre snap reads beat the Chiefs’ pressure, and he makes enough plays downfield that the Bucs score 30 or so points. On the other side, the Bucs are able to pressure with four, never allowing Mahomes enough time to make the plays downfield or with his legs that make him so dangerous.
That’s where the game could be won: Spags vs. Brady; the Chiefs’ line vs. the Bucs pass rush.
Maybe a 6 or 7?
The Bucs, as I see it, have two distinct advantages here. They have Mike Evans and Chris Godwin attacking downfield against a defense that has been attacked downfield, and they have a top-shelf pass rush going against a makeshift line.
The Chiefs’ secondary has been good enough in the playoffs that you would be calmed a bit on the first part, but the second part is the clearest way for the Bucs to win. Nothing is this simple, and you know I always say we shouldn’t be shocked by anything, but I would be shocked if the Bucs won this game without their pass rush wrecking the Chiefs up front.
Now, I’m also old enough to remember week 15, when the Chiefs were playing an obviously hobbled Eric Fisher at left tackle and Andrew Wylie taking his first professional snaps at right tackle against the bunch of pirates the Saints have rushing the passer and they got through it.
Mahomes was pressured on 24 of 54 drop backs that day and the Saints only blitzed seven times, according to Pro Football Focus. The Chiefs will try to do much better than that in the Super Bowl, obviously, but that film might be instructive for how they’ll need to approach this.
The Chiefs used a lot of short passes — 29 of Mahomes’ 44 passes traveled fewer than 10 yards downfield — and relied on quickness and creativity.
Actually, you can see this on all three of Mahomes’ touchdown passes that day.
Here they are using trips stacked to the right, then a funky motion by Hill, then moving the pocket to the right to set up the look they want:
Here’s a sort of touch-shovel-pass-thingy to Kelce, with the blocking set up by the formation:
And here’s the Mahomes magic trick, where the Chiefs move the pocket left and Mahomes has the patience, confidence, and talent to make a throw that’s impossible for most:
The Bucs will be a massive test for the Chiefs’ line and coaches, but I would argue they are in better shape now than they were against the Saints. Remmers is healthy, at least, and you would assume that Wylie (who played well against the Saints) will be better with the experience. The extra time to prepare should help, too.
The difference, of course, is the stakes are exponentially higher and Brady will be able to pressure the Chiefs better than Drew Brees could in his first game back from a brutal injury.
Meh, I don’t think this is a thing. It’s no different than any road game, and the Chiefs won all eight of their road games, including one at Tampa.
The Bucs don’t have to drive to the airport, get on a flight, and take a bus to a hotel, but what are we talking about here?
Both teams have an extra week to prepare. Maybe I’d feel a little differently if the Chiefs were traveling from Seattle, but this isn’t a big deal.
You’d rather not travel, but these are chartered flights with streamlined processes. The Chiefs will build their schedules around the downtime of a flight, and the hotel will be set up for meetings when they arrive.
A lot is going to be made of the Bucs being the first team to play a Super Bowl in their own stadium, but even in normal times I’m not sure how big of an advantage that would be with how tickets are distributed. With limited capacity, that becomes even less of an issue.
Although it is kind of funny to think about the Chiefs as the home team, and Mahomes using Brady’s locker.
This is one of the strangest storylines of the season.
If anything, you would think the Chiefs have TOO MANY returners. How many teams can match this many capable playmakers to return kicks and punts — Tyreek Hill, Mecole Hardman, Byron Pringle, Demarcus Robinson, Rashad Fenton.
Now we find ourselves in a spot where the Chiefs don’t know who to trust.
Hill, in theory, should be the game’s most dangerous returner. He made (as he and Jalen Ramsey will remind you) All-Pro as a returner his rookie season. But the Chiefs have every motivation to save his legs and body for offense, and he did muff the punt against the Texans in the playoffs last year.
Hardman has had some questionable decisions, and then the muff against the Bills. Robinson turned that return in New Orleans into a circus act, and Fenton doesn’t have much experience.
Honestly, if it’s me, I’m not sure I wouldn’t put Pringle back there and tell him his only job is to make sure we retain possession of the football.
We’ve written and talked a lot here about how the Chiefs are different than normal teams, so they should be defended differently, and the decisions on fourth downs should be different.
Well, then it would also track that other decisions should be made differently, including the risk-reward balance on special teams. So, yeah. I’d be willing to go conservative on this one, feeling confident that whatever yardage I might lose on returns would be made up by my freakshow offense.
All that said, it’s hard to fault them for sticking with Hardman. He is immensely talented, and his mistakes are not for lack of care. Trust is an essential part of their culture, and we saw how Hardman responded after the return mistake against the Bills.
But, yeah. It’s a wild thing that the Chiefs are here dealing with this issue.
So, I’m including this mostly so we can drop this video of Chris Jones answering a question about going against Morse.
Does it not appear that Jones is saying he did not realize Morse played for the Bills until seeing him on the field before the game?
Maybe Jones misspoke, maybe he was making a joke, but man. That is really something.
But, yes. The Chiefs could use Morse on the inside.
It is, yes.
We’ve talked about the short-term already, and I think we’ll get more into the long-term soon so I want to keep this relatively short.
With the love that Alex Smith has received after leaving Kansas City, Fisher is probably the most under appreciated player of the Reid era.
He played out of position, and then through a line of injuries, never complaining and growing into a dependable protector of Smith and now Patrick Mahomes.
Being the first overall pick in the 2013 draft burdened him with unfair expectations from the jump. That was one of the worst draft classes in recent memory, and there can’t be many (if any) other years that Fisher would have gone first. Because he did, people wanted him to be an All-Pro immediately. Every mistake was amplified, and the small-town guy struggled at times to cope.
A ruptured Achilles could be the worst injury an athlete can suffer. The rehab is long and brutal, and full recovery is not guaranteed. If nothing else, it means the Chiefs will probably be starting someone other than Fisher at left tackle next season for the first time in eight years.
Combined with the uncertainty of right tackle Mitch Schwartz’s back injury, the Chiefs could be transitioning to a vastly different offensive line than the dependable structure they’ve had in front of Mahomes for years.
This will be a thing we’ll talk a lot about in the offseason, no matter what happens in Tampa.
Preach. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but our older son was 4 when he first started paying attention to football. That was 2018. If Mahomes plays out his contract and not a day more, our son will have gone from his first year of preschool to high school graduation knowing nothing but Mahomes as the quarterback of the Chiefs.
If you have a son or daughter who fell in love with football at age 10 that same fall (a reasonable age) he or she will be an adult with bills when Mahomes’ contract is over.
This is one of the loopholes of the salary cap. It’s supposed to pull the best teams down and lift the worst ones up, and it does, but in a world in which the best quarterbacks don’t switch teams — unless the Texans screw it up — it means that if you get an elite quarterback you start every season a step ahead.
Because quarterbacks can’t be paid their true value. They take modest gains that don’t track with what’s happening on the field, and as a bonus to the teams with truly elite quarterbacks the market now works in a way that dependable guys like Jared Goff and Kirk Cousins are paid like stars.
That’s the genius of Mahomes’ contract for the Chiefs. It’s not just having him here for the NFL equivalent of forever, it’s that he’ll never be paid his full value, and the fact that he made concessions on structure means every other player who negotiates with Brandt Tillis and Brett Veach will have to explain why they deserve something Mahomes doesn’t.
What a time to be alive.
This week I’m particularly grateful for nachos. That’s it. That’s all. Nachos.