Chiefs are crushing it with 13 personnel.
 

The Chiefs Use of 13 Personnel Has Become a Problem for Opposing Defenses
The Chiefs have utilized their unique ability to attack vertically out of heavy personnel exceptional well late in the season.
by Matt Lane
5 hr ago

The Kansas City Chiefs went into Las Vegas and easily dispatched the Las Vegas Raiders to lock up the first seed for the AFC Playoff picture. They hit the ground running and jumped out to an early lead before coasting off to a comfortable victory. A lot of flashy play calls and designs are going to be the first thing most remember from this game but it’s the building blocks being established that ultimately will matter more going forward.

The last few weeks have seen the Chiefs consistently working on specific parts of their offensive game plan in preparation for the playoffs. Last week there was an emphasis on getting quality looks in the vertical passing game. This week the Chiefs leaned a little more on the run game but there was another wrinkle they have been experimenting with all year.

The Chiefs have been using their 13 personnel for much of the season but with the return of Blake Bell that package has been forced to change. Substituting in Bell for Jody Forston certainly lowers the overall athleticism of the unit but the trade off is an increase in physicality and run game success. The challenge becomes maintaining a threatening passing attack from this heavy personnel that now presents as a dangerous run personnel grouping.

The Chiefs 13 Personnel Package

The Chiefs have been playing around with heavier personnel packages quite frequently in recent seasons as teams work to slow down the vertical passing attack. The issue they’ve continued to run into is how to maintain a threatening vertical passing attack while getting less speed on the field but it feels like they finally be figuring it out in time for the playoff run.

Stretching the Field

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Chiefs have been toying around with their 13personnel and how to attack teams vertically out of it.<br><br>LV even stuck to nickel (and dime) vs 13p most of the game to defend it but the PA Jet Motion Wheel still snuck behind them. <a href="https://t.co/NcIpJephzQ">pic.twitter.com/NcIpJephzQ</a></p>&mdash; Matt Lane (@Matty_KCSN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matty_KCSN/status/1612870508156194818?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

This general concept - the motion behind the line of scrimmage paired with hard play-action - is something the Chiefs have been working in all season. They’ve ran it with tight ends, wide receivers, and out of various different alignments. It works well for the Chiefs because they have some athletic tight ends that can are capable of working vertical over the middle of the field and a quarterback willing to throw the ball to them.

This can stretch the opposing defensive backs horizontally because of how many players the Chiefs can get on the same plane. The routes over the middle of the field force safeties to decide on honoring the middle of the field and leaving the outside corner isolated one on one, or assisting the the outside corner leaving their safety mate at risk of defending multiple routes.

With Chiefs are working with heavy personnel and out of a condensed split, it forces the defense to play tight to the line of scrimmage even if they remain in lighter personnel. This creates a lot of vertical space to be attacked by the Chiefs athletic, tight ends Travis Kelce and Noah Gray. The Chiefs are manipulating space vertically and horizontally through the alignment and route distribution on the field. The route combinations for the Chiefs are on point - as always - but it’s how it forces the defense to play that is the key.

Forcing Basic Coverage Shells

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">13p forces defenses into more basic coverage shells and KC trusts their QB + weapons to still win vertically.<br><br>87 demands the attention of both deep third defenders by splitting them, RB to the flat drags the hook defender wide, and Bell wraps to wide open grass. <a href="https://t.co/U2LiDhwIC8">pic.twitter.com/U2LiDhwIC8</a></p>&mdash; Matt Lane (@Matty_KCSN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matty_KCSN/status/1612871114677538822?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

When the Chiefs trot out this heavy personnel, teams are forced with the decision on how to respond with their own personnel. Some teams - like the Broncos - will play their base defensive personnel packages while other - like the Raiders - will play nickel or even dime personnel. Regardless of the actual players on the field, the formations will force defenses into relatively basic 4-3/3-4 alignments.

Even more important than the alignment is the limitation placed on the potential coverage shells on the back end. It’s difficult to rotate players around post-snap when so many have to play specific run fits in the box. Most defenses end up extremely limited in their blitz or coverage packages when aligned this heavy. Becoming more predictable in these ways is incredibly difficult against a team like the Chiefs with their offensive prowess.

The Chiefs do such a good job overloaded multiple “coverage zones” with potential route options until someone can pop open. On this play vs Cover-3 the Chiefs release three routes to the outside of the hook defender to the strong side. When the final route releases outside, the hook defender is forced to widen with the Flat route allowing another receiver to wrap around him.

They don’t stop there though. The Chiefs also push two routes vertically into the space between the two deep zones which forces both of them to play the deepest route. This creates a hi-lo over the middle of the field which forces the deep middle defender to make an impossible choice.

Even When “Failing” They Are Learning

[video here, posted the link, but not embeddable]

Here we have the Chiefs getting into the gun and having their tight ends slightly more spread out which allowed the Raiders to play less condensed at the line of scrimmage. The downhill run threat wasn’t as eminent allowing them to play with more depth along the second level.

As the vertical routes unfolded to stress the coverage shell horizontally, the underneath defenders were playing at depth not letting any vertical stretch to occur. Despite this happening, the Chiefs still had a chance for a big play in the passing game. Both the tight end and running back were delayed getting out into their routes which would have forced the curl-flat zone defenders to make a decision on what to cover.

Without that stress being placed, both corner backs were able to drift underneath the vertical routes and the pass rush started to get home before either receiver made it to the flat. The Chiefs likely identify this moving forward and make sure they get one of these Flat routes out early to allow for an outlet but also to properly create that vertical stretch.

Run the Dang Ball

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">LV was okay staying in Dime personnel (then lining up in a 4-3 look) vs KC&#39;s heavy personnel.<br><br>Chiefs didn&#39;t hit any big runs but if defenses wanna play that light vs the 13p look, KC has the ability to pick solid gains on the ground. <a href="https://t.co/CjnZiIutrk">pic.twitter.com/CjnZiIutrk</a></p>&mdash; Matt Lane (@Matty_KCSN) <a href="https://twitter.com/Matty_KCSN/status/1612886595299938304?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 10, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

The short and sweet answer to the above play - defenses playing with light personnel and from depth - is simply to run the football. The Chiefs still haven’t opted to just pound the rock out of 13 personnel but they have flashed the ability to pick up positive yards. Blake Bell returning helps in this area a ton due to his ability to be an excellent in-line and second level blocker.

When the Chiefs run at 13 personnel it’s usually coming from under center and so far they have stayed pretty close to the vest in terms of run plays. It’s predominantly been Midline Zone and Outside Zone but the Chiefs have also diluted their traditional run plays down the stretch as well.

It’s quite possible that is where their run game sticks out of this formation and that’s okay. The Chiefs will still have the “weight” advantage on the majority of plays and can simply fall forward for a quality gain.

If the Chiefs want to mix things up and start to hunt for more explosive run plays out of 13 personnel they might start utilizing some of their power run game to create new run lanes. They can also go back into shotgun if teams are going to play further back against that look and attack the space vacated rather than trying to just plow ahead.

Moving Forward

The Chiefs aren’t likely to become a team like the San Francisco 49ers that base out of a heavy personnel group but their uptick in it’s usage down the stretch still tells a story. Andy Reid has been using games down the stretch to test out and perfect some situational football decisions and the use of 13 personnel is no different.

It’s hard to say how the Chiefs will use this heavy package but they’re going to work it in as they see fit. What makes it so dangerous for opposing defenses is how well the Chiefs 13 personnel can still attack vertically thanks to the athleticism at the tight end position. Combine that with well thought out route combinations and a good understanding of how to manipulate coverage shells with alignment and it becomes the perfect storm.

When the Chiefs learn how - or decide to - run the football out of this heavy personnel package they will take another step forward. Right now they just utilize this personnel grouping for the run threat, but if teams follow the Raiders’ plan of playing nickel and dime defense against them that could change.

Gonna bring another Lombardi home in a month!

If teams sit in Nickel and DIme against it, take your 5-7 yards a pop in the run game and just plug away.

Not in their nature

We missed the Belldozer

That's because nobody else is running it.

It's something of a dinosaur in today's NFL so teams aren't used to it.

Though honestly, I'd just treat Kelce as a WR in those formation and defend it like a typical 2 TE set with Bell in the 'Dunn' role and Gray as a conventional TE.

I hope we don't over-expose it because I don't think it's actually all that tough to counter if you get enough looks at it.

I haven't looked into it at all but I wonder if the offense's struggles over the last 3-4 weeks were just Andy experimenting with shit and working out the kinks against bad teams.

I think that’s exactly what it was.

Massive margin for error in those games allowed for experimentation.

It sure as hell isn't but it's exactly how we can beat Bengals or Buff. Hopefully when we play one of them they use some discipline and keep doing it.

My favorite team, the Kansas City Chiefs, calls it the "13 personnel" package because they're the Judge and Jury, sentencing their opponents to Losses for the remainder of 2023.

As if the Bills didn’t have enough PTSD from the Chiefs and the number 13 already….

It's nice to "struggle" on offense for a month and still score 28 per game ROFL

You better Belize it!!

There was another article written a couple months ago about this. Couple factoids:

KC is running 13 personnel about 10%-11% more than last year, about 38% in 2022.

KC is only running rushing plays out of 13P 3%-5% more than last year.

Opposing defenses are calling some version of the Fangio 6 a lot less against the Chiefs in general, but in particular against 13P. And there doesn't seem to be a consensus yet about what defense works best against this personnel grouping. Meaning, the league hasn't figured out yet exactly how to defend it.

Man, I wanna see them run 13 w/ Toney or Hardman isolated on the weak side running a vertical and just launch that ****er over the top of the secondary.

Put McKinnon in the backfield, send him out of the backfield to the left, then motion him over to the right to create something of a bunch on the far side. Have Fortson run a drag across the middle to put the SS at risk while McKinnon runs crosser to get his eyes moving. Then run Kelce on a deep post/corner to get the FS cheating over a bit and Bell on an out to come in under him and force a decision.

Then you just send Hardman or Toney on a 9 against the isolate corner from the far sideline. You have Mahomes fire that sucker into the biggest patch of green grass he can find out there and let the receiver adjust to the ball.

That play will probably be called Snowglobe 13 rocketbomb 19...it takes 13 seconds to run it for a TD. Saving it for the AFC Championship game.

And every variation in between.

I said a few weeks ago that I had a theory about 13P, and it looks like it's finally becoming a thing.

Basically, my thought was that from this package, not only could you mix and match players, but you could go into a hurry-up and never have to sub packages of players in and out, because you can run or pass so effectively from EZ to EZ from it. And defenses would have to pretty much guess what Andy was going to do from snap to snap. DCs couldn't simply look at the personnel grouping/formation and call a pass-/run- centric defense. And once in the RZ, having three TEs/big WRs or whatever (FB?) forces the defense to almost straight guess.

The only real issue, from a traditional standpoint, is that the package tends to condense things between the numbers/hashes. But this is Andy we're talking about; you know he's going to modify things, use motion, etc., to spread the defense out horizontally. He could get the DC to send in a base or heavy defense call/personnel package, and then spread Fortson, for example, out to the X, Maybe do the same with Pacheco/McKinnon or whoever, and draw two LBs out past the numbers, creating isolated bad matchups for the defense, and leaving one or no LB in the middle, while simultaneously creating a light box.
And so on.

it's just a theory, but there's plenty of potential.

There's something I'm missing in it because it seems damn near impossible to stop to my eyes.

Against something like cover 4 it's pretty easily beaten because you're really left with little more than a high risk throw to Fortson or low probability to throw on the out to Bell.

But it seems like it would be awfully nasty vs. 'conventional' coverages.

What might be fun would be to put Toney in the backfield with Hardman on the vert. They still have to respect the jet motion given what Toney has done on his carries. Then instead of running the deep cross, you have him run a whip route w/ Kelce running more of a skinny post.

But now I've gone crosseyed.

In either event, if you can get a burner isolated out there in that 13 grouping, there's gotta be a way to get him isolated and with Hardman's raw speed or Toney's ball skills, there are some ways to make that damn dangerous.

Gray and Kelce can both play as 'move' TEs. Hell, so can a healthy Fortson for that matter (though he's shockingly stiff for a converted WR).

So if you feel like defenses are bunching the middle of the field too much, you can take either of those guys off the end of the line and get them spread out a tick more.

And they're going to have to call their personnel packages based on our huddle, not our formation. So if we line up 3 TEs, they're unlikely to be out there in a Nickel. At that point, you can use those athletic TEs to motion out. And if they come out in a lighter defensive grouping, you just keep them in-line and either play bully ball with short passes or run it at them.

It's a really fascinating set of options.

Yep. As multiple as Andy likes to be, he could easily have JJSS in there as a 'TE,' Fortson in there as almost anything from the X/Y/Z . . . nearly any combination Andy can imagine.

If you've got JJSS in there at TE, you're just running simple 12 personnel though.

I don't think that's gonna jink a DC into sending out a heavy personnel group.

I think the idea is to put that extra TE into the huddle to make DCs lean towards keeping an extra LBer on the field. If they see 2 WRs and 2 TEs in the huddle, especially if one of them is Gray, they're probably still gonna run a Nickel at us.

I want them in base. I think 13 does that.

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that specifically. Was merely using him as an example of how Andy could use JJSS in 13P as a 'TE', since he's the 'hybrid' on the team more than anyone else; then kind of jumped mid-stream to the heavy thing.

My main point is that Andy won't be constrained at all by whatever is 'traditional' from the package; he'll tinker with it and produce all kinds of off-the-wall formations/plays. So, as an extreme/unlikely example, he could bring in Toney/Skyy as a 'TE' if he thought he could take advantage of that somehow.

I mean, probably there's dozens of possible mods Andy could come up with, though a lot of them probably wouldn't actually be useful. It's fun to speculate what we might see though.

Invariably my old madden 'create a play' attempts ended with "**** this, I'm running the option..."

So yeah - I suspect Andy's got a lot more tricks up his sleeve than I'm gonna come up with.

This is brilliant. It puts defenses somewhere between a rock and a hard place. The biggest thing is the Chiefs have shown they can roast you out of this heavy package and will likely only get better at it, it's fairly new. Pure genius.

Shhhh that's for playoffs

Fingers crossed.

"Do we have time to run Rocketbomb?"

Yeah, it checks out...

Not sure if this is related to or even run out of this particular set because I don’t get a chance to watch the all 22 but:

In the last several weeks (4), the Chiefs have run a pass play that involves one TE engaging a DL for 1.5/2.0 seconds. Then breaking away into the flat or simply turning and this becoming a TE screen.

The Bengals used this against last season in mid to short yardage, and our D would drop just far enough that, upon completion, the first down was an easy take.

The opportunities out of this set seem vast. Maybe Andy is running it now, so defenses pick up on it and in game he’ll “Rocketbomb”, but it’s an effective short yardage set for sure.

I've been saying it. I think they're sandbagging the run game boys. I bet we see them unleash it in the playoffs.

Speaking of All-22, anyone notice that NFL+ took down all of the 2022 season games last night?

I haven't checked today, maybe it was a technical difficulty. But i went to watch the All-22 For the Chiefs/Raiders last night and NOTHING was there. Only the 2021 season.

Y'know we averaged 25 carries/gm this season, right? 20 times/gm when you remove scrambles and jet sweeps from the list (though you could just as easily ADD those pop passes to offset many/most of those).

Fellas - we ain't gonna go ground and pound in the playoffs. Nor should we.

If we run the ball more in the playoffs it'll be to run out the clock. It won't be the primary component of a team being led by the most efficient QB in NFL post-season history.

Our quarterback averages 307 and 3 scores in 11 career playoff games. He's going to be the runaway MVP this season and his average game this season is almost identical to his average post-season game.

Maybe "Hey now we'll beat 'em with the run!" isn't the best idea...

Highest the Andy-led Chiefs seems to have gone with the rushing attack is about 38% on the season. 2018, iirc. Call it 'Before Damien Williams' era. We wre also scoring over 34 points/gm, I think.

Not that stats tell you everything, and even season stats are a pretty small sample size in reality, but the sweet spot for the Chiefs seems to be between 34%-38% rushing.

i'm old school, and would like to see the Chiefs run right in that window pretty much every game, but . . . Andy is going to Andy.

So long as KC doesn't go below about 32%, we do just fine, it seems. Below that and things start to get inefficient, generally speaking.

unless they rush 3 and drop 8, we need to pound them out of that in a hurry.

No, I don’t mean a huge increase in volume. Although I do think there will be a little increase there. I mean I think we’ll see a much wider variety of runs.


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Been thinking about this broadly I really think the offense is going to have some fun stuff for us this post season.

i keep thinking about wild stuff like pacheco running his way to SB MVP

probably need an absolutely dominant game from the defense for that

a few turnovers that give us a big lead...

He’s been soooooo close to breaking one soooooo many times this season.


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What amazes me most about Andy Reid is his ability to never stop innovating. Always adding something, evolving, forcing opponents to try and keep up. By the time the figure something out he’s moved on.