The Kansas City Chiefs traded away Tyreek Hill and got better on offense. That’s not how things are supposed to work in the NFL. But Patrick Mahomes has a tendency of making things work when they’re not supposed to, so it’s hardly surprising that Kansas City finished with the top-ranked offense in nearly every major category while his former WR1 was off in Miami breaking records for the Dolphins.
“Nobody’s happier for Tyreek than I am,” Andy Reid said earlier in the week, days before he’d win his second ring after beating the Eagles 38-35 in Super Bowl LVII. “He made a lot of money and gained a lot of yards. … [But] we didn’t lose Patrick Mahomes. That was a good thing.”
Having Mahomes on Sunday was certainly a good thing. The Chiefs quarterback wasn’t perfect, but he wasn’t far off. Against the NFL’s best defense, he completed 78 percent of his passes and threw three touchdowns. He averaged 0.56 expected points added per pass play with a 71 percent success rate, per RBSDM.com. Nearly half of his dropbacks resulted in a first down.
Mahomes was the best player on the field, but he also had plenty of support. His offensive line held up against a historically prolific pass rush. Rookie running back Isiah Pacheco ran for 76 yards and a touchdown on 15 carries. Jerick McKinnon added 34 yards on four carries, including a would-be touchdown if not for his heady decision to slide short of the end zone to keep the clock running late in the fourth quarter of a tied game—a decision that allowed the Chiefs to burn an additional 90 seconds off the clock. Kansas City also got big contributions out of its receiving corps. Skyy Moore and Kadarius Toney both scored touchdowns, and the latter nearly tacked on a second but was tackled short of the goal line after a thrilling punt return early in the fourth quarter. JuJu Smith-Schuster was the team’s most active wideout, with seven receptions on nine targets and 53 yards. And, of course, Travis Kelce was the star he always is, leading the team with 81 receiving yards.
Mahomes, playing with a re-aggravated high-ankle sprain for the entire second half, was heroic. But this was a total team effort on the offensive side of the ball, which had always been the plan.
“I said it before the season: It’s going to be everybody,” Mahomes told ESPN after the game, before editing himself a bit: “It’s going to be everyone and Kelce … and you saw it today.”
That was how it felt throughout the season. Mahomes and Kelce did their typical thing, while it seemed like a different receiver (or two) stepped up every week and made plays when necessary. And it wasn’t just the high-profile newcomers, either. Smith-Schuster and fellow free-agent signee Marquez Valdes-Scantling led the wide receiver room with 933 and 687 receiving yards, respectively, but Toney, Moore, and even Justin Watson all had their moments throughout the season.
“MVS, JuJu, and KT. These are all new faces, and they just stepped up,” Reid said of his revamped receiving corps after Sunday’s triumph. “They’ve done that all year. … MVS, big plays. JuJu tonight, big plays. … Skyy Moore, big plays. These guys, my hat goes off to them.”
Reid was effusive in his praise of his wide receivers throughout the week. Even while acknowledging the role that having the league’s best quarterback plays in their success, Reid pointed out that the partnership is beneficial for both sides.
“He makes those guys look good in a lot of ways,” the 64-year-old coach said Tuesday. “And they helped him look good too, so it’s a good relationship.”
The ways Mahomes’s receivers made his life easier this season might be hard to spot. Kelce’s contribution is a little more obvious, but the new guys on the supporting cast helped spur a schematic evolution for an offense that had grown somewhat stale over the previous year or two. Hill gave the Chiefs the best deep-threat receiver in the NFL, yes, but Kansas City’s entire deep passing game was built around him. That made it easier for defenses to scheme up ways to limit it, and the Chiefs and Mahomes struggled to find a viable plan B at times.
Chiefs wide receivers coach Joe Bleymaier told Fox Sports that it was “liberating” to scheme up deep shots this year without Hill, which sounds awfully counterintuitive. Bleymaier, who served as a pass game analyst before this season, explained that not having to design everything for Hill allowed Kansas City’s staff to “conceptualize downfield concepts where we could incorporate all different guys from perhaps different sides of the formation.”
Opposing defenses seemed to be emboldened by Hill’s absence. A year ago, Mahomes saw a ton of soft zone coverages. In 2022, he saw more man coverage, the fourth most in the league, according to TruMedia. Matching Smith-Schuster stride for stride down the field is a much lighter lift for cornerbacks than sticking with Hill, obviously. But the strategy didn’t pay off for Kansas City’s opponents. The Chiefs torched man coverage all season. Mahomes racked up 74.8 total EPA against man in 2022, which led the league, according to TruMedia. That was more than three times his 2021 output (23.3 EPA) on such plays.
Smith-Schuster himself generated 20.4 total EPA on 31 targets against man coverage, according to TruMedia. The rookie Moore chipped in with 6.8, and Valdes-Scantling finished with 6.6. Hill hasn’t been so great against man coverage. Over the past two seasons, including his first season in Miami, he’s produced just 3.5 total EPA on 80 targets. The Dolphins star is the best player of the bunch, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he was the best fit for what the Chiefs were facing this season.
On Sunday night, the Eagles played man coverage at their highest rate of the season, according to Next Gen Stats, which allowed Reid to dial up the two touchdown passes Mahomes threw in the second half. Both took advantage of the way Philadelphia defended jet motion and caused miscommunications that left Toney and Moore without defenders within 5 yards.
“Good play against man coverage,” Reid said of Toney’s touchdown, via NBC Sports. “We had it ranked high [on the play sheet].”
Hill’s departure also led to structural changes to the offense. It just looked different, and that’s because it was. Kansas City made its offense more condensed, dropping its average formation width by a full yard, per Next Gen Stats. The offense also got bigger in terms of personnel, ranking second behind only the Ravens in snaps played by tight ends after ranking 10th a season ago. It dropped from eighth all the way down to 22nd in snaps played by receivers. Kansas City’s usage of 11 personnel (one back, one tight end, and three receivers) dropped from the eighth highest in the NFL in 2021 to 21st this season, according to Sports Info Solutions.
Those changes led to more loaded run boxes this season, but that didn’t affect the production of the run game negatively. In fact, the Chiefs moved from 10th to ninth in rushing DVOA despite facing tougher run looks. Pacheco’s violent running style helped create more yardage, but replacing Hill with better and more willing run blockers in Smith-Schuster and Valdes-Scantling also helped. So did more tight ends on the field this season. Overall, this was just a far more physical offense, and the new receiving corps played a big role in that change.
It’s tough to doubt Mahomes, but I’m not sure any of the past iterations of the Chiefs offense would have been able to hang 38 points on this Eagles defense. One of only two times Philly was able to force a punt came in a two-minute situation late in the first half. The Chiefs, needing to move quickly, spread things out and played more like they had in the past when Hill was on the roster. It didn’t work. The Eagles pass rush, not having to worry about the threat of the run or play-action, hurried Mahomes and eventually forced a stop.
The Chiefs didn’t face similar time constraints for the rest of the game and were able to keep Eagles defensive coordinator Jonathan Gannon guessing all night. Reid never abandoned the run, he threw in some misdirection plays to take advantage of Philly’s aggressive defense, and he leaned heavily on quick-passing concepts that got the ball out of Mahomes’s hands in a hurry. It was a masterfully called game that just wouldn’t have been possible with last year’s roster.
The front office deserves its fair share of the credit for the offensive evolution that helped Kansas City win another Lombardi. Building a good offense is a lot easier when you employ Reid and Mahomes, but finding the right pieces to maximize their talents requires a keen eye.
“Our GM, Brett Veach, he brought in every single person that he needed to win this season,” Smith-Schuster, one of Veach’s offseason additions, told NFL Network after the win. “And it worked out perfect. We had missing puzzle [pieces]. We replaced [them].”
Veach will have some work to do to keep the puzzle intact over the next few months. Smith-Schuster will need a new contract after signing a one-year prove-it deal last offseason. Mecole Hardman, a key contributor when healthy, will also see his deal expire in March. With other pillars of the roster, including star defensive tackle Chris Jones, in need of new deals and only $11 million in projected cap space, per Spotrac, it could be hard to bring back both Smith-Schuster and Hardman.
Last offseason, Veach zigged while the rest of the league zagged. There was a heavy investment in the receiver position across the league, and a lot of those teams should be happy with the returns they saw in 2022. Miami’s trade for Hill was a big reason the team ended its playoff drought. The Eagles nearly knocked off these Chiefs thanks to A.J. Brown, who came over in a draft-day trade. The Jaguars were laughed at for giving Christian Kirk a huge deal in free agency, but he helped them get to the playoffs and made Trevor Lawrence’s job a bit easier. The Raiders weren’t nearly as successful as those other teams, but Davante Adams is really the only thing that offense has going for it now, and it’s not like the Packers are thriving without him.
Maybe the Chiefs’ gamble paying off with a ring will convince teams to scale back their spending on wideouts, but I’m not sure we should consider anything that Mahomes and Reid pull off to be actionable for the other 31 teams. Kansas City’s duo is one of one.
