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In a scene from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, Harvey Dent makes a philosophical proclamation to Bruce Wayne, amidst a deep discussion about society’s need (or want?) for a hero like Batman. One of the many reasons this film will be remembered as one of the finest ever made is its relevance beyond the time period in which it was released, perhaps with no example better than Dent’s famous quote:
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”
Although the circumstances of Bruce Wayne’s plight to save an ungrateful Gotham City from destruction may be much more dire, Dent’s words still ring true in the modern sports world. As a society, we love to build up a darling player or team that employs an exciting brand of play or has a unique personality or culture.
After that, we love even more to watch them burn.
Patrick Mahomes and his Chiefs are no exception to this rule: we watched Mahomes put on the greatest debut act in NFL history, change the way the quarterback position is played and scouted, and deliver a Super Bowl to Kansas City for the first time in 50 years.
Then, we watched him win too much. We watched too many highlights of his posted on NFL’s and ESPN’s social media accounts. We watched him sign the biggest contract in American sports history. We watched his family steal the spotlight for less-than-noble reasons.
Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs, once the Batman to the NFL’s Gotham, had decidedly become the villains. And as such, the football world was relishing the thought of the downfall of this team. Over the first half of the season, Mahomes was chucking interceptions left, right, and center, and this juggernaut was at one point in last place in their division.
I hate to break it to you, though-- the script has fully flipped. They aren’t exactly the same team that we’ve gotten used to, but the Chiefs are indeed back to being the class of the NFL.
The Chiefs’ offense from 2018-2020 dominated NFL defenses at levels we’ve rarely seen before. Still, this league is where the sharpest defensive minds in all of football work, and it was only a matter of time before strategies were devised to dull the buzzsaw in Kansas City.
The Chiefs stumbled out of the gates to start the year, starting just 3-4 with losses to their AFC contenders in the Ravens, Chargers, Bills, and Titans. If not for a botched punt in Week 1, a loss to Cleveland would’ve been on that list, too.
The NFL is notoriously a copycat league; when you see something work against the best teams in the league, you do that thing too. In the case of the Chiefs, what worked was Todd Bowles’ strategy for the Buccaneers’ defense in a dominant Super Bowl LV victory-- don’t blitz Patrick Mahomes.
While it makes sense that getting pressure on the quarterback is a great way to slow down said quarterback (getting hit repeatedly by 250-pound men tends to affect your body negatively), some signal-callers can excel when more bodies are put into the pass rush. This inherently leaves fewer players in coverage, and with the speed of the Chiefs’ receiving corps and Mahomes’ arm and football IQ, this lighter coverage gets punished.
Last season, Mahomes led all NFL passers with a minimum of 75 attempts this season in passer rating and yards per attempt vs. the blitz, according to Stathead. He had 12 touchdowns and zero interceptions when facing the blitz.
And so, accordingly, the Buccaneers deployed their lowest blitz rate of the season in the Super Bowl, sending an extra pass rusher on just five of Mahomes’ 52 dropbacks for a rate of 9.6%. It worked, but also because Tampa Bay’s four-man rush was still able to get to the quarterback consistently; on plays with a four-man rush, they pressured Mahomes on 16 of 46 dropbacks, also generating all three of their sacks on such plays.
Image From: ChiefsWire
This season, the copycats arrived. For instance, in the Bills’ statement win over Kansas City in Week 5, Buffalo did not blitz Mahomes a single time on his 56 dropbacks. As such, the huge plays downfield were largely eliminated, and the Chiefs were forced to move slowly and methodically down the field, something they did not excel at in the first half of the season.
This style of defense posed a pretty large paradigm shift for the big-play-happy Chiefs, and perhaps this contributed to their glut of turnovers in the early part of the season; more than a few of Mahomes’ interceptions appeared to occur on plays where he was trying to force a big play downfield that just wasn’t there.
Take this play against Tennessee, for instance:
The worst part about this Mahomes throw is that it happened on first down. Yes, his team was in a 17-0 hole, but it was still just the second quarter-- situationally, a pick in that area of the field hurts much more than a throwaway out of bounds. Yes, Patrick Mahomes has razor-sharp accuracy and a rocket arm, but attempting passes like these becomes much more dangerous with so many more defenders in the area.
If you watch again, you’ll see this backbreaking play happened on a four-man rush from the Titans, which put more defenders in the second and third levels. As such, when this throw into a very tight window was just slightly off the mark and batted up, there were three defenders in the vicinity and one of them was able to make the diving interception.
Defenses deployed two-high safety looks at their highest rates against Kansas City, purely in the hopes of limiting the deep shots that the Chiefs love to dial up. It has done a decent job limiting this fire-breathing dragon of an offense, all things considered. For instance, Tyreek Hill -- by far the Chiefs’ biggest threat downfield -- is having a much tougher time beating defenses deep.
Image From: Harry How/Getty Images
Hill’s reception, yard, and touchdown numbers are all good, but more advanced stats show he’s not acquiring these numbers in quite the same way as years past. His yards per target, yards per reception, yards before catch per reception, and average depth of target are all way down compared to the past three years. However, his first downs gained and receptions per game are up, all of which indicates that Andy Reid and Eric Bieniemy are still scheming up ways to get the ball into the hands of their speed demon, but utilizing more shorter concepts and fewer deep plays (i.e. Wasp is not something you’ll see much of this year).
Deploying Hill in different ways according to how the defense is playing is a sign of an adept coaching staff, but it’s still not anyone’s preferred way to use their star wide receiver and has led to some dropped passes in crucial spots, like this one against Buffalo.
With deep shots limited, and without targets that excel in underneath plays besides Travis Kelce, one would logically think that having at least a semblance of a running game would be crucial to keep the Chiefs’ offense ticking. Alas, over the first half of the season such a rushing attack did not exist:
Even amidst their passing-game struggles in the first part of the season, their overall dropback EPA/play was just fine. The same could not be said for their rush EPA/play, however.
Since then, their dropback EPA/play has improved only slightly, but their rushing EPA/play has started, finally, to pull its weight:
In Weeks 1-7, the Chiefs were 5th and 2nd in passing EPA/play and passing success rate, respectively, while they were 21st and 6th in rush EPA/play and rush success rate, respectively. Since Week 8, they are 6th and 6th in passing EPA/play and passing success rate, respectively, but they are 5th and 7th in rush EPA/play and rush success rate, respectively.
Passing-game purists would perhaps argue that this improvement in their running game doesn’t mean a whole lot; after all, the Chiefs were still a respectable 5th in total offensive EPA in Weeks 1-7 despite their issues, and are 3rd since. And perhaps they’re right to an extent-- neither Clyde Edwards-Helaire nor Darrel Williams inspires a ton of confidence as a true workhorse back, and it is possible that the Chiefs’ cutting down on turnovers has been a more important factor in this slight offense improvement.
Image From: ChiefsWire
However, I would still argue that this jump in competency in their running game as a whole materially changes how defenses have to play against Mahomes and this offense. Previously, defenses could play boxes so light that they would actually have a disadvantage against the run -- like the Titans did -- and almost dare the Chiefs to beat them with passes over the middle. But with just a slightly better rushing attack, even if the defense has to put only one more defender in the box this greatly benefits the Chiefs passing game.
As a result, the Chiefs are now able to move the ball more methodically, controlling time of possession and limiting turnovers.
By Week 8, the Chiefs were -10 in turnover differential, all the way near the bottom of the barrel in that statistic with only the Jaguars as company. They’ve now climbed all the way back to a +3 turnover differential, which, unsurprisingly, coincides with better offense and wins.
This is partially due to a smarter and more balanced offense, but also due to better luck, simply put. This article written at the start of December explains it well, but to sum it up: “According to the N.F.L.’s Next Gen Stats, six of Mahomes’s 11 interceptions have come on passes that had at least a 75 percent chance of being completed. Five of those such interceptions — including Micah Hyde’s pick-6 for Buffalo in Week 5 — hit a receiver’s hands first”.
Mahomes has had great fortune in previous years with turnover-worthy throws not turning into interceptions, and perhaps all of that came to roost in the early part of this season with some positive regression. However, it seems to be levelling out to normalcy now, and for Mahomes normalcy is still a great TD/INT ratio as he is a great quarterback.
Still, the offense hasn’t made massive leaps and bounds during this win streak to power the team; in fact, the offense is still underperforming compared to what we’re used to.
After averaging 6.43 yards per play from 2018 (the start of the Mahomes era) to 2020, that figure has dipped to 5.9 this year. They averaged 2.82 points per drive in 2018-2020 but average 2.6 this year. Their net yards per pass attempt from 2018-2020 was 7.67; this year it’s 6.8.
To illustrate the difference in the potency of Kansas City’s aerial attack, compare where Kansas City were on the previous graph on the Dropback EPA/Play axis (which generously excludes their slow start to the season) to the levels they were performing at from 2018-2020:
Again, while the Chiefs have been passing the ball well over the second half of the season, it still pales in comparison to how hyper-efficient Reid and Bieniemy had this offense in the past.
All of this is to say; the Chiefs offense is still perfectly fine and is certainly not broken. It’s a strong unit that is capable of putting 40+ points on your favorite team. But it is, at present, a step down from the historic levels that it produced at over the past three years-- and that’s ok! This is because their defense has quietly transformed from the laughing stock of the league to a top unit.
Over the first seven weeks of the season, the Chiefs sucked at defense. All you need to see is this chart, which put their defense in the realm of the Texans and the Jaguars, and that should just about explain everything:
If you like numbers more than charts: Kansas City was 31st in total defensive EPA per play and 32nd in total success rate from weeks 1-7. On dropbacks, they were 29th and 32nd in EPA/play and success rate, respectively, and on running plays they were 30th and 31st in EPA/play and success rate, respectively.
There was no area of defense that this team was good at. Daniel Sorensen was a meme. Tyrann Mathieu was exasperated, and so were Chiefs fans. Then, suddenly -- and shockingly -- Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo started to get his defense playing at an elite level:
Since Week 8, the Chiefs are 4th in total defensive EPA per play -- behind only Miami, Dallas, and New England -- and 10th in total success rate. Spagnuolo seems to be pressing all the right buttons at the moment, as this defense is allowing just 12.9 points on average over these last eight games, the best in the league in that stretch.
There are a few reasons for this dramatic shift. One simple reason is personnel; the Chiefs acquired linebacker Melvin Ingram from the Steelers at the trade deadline, and he’s begun to pay massive dividends at the second level alongside rookie Nick Bolton, who himself is starting to really flourish. Spagnuolo also made the decision to move Juan Thornhill into the starting safety position next to Tyrann Mathieu in place of the much-maligned Daniel Sorensen, and this has stabilized the secondary quite a bit.
Another reason for this turnaround is that the Chiefs defense has begun to generate a lot of turnovers. In Weeks 1-7, they forced just seven turnovers, but since then they’ve forced a whopping 21, good for an average of about 2.6 per game.
Image From: Peter Aiken/Getty Images
Of course, if Andy Reid, Eric Bieniemy, and Patrick Mahomes make some adjustments for the stretch run that get their offense playing back at 2018-2020 levels, you can essentially pencil them in for the Super Bowl. Although it’s not there yet, signs have been popping up that indicate this sleeping giant may be rounding into form after all.
The Chiefs’ low point of the season on offense was most certainly a three-game stretch against the Titans, Giants, and the Packers, where they averaged a paltry 12 points per game and turned the ball over five times in the former two games. Since then, something must have lit a fire under Mahomes and Company, as they have racked up point totals of 41, 48, 34, and 36 on the Raiders (twice -- yikes), the Chargers, and the Steelers. In their other two games in this period they scored a more modest 19 and 22 points, but these came against Dallas and Denver, two of the league’s absolute strongest defenses, in relatively comfortable wins.
So, it's not yet a consistent behemoth, but it's behemoth-adjacent, and that's more than scary enough given how their defense is playing.
Just when we thought the Chiefs, finally, were at the end of their rope, they’ve emerged from the depths as strong a team as ever-- looking differently than how we’re used to, but still strong. Patrick Mahomes has played and succeeded long enough in the NFL to see himself become the villain, but he seems to be just fine with playing the heel. And that's just something we're going to have to get used to.
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