A wildly frustrating start to the Kansas City Chiefs' 2021 season turned ugly on Sunday. The defending AFC champs were outscored 27-0 in the first half by the Tennessee Titans. Mike Vrabel's team took its foot off the gas and didn't score in the second half, but the Chiefs could muster only a lone field goal in what was the worst offensive performance of the Patrick Mahomes era. If that wasn't bad enough, Mahomes was injured in the fourth quarter and had to leave the game. The only good news from the defeat is that Mahomes passed the concussion protocol.
At 3-4, the Chiefs have as many losses through seven weeks as they've had through any full season since Mahomes took over as their starter in 2018. With losses to the Bills, Chargers, Ravens and Titans, they have lost tiebreakers to many of the teams they would expect to compete against in the postseason. They're a tiebreaker away from last place in the AFC West, a division they were overwhelmingly expected to win for the sixth consecutive season. If this were a video game, the Chiefs would frantically be pressing the reset button.
Let's take a closer look at the Chiefs, and I'll do my best to break down what is factual and fictional about this start to the season. I'll begin with one of the biggest reasons they were manhandled in Week 7:
Fact: The Chiefs are turning the ball over way too often
Spoiler!
In 2018, when Mahomes took over as the full-time starter and won MVP, the Chiefs turned the ball over 18 times all season. In 2019, even with an injured Mahomes missing time, they turned the ball over just 15 times. Last season, they turned the ball over 16 times in 16 games. They averaged just about one turnover per game over those first three seasons, and that formula served them just fine.
In 2021, they have turned the ball over 17 times in seven games. In some cases, the turnovers have been incredibly painful, like the Clyde Edwards-Helaire fumble that cost the Chiefs a chance to kick a game-winning field goal against the Ravens in Week 2. At other times, it's felt like they spent the entire offseason taking classes in how to tip passes into the arms of opposing defenders.
Have they been unlucky? A little, yeah. They have recovered just four of their 12 fumbles (33.3%) on offense so far. Fumble recovery rates can vary a bit here and there depending on who does the fumbling and where, but they recovered 57% of their fumbles on offense across the first three seasons of the Mahomes era. Offenses on the whole covered just over 55% of their fumbles during that span. The difference between a typical recovery rate and what has happened to the Chiefs this season has been only two or three recoveries, but if one of those recoveries had been the Edwards-Helaire fumble, they are probably 4-3.
As for Mahomes' nine interceptions, you could argue that he has been a bit unfortunate. Three of those picks went through the hands of an open receiver and into those of a defender, including Micah Hyde's pick-six of Mahomes in the ugly loss to the Bills. Defensive end Greg Rousseau also made an incredible play by tipping an attempted throw to the flat to himself before catching it on the second try. Every quarterback deals with tipped picks, but it sure feels like a disproportionate number of tipped balls in Kansas City games have resulted in interceptions in 2021.
And yet, at the same time, there were signs that Mahomes was lucky in years past. He had seven dropped interceptions last season, which was above the league average. His five other picks have also come on the sorts of plays we've come to treat as his moments. Interceptions have come after seven seconds of scrambling, falling down and on throws into triple coverage. For years, Mahomes has been the exception to so many rules for young quarterbacks. This season, he has been punished more often in those situations.
Fiction: The offense is a problem
Spoiler!
With all of that being said, before Sunday, the Chiefs were doing just fine on the offensive side of the ball. Through Week 6, they ranked in the top five in virtually every offensive category you can find: points per game (fifth), DVOA (second), EPA per play (third) and win expectancy added (first) all had them as one of the league's best offenses, even with the turnovers included. Several of those statistics adjust for game situation, so it's not as if they were just scoring in garbage time to goose up their numbers.
Those numbers will fall off a bit after Sunday. The Chiefs scored a mere three points on eight drives against a Titans defense that came into the game ranked 28th in defensive DVOA. They eventually pieced together 22 first downs, but they didn't even make it onto Tennessee's side of the field before halftime. Even after Sunday, though, they still ranked fifth in the league in EPA per play.
In its own weird way, it's a strange testament to how good the Chiefs have been on offense that they can still rate this highly while simultaneously leading the league in giveaways. Strip out the plays that resulted in turnovers for each team and they would be averaging 0.26 expected points per snap on offense, which would be the best mark in football.
We can't just write off those takeaways for what has happened so far, but we have three years of evidence suggesting that the Chiefs aren't going to run a 33% fumble recovery rate and Mahomes won't throw interceptions on more than 3% of his passes over the remainder of the season. They have been very good on offense even while dealing with turnovers, and they're not likely to turn the ball over this frequently as the season goes on.
Even if the turnovers didn't go away for some reason, we've seen this style of offense work in the past. I liked Chris Brown's comparison between the 2021 Chiefs and the 1999-2001 Rams, who led the league in points per possession three straight years despite ranking 18th, 25th and 31st in turnover rate over that span. The Rams won one Super Bowl and went to a second during that run.
Fact: Teams are playing two-high coverages against the Chiefs far more frequently
Spoiler!
If you're a talking head looking to break down what has been stopping this team on offense this season (a thing that, as you saw from the previous section, had not happened before Sunday), the simple answer has been to talk about a two-high shell. By playing Cover 2, Cover 4 or two-man coverage, defenses have protected themselves from the vertical shots on which the Chiefs thrived in years past.
This one is somewhere between truth and fiction. It's naive or disingenuous to suggest that the league wasn't using two-high coverage concepts against then before 2021. Defensive coordinators realized that they needed to protect downfield with two deep safeties against then sometime around Week 3 of the 2018 season. More recently, we saw the Texans and Bills both play heavy doses of two-high coverage with extremely deep safeties during the 2020 regular season in games the Chiefs won while scoring a combined 60 points.
What is true, though, is that defenses are going to two-high looks against the Chiefs at a much higher rate than ever before. ESPN's automated coverage analysis reports that they faced two-deep coverage on about 36.5% of their dropbacks between 2018 and 2020. In 2021, with the league as a whole upping its two-deep coverage rate to nearly 38%, opposing defenses have played two deep safeties against Mahomes & Co. on more than 59% of their dropbacks. Fifty-nine percent!
Teams playing two-deep coverage cede the numbers advantage in the box, making it easier to run the football. Despite the criticisms levied at Edwards-Helaire before his injury, the Chiefs have run the ball efficiently this season, ranking fifth in EPA per rush play, ahead of the Ravens. They're also much more efficient throwing the ball than they are running the ball, even against those shells and with Mahomes' interceptions.
Could Andy Reid's team run the ball more? His offenses are always going to be pass-happy, but owing perhaps to the defenses they've seen, the Chiefs are actually running the ball more frequently in 2021 than they have in years past. On early downs while neither team has a commanding lead, they are throwing the ball 62.3% of the time, which is the league's second-highest rate behind the Bills. From 2018 to '20, they threw the ball 64.1% of the time, which was more than five percentage points more than any other team in the league. Again, in these situations, Kansas City has been much more productive and effective throwing than running, even at its elevated passing rates.
It's true that teams are playing more two-high than ever before, but this isn't something new for the Chiefs or some "blueprint" for stopping them. The only thing that had slowed them down on offense before Sunday was turnovers.
Fact: The Chiefs haven't been as explosive as in years past
Spoiler!
This one is true. The Chiefs aren't moving the ball the same way. The explosive shot plays we saw to Tyreek Hill and Mecole Hardman haven't been weekly occurrences. I wrote about this after Week 2, but that was with Mahomes struggling to hit throws downfield. He has improved there, with his completion percentage on throws traveling at least 25 yards in the air rising above its expectation over the past few weeks. He hit 50 completions on those throws across 45 games between 2018 and 2020; he has six in seven games this season. He ranked third in QBR on those passes over his first three years, and he's 12th this season. There isn't a huge difference there.
What is true, though, is that the Chiefs haven't turned many of their short plays into bigger gains. They used to be the kings of YAC, and they haven't been in 2021. From 2018 to '20, they averaged 6.2 yards after catch, which was the second-best mark in football. They're down to 5.3 YAC this season, which ranks 19th. Part of that relates to the passes they are throwing. The average Mahomes pass before 2021 expected to generate 5.4 YAC; this season, that's down to 4.7 YAC. Hill has been far more inconsistent with the ball in his hands; he has exceeded his expected YAC just 38.8% of the time, down from nearly 53% over the prior three seasons.
Over the first three seasons of the Mahomes era, the Chiefs produced 17 plays for 50 yards or more. That might not be as many as you think -- the Titans lead the league with 29 over that time frame -- but Kansas City also added four more during its playoff runs. In all, it produced a 50-plus yard gain about once every 169 plays. On 474 snaps this season, the Chiefs have one 50-plus yard gain, a 75-yard touchdown to Hill in the opener. The truly explosive plays have been missing.
Those moments in which Mahomes seems to bend time before finding an open receiver have also fizzled out. From 2018 to '20, he averaged 7.9 yards per attempt and posted a 87.1 QBR when he held the ball for at least five seconds before throwing. On those same passes this season, he's 5 of 16 for 83 yards and two picks, good for just 5.2 yards per attempt and a QBR of 2.4.
And whether it has been Mahomes itching to make plays, the deep coverage looks, randomness or some combination of the three, the Chiefs haven't been anywhere near as effective when he does get time to throw. When he wasn't pressured over the first three years of his run, they averaged 8.9 yards per dropback, which was fourth-best in the league. This season, the seeming inevitability of a receiver getting open hasn't been an inevitability at all; they're down to 7.7 yards per dropback, which ranks 22nd in the league without pressure.
The Chiefs have thrived instead by dominating on third down. Even after the Titans game, they have converted on 57% of their third downs this season. The Bills rank second in the league at 50%. I don't think Kansas City can sustain that rate over an entire season, given that it hit at about 48% of the time between 2018 and 2020. My guess is that its third-down conversion rate comes down as the season goes along, but it's replaced by more frequent big plays.
Fiction: The Chiefs fixed their offensive line over the offseason
Spoiler!
After seeing Mahomes torn apart behind an offensive line of backups in Super Bowl LV, the Chiefs went all-out to fix their line this offseason. Not one of their five starting linemen played for them in 2020. Left tackle Orlando Brown Jr. was on the Ravens, left guard Joe Thuney was on the Patriots, right tackle Lucas Niang opted out of the season and center Creed Humphrey and right guard Trey Smith are rookies. Guards Laurent Duvernay-Tardif and Kyle Long are both on the PUP list, and neither of them played in 2020, either. The only significant returnee is swing tackle Mike Remmers, who took over for an ineffective Niang against Washington.
It's true that the Chiefs are better up front now than they were by the end of the 2020 playoffs, but the line is still a major work in progress. Mahomes extends nearly every play in his own way, but ESPN's pass block win rate (PBWR) attempts to measure how an offensive line performs across the first 2.5 seconds of a pass play. They ranked sixth in PBWR in 2020 and are 13th in the same category this season.
Admittedly, it can be difficult to pass protect for Mahomes, whose brilliance and creative freedom can lead him to take extra steps while attempting to extend dropbacks and scramble if he thinks it'll open up a passing opportunity. The trade-off is well worth it, of course; nobody complained when Mahomes took a nine- or 10-stop drop on third-and-15 in the Super Bowl LIV and turned the game around with a deep pass to Hill.
There have been plenty of times this season, though, in which the offensive line deserved its fair share of the criticism. The Titans were able to control the line of scrimmage for stretches of Sunday's win, and it wasn't because Mahomes was holding onto the football. Denico Autry, who was great for Tennessee, had no trouble getting to Mahomes for a quick sack on third down. Same for Harold Landry III, who dipped underneath Brown for a sack. Brown, who was imported in advance of what will likely be a massive extension to be the team's long-term left tackle, ranks 48th in PBWR this season.
Naturally, for a line that had zero snaps together before this season, the hope will be that they play better as the year goes on. Smith, a sixth-round pick who is the weak link of the line on paper, has been extremely impressive as a rookie, which is a promising sign for a team with a great track record of developing interior linemen. The chances that the Chiefs will be down to bare-bones up front again come January are low, but this line isn't clicking on all cylinders yet, either.
Fact: The defense has been a major, major problem
Spoiler!
I recognize that it's easy to see a struggling Chiefs team that has been built around its offense for years and try to pin their problems on Mahomes & Co., but let's be realistic. Let's go back to win probability added (WPA), which measures how each side of the ball impacted their team's chances of winning from snap-to-snap. I'm also going to include how Kansas City performed during the first three years of the Mahomes era for reference. This is where the Chiefs ranked in terms of WPA per game, split by offense and defense:
WPA ranking in 2018-20: 1st on offense, 23rd on defense
WPA ranking in 2021: 14th on offense, 28th on defense
There's an important distinction to keep in mind. It's true that the offense isn't contributing as much as the offense typically does for the Chiefs, but that decline (fueled by turnovers) isn't the problem with this team. The Cardinals rank 12th in offensive WPA per game and are 7-0 with an MVP candidate at quarterback. The offense was carrying the defense for the Mahomes era, and with that unit falling back toward the pack during an inconsistent start, the defense has only gotten worse.
Let's start up front, where the Chiefs at least expect to be good most years. Frank Clark and Chris Jones have both missed time with injuries, but neither has produced a sack since the opener. Kansas City hasn't had any success getting home with its front four; when it doesn't blitz, Steve Spagnuolo's defense ranks dead last in the league with a 19.5% pressure rate. As a result, it has blitzed at the second-highest rate and has a below-average pressure rate to show for it.
If you miss the old Mahomes and the old Chiefs offense, all you have to do is just watch this defense and wait for the pass rush to not get home. When they haven't successfully pressured opposing quarterbacks this season, they've posted a Mahomesian QBR of 81.2. Josh Allen, Ryan Tannehill and the rest of the Chiefs' opponents have completed nearly 78% of their unpressured passes and averaged 9.4 yards per attempt. Only the Lions have been worse against unpressured quarterbacks.
Just about everybody in the secondary besides Tyrann Mathieu and Charvarius Ward has struggled. L'Jarius Sneed, who impressed as a rookie last season, has allowed a 145.1 passer rating as the nearest defender in coverage. Mike Hughes has been better (103.9), but he has been the nearest defender on a team-high four touchdown passes already, including A.J. Brown's touchdown catch on Sunday. I don't think Hughes was particularly bad in coverage on the play, but it's telling that the Titans saw Brown matched up against the former first-round pick and had Tannehill immediately toss a 50-50 ball.
This is generally baked in to the Chiefs' defensive philosophy over the past few years. They want to spend heavily in some places and get by on the cheap at cornerback. Sneed and Bashaud Breeland have been useful players for relatively small salaries in years past, in part because the pass rush has made their lives easier. In 2021, with the rush struggling, the cornerbacks have been further exposed.
Fiction: The defense is not one player or one change away
Spoiler!
The hope for the Chiefs throughout the season on defense has been that they're one return or one roster move away from looking just fine on that side of the ball. First, it was getting Mathieu back from the COVID-19 list. Next, it was getting Clark and/or Jones back. Then it was benching safety Daniel Sorensen for Juan Thornhill or making a change at linebacker.
Well, all of those things have happened, and the Chiefs still aren't good on defense. They deserve some credit for slowing down Derrick Henry on Sunday, but the Titans racked up 19 first downs and 27 points on their five first-half drives. Two of those drives came from midfield after Kansas City turnovers, but Tennessee scored touchdowns on drives of 75 and 97 yards in the first quarter.
I can't fault Chiefs fans for wanting to see Sorensen benched, given that he has been an easy target for opposing offenses in the passing game for several seasons now. Unfortunately, it hasn't solved their problems. Sorensen, who was benched for most of the last two weeks, wasn't on the field for this long touchdown against Washington, where three players sell out to stop the (fake) screen and two of Taylor Heinicke's receivers are open going up the sideline for a touchdown:
This defense is structurally flawed. The pass rush isn't winning with four, and the corners aren't good enough to cover when the rush doesn't get home. Spagnuolo can draw up plenty of blitzes, but the Chiefs don't tackle well in the open field and allow the league's fourth-most yards after catch per play. The run defense ranks 31st in EPA and Success Rate, so it isn't putting opposing offenses in a bind most series, either.
All of this adds up to a defense that doesn't do anything well. It has allowed a league-high nine plays of 40 yards or more, so big plays are in play. Mathieu & Co. have allowed teams to convert 48.7% of their third downs, the third-worst mark in football, so matriculating the ball down the field is no big deal. Offenses have scored touchdowns on 73.1% of their red zone possessions (fifth best), so the Chiefs can't claim they're a bend-but-don't-break unit. And while they intercepted Tannehill in the red zone on Sunday, they have seven takeaways in seven games, which is down from their three-year average.
If there's any hope, it has to come from the pass rush. If the Chiefs can get pressure without having to blitz, they can play seven men in coverage, which will at least reduce the broken tackles and big plays by sheer volume of defenders. They also have two stars up front in Jones and Clark, although the latter has only really been a star for Kansas City during stretches of the postseason. I would say that they could probably add a pass-rusher or two to try to help things out, but that would qualify as contradicting the section heading. For a team that seems to be struggling with everything on defense, the Chiefs need to at least get good at something.
Fact: Years of questionable drafts have left the Chiefs without great depth
Spoiler!
In 2017, former general manager John Dorsey traded up for Mahomes in the draft. You don't need me to tell you that was a good idea. The future Browns general manager was fired several months later and replaced by Brett Veach, who had started as a coaching intern under Reid in Philadelphia before joining the legendary coach in Kansas City. Veach signed Mathieu, and that helped win the Chiefs a Super Bowl. No complaints there.
In terms of the post-Mahomes drafts, though, they can't feel thrilled about what they've added. They've used their first-round picks mostly as trade fodder. After giving a second first-rounder to the Bills for Mahomes, their 2019 first-rounder went to the Seahawks for Clark, and their 2021 pick was shipped to the Ravens for Brown. The only first-round pick the Chiefs have used was at the end of the first round in 2020, when they drafted Edwards-Helaire, who hasn't been an impact player.
What about the second round? In a spot in which the Chiefs drafted players such as Mitch Morse and Jones in years past, they haven't found difference-makers since Veach took over. Breeland Speaks played only one season before getting injured in 2019 and then cut in 2020. Hardman hasn't developed into a starting-caliber wide receiver. Thornhill looked promising as a rookie before tearing his ACL, but the organization was starting Sorensen over him to begin the 2021 season. Willie Gay hasn't been more than a rotation linebacker so far. Humphrey and linebacker Nick Bolton have shown more promise as rookies, but the Chiefs would have hoped to have found at least one above-average starter out of those four picks between 2018 and 2020.
Travis Kelce and Steven Nelson were once Chiefs third-round selections, so what about that round? Again, disappointment. There's at least one starter here, although Derrick Nnadi is a two-down defensive tackle on a team that doesn't stop the run on either of those downs. Niang has been benched. Khalen Saunders has been a backup defensive tackle, and Dorian O'Daniel is strictly a special-teamer. That's nine top-100 picks over three drafts between 2018 and 2020, and they appear to have come away with one adequate starter in Nnadi and one with some promise in Thornhill.
The Chiefs did land a couple of useful players in the later rounds with Sneed and Rashad Fenton, but they haven't found any blue-chippers, either. Veach & Co. have been drafting toward the end of most rounds, but even by that bar, their drafts would have to be seen as a disappointment so far. (I also don't buy that argument; the Chiefs drafted Hardman just before DK Metcalf, Diontae Johnson and Terry McLaurin.) They have won in spite of those disappointing drafts.
Without the draft picks making a significant difference, they have gone as far as their stars can carry them. Thankfully for them, that has been pretty far. We can't say the same about 2021. Mathieu has been great -- and Kelce continues to soldier on despite looking less than 100% healthy at times -- but they might be the only two. Mahomes has been sloppier than normal. Edwards-Helaire was dealing with fumble issues before getting hurt. Hill has dropped multiple passes for interceptions. Brown, acquired for that first-rounder, has struggled in his new full-time role. Thuney has generally played well, but he's dealing with a broken hand. Clark and Jones haven't been healthy or consistently effective. Anthony Hitchens was coming in for criticism before going down with his own injury.
Kansas City needs the players it has prioritized, either with cash or first-round picks, to be available and make a difference. Right now, that's not the case.
Fiction: The Chiefs' Super Bowl hopes are out the window
Spoiler!
Let's finish up by saying something that should be obvious. You can never, ever, ever rule out the Chiefs going on a run. A slightly better version of this team with better turnover luck could look significantly better. They have just one road game over the next seven weeks, and it's to Las Vegas to play the Raiders. The ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) thinks they are favorites to win each of their next six games, although several are considered coin flips. If the Chiefs go 5-1 or 6-0 during this span, they're comfortably back in business before the final month of the postseason.
We've seen Super Bowl teams get into this sort of predicament before with a rough start, although not many. The 1995 Steelers started 3-4 before winning eight straight games and eventually claiming the AFC title. The 2001 Patriots started 3-4 and then went 8-1 down the stretch. You know what they did in the playoffs. The Chiefs are just about the opposite of that Patriots team in many ways, but it's not too late for a great team to turn things around.
10-25-2021, 03:19 PM
Time to panic about Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs? Separating fact from fiction
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