When the Kansas City Chiefs meet the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl, a matchup is clearly in focus: Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs offense against an excellent 49ers defense! But what does the chiefs offense actually consist of? SPOXEditor Adrian Franke looks in detail at the dangerous offense.
There is the Super Bowl in the night from February 2nd to 3rd live on DAZN – with Markus Kuhn and Sebastian Vollmer in the German live commentary, alternatively also in the original US commentary.
It was one of Andy Reid’s first sets after his Kansas City Chiefs reached the Super Bowl for the first time in 50 years.
“‘Never die’ is their thing,” said the head coach about his team, and continued with a grin: “I mean – lying back like that doesn’t make it easy for an old guy. But they are well back came.” He spoke of “some highs and lows”, but his team “got back on track”.
Only 0:10, then 7:17, the Chiefs were behind the Tennessee Titans in the AFC Championship Game, in the end there was a safe 35:24 victory. The week before, Reid had probably suffered much more than the Houston Texans had taken the lead 24-0 and slowly disarmed mines in Arrowhead gave way to whistles.
The end result is known, Kansas City not only won 51:31, the Chiefs broke a number of offensive records along the way. The chase against Houston was exceptional even by Chiefs standards; but while the Ravens, who played so big in the regular season, found no way back into the game after an early deficit against Tennessee, Kansas City is the exact opposite in this regard.
The Chiefs were nine times behind the first quarter this season. They won seven of those nine games in the end, one of the two defeats came against Green Bay in week 8 when quarterback Patrick Mahomes was missing injured. The simple reason for this is obvious: it is the best passing offense in the NFL.
Mahomes: Elite-Quarterback plus Elite-Scheme
“I think it’s a” never give up “mentality,” added Mahomes to his coach’s statement after the championship game. “Ultimately, the point is that we give everything we have on every play and want to focus on the rest of the game. We don’t care whether we are 0:10 behind or 10-0 – we will implement our plan on the field and do everything we can to be successful in every single play. “
Mahomes himself stands for this mentality better than any other player. He focused his teammates on the sidelines at 0:24 against Houston, apparently at no moment he looked nervous or angry. And in the field? Patrick Mahomes is currently the best quarterback in the NFL.
When you look at the chiefs offense, two things become apparent: Mahomes’ ability to create offense inside and outside the play structure makes the chiefs offense so incredibly dangerous.
Combined with what Mahomes has in store when it comes to play designs and weapons, this produces an absolute elite offense. It’s all in the mix, in this case an elite quarterback, an elite play caller and what is probably the best arsenal in the NFL.
Andy Reid’s offense philosophy
For a story in The Athletic author John Middlekauff asked some coaches about Andy Reid. An anonymous offensive coordinator summed it up best: “What makes Coach Reid such a good play caller? He doesn’t tie himself to anything. Run-pass ratio, he doesn’t care about all this stuff. He is interested in that his best players get the ball. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a run, a pass, a screen, or whatever. “
It sounds simple, “but so many coaches are completely committed to their scheme and want to implement their philosophy at all costs. Coach Reid feeds his playmaker. That’s how he always did it. And that’s one reason why he wins so much . “
Turning the best players into factors that are as large as possible – of course that sounds good and sensible at first. But how does that look in detail at Kansas City?
Chiefs-Offense: Die Basics
To summarize a few basics of the chiefs offense, so that a first feeling for this offense arises:
- Kansas City is primarily an 11-person offense, which means: Kansas City acts preferentially – in 60 percent of offensive snaps (league average), to be precise, with a running back, a tight end and three wide receivers on the Field. This makes them unsurprisingly fire-prone in passing: If the chiefs throw out 11 people, they do it on average for 8.6 yards – and are thus 1.5 yards (!) Above the league average.
- If the chiefs don’t play 11-personnel, 12-personnel – i.e. a running back, two tight ends, two wide receivers – is usually the alternative: 29 percent of the chiefs snaps come in this way. They are comparatively very pass-heavy, many play-action and run-pass option concepts come from this.
- Speaking of RPOs: Kansas City is one of the league’s most play-action teams, and the Chiefs also played the fifth most RPOs (71). Mahomes had 469 passing yards this season via RPOs.
- The chiefs are as the tweet built in above shows, the passport-heavy team of the NFL in “neutral” game situations, and by far. If you only look at the total stats for first down, Kansas City puts on average 8.9 yards per first down pass – the fifth highest value in the league.
- Kansas City uses a lot of motion before and during the snaps. The chiefs are also difficult to defend and regularly create matchups for their top targets.
- The clear top target is Travis Kelce, who has seen 146 targets so far this season – no other Chiefs player gets over 100. Kelce is the engine in Kansas City’s arsenal, the big plays come more from the immense speed, the Kansas City has; starting with Tyreek Hill and Mecole Hardman, of course.
- But Hill is by no means just a downfield receiver. According to Next Gen Stats it is alluded to with an average target depth of 12.6 yards, which means that it ranks in the area of Julio Jones (12.3), Adam Thielen (12.7) or Amari Cooper (12.8) in the league Midfield. For comparison: Chargers receiver Mike Williams is 17.4 yards ahead of Breshad Perriman (16.1) and James Washington (15.6) among receivers with at least 60 targets.
- This statistic also fits: Per completion only two quarterbacks (Tannehill, Garoppolo) have more yards after the catch per completion than Mahomes (6.1).
Travis Kelce and the meaning of Y-ISO
When Mahomes Kelce alluded to in the regular season (130 times in total), he installed 74.6 percent of his passes, at 9.4 yards per pass on average.
One formation that you will surely see often in the Super Bowl, because Kansas City aggressively does few things from formation aspects, is “Y-ISO”; the tight end is isolated on one side of the formation, with the running back in the backfield still on its side, and the three wide receivers on the other side.
In the field, for example, it looks like this: