It’s no secret that the Kansas City Chiefs’ top offensive weapon is TE Travis Kelce. The 33-year-old tight end just recorded 10,000 career receiving yards and his seventh consecutive 1,000-yard receiving season. He has a reputation for being tough to defend. One of the reason’s that he’s so tough to defend is that Kansas City has done a good job of finding a player to counter the work he does in the middle of the field.
Chiefs HC Andy Reid spoke a bit about the team’s pursuit of Smith-Schuster on Wednesday, explaining how he completes their offense.
“We were hoping that he could kind of counter (Travis) Kelce – and this offense is best when you can kind of do that,” Reid explained. “We had Sammy (Watkins) and then (Byron) Pringle developed into that as we went. And that’s when it rolls the best. And so, he’s come in and (has) done that and does a nice job with it. He’s got a great feel for the game. He’s got great feel in space. And then he’s really tough to bring down and I kind of forgot about that part (laughter). After he gets that ball in his hands, man, you try to hit him in his lower body, he can shrug it off like a running back. That’s special to have that.”
It’s not just a matter of what Smith-Schuster does to counter Kelce on the designed plays, though. Smith-Schuster explained that three of his receptions in Week 14 came on routes where he improvised. That included his touchdown reception in the back of the endzone, with his quarterback Patrick Mahomes buying time for him to get open.
“He just stayed alive,” Mahomes said of Smith-Schuster. “He’s a guy that’s going to attract people, so he can get Travis (Kelce) open and obviously they dropped right into where we wanted to throw the football. So instead of just running off and letting the play end, he just kept working. You can see it I think from the back endzone view of he’s just moving side to side, just trying to find a way to give me a spot to throw the football so he got open (and) I was able to get him the ball in a big moment. It’s going to take that. Not every play’s going to be perfect, we’re going to have to be able to make some plays whenever the play call isn’t perfect. I thought he did a great job of continuing to work and not giving up on it.”
Kelce and Smith-Schuster’s ability to help get each other open, on both designed and improvised plays, has the offense performing at a high level deep into the regular season. When one player attracts attention, the other seemingly has the ability to get open.
Smith-Schuster is currently pacing to record his second career 1,000-yard receiving season and that’s all with missing a week due to a concussion. With the postseason fast approaching, Smith-Schuster will be leaned on even more in big situations to help keep this offense performing at a high level.
