For the third time in three years, the Kansas City Chiefs have made it to the Super Bowl. But despite their lofty status as the AFC’s top team, cracks persist in their armor.
Patrick Mahomes, fresh off an MVP-caliber season, is playing through a high ankle sprain that limits his mobility. A young defense ranked 16th in points allowed. Andy Reid’s team was also guilty of playing to the level of its opponents, needing overtime to dispatch the Houston Texans and a Malik Willis-led Tennessee Titans team, as well as losing to the Indianapolis Colts.
This all seems to suggest the 2023 Super Bowl will be a close game decided by a few key factors. What will those be?
It all starts up front for the Kansas City offense.
1
Protect Patrick Mahomes
This isn’t a shocking revelation or explosive insight. It’s a basic tenet of football.
Two factors push it to the forefront of Andy Reid’s game plan in Super Bowl 57. First, he’s dealing with the league’s most disruptive pass rush. Kansas City finished second in the NFL with 55 sacks in the regular season. Philadelphia was first, with 70. That unit has accrued eight more in the postseason.
The Eagles are historically powerful and historically deep. Four different players — Haason Reddick, Javon Hargrave, Josh Sweat and Brandon Graham — had at least 11 sacks in 2022. Five had at least 14 quarterback hits (that group, plus Fletcher Cox). The majority of those guys create havoc on the front line of the team’s 4-3 base, which means offensive lines wind up in shambles even before accounting for a blitz.
The second factor is Mahomes’ sprained ankle. While he was able to play brilliantly on it to beat the Bengals, it was clear he wasn’t quite as mobile as he typically is. That ability to escape pressure and extend plays is what makes him so valuable amidst the chaos of a primed pass rush. Coming into 2022, Mahomes had a 23-1 touchdown-interception ratio when blitzed and a 64-16 ratio when facing four or fewer rushers.
Philadelphia can generate that pressure while leaving seven guys in coverage, and those guys include stars like James Bradberry, Darius Slay and CJ Gardner-Johnson. It’s not an exaggeration to suggest the war up front will dictate who wins Super Bowl 57.
Fortunately, Mahomes has a very good offensive line which can protect him — ESPN rated it the best in pass protection in the NFL, even if other sources didn’t agree.
Final Official Pass Protection Rankings as measured by three independent data sources
— 3 teams lapping the field (GB, PHI, BAL)
— MIA/CIN ended up being somewhat disappointing given their investments in OL pic.twitter.com/KdWJddivjc— Computer Cowboy (@benbbaldwin) January 10, 2023
Kansas City’s 2.6 seconds of pocket time per dropback was second-best in the NFL and suggests it can keep Mahomes upright long enough to make throws without having to escape pressure. This paid off in the AFC title game — while Mahomes was sacked three times, he also was only hit five more times on 46 dropbacks. His 2.94 seconds from snap to throw was the highest number in the conference championship round.
The Bengals, of course, aren’t the Eagles. Their regular season pressure rate ranked 13th in the NFL and only two players had more than 3.5 sacks in the regular season. But the Chiefs’ offensive line is equipped to handle Philadelphia’s challenge. Doing so would pave the path to another Mahomes Super Bowl MVP.
2
Scheme a way to free Chris Jones as a pass rusher while maintaining QB contain on Jalen Hurts
The Chiefs’ pass rush is paramount to its success defensively, especially with a young secondary on the field. Four different rookies have stepped into major roles this postseason. Trent McDuffie (first round), Brian Cook (second), Joshua Williams (fourth) and Jaylen Watson (seventh) all saw significant playing time in January. McDuffie, Williams and Watson all played at least 90 percent of the team’s defensive snaps as defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo worked to shut down the Bengals’ high-octane passing attack.
Those first-year players thrived, but it wasn’t simply a function of their own talent. It was because Chris Jones set the pace up front, discombobulating Joe Burrow. The All-Pro defensive tackle sacked Burrow twice, hit him five more times and added three tackles for loss. This meant that when Jones was on the field (54 snaps), he had roughly a one in six chance of ruining Cincinnati’s plans by himself.
The problem now is that he’ll go from facing a bottom-3 offensive line that was racked by injury to a top-3 unit in Glendale. Sticking to the middle of the trenches means a matchup with Jason Kelce, a first-team All-Pro in the midst of arguably his finest season after contemplating retirement last offseason. Guards Landon Dickerson and Isaac Seumalo have combined to allow just two sacks this season, per Pro Football Focus.
Spagnuolo won’t limit Jones’ work to interior gaps. We saw that versus Cincinnati.
Chris Jones moving to end just to abuse Hakeem Adeniji on third down is defensive poetry pic.twitter.com/TomikzAULk
— Christian D'Andrea (@TrainIsland) January 30, 2023
But difficult matchups persist there as well. Beating Lane Johnson is several magnitudes more difficult than blasting Hakeen Adeniji. Fortunately, Jones isn’t alone up front; four other Chiefs defensive linemen averaged at least one QB pressure per game and each of them had at least 10 quarterback hits over the course of the season.
That will leave Spagnuolo to scheme ways to either sneak those guys in against an offensive line likely to consistently double-team Jones or use their presence to create openings for Jones to wreak havoc. That’s important! Hurts was only pressured on 17.7 percent of his dropbacks. He only had to throw 15 percent of his passes into tight windows — the 10th-lowest mark in the NFL.
Hurts has been understated as a passer since his return from a Week 15 shoulder sprain. He’s thrown for only 504 total yards across three games. Only nine of his passes in that stretch have covered more than 15 yards from the line of scrimmage. Granted, he hasn’t been asked to throw much thanks to playoff blowouts — the Eagles have run the ball more than 63 percent of the time in the postseason — but his viability as a downfield passer is one area Kansas City can attack in order to shut down drives.
Freeing Jones is the key to that. If Hurts has to throw, on the run, into situations where his wideouts haven’t quite broken free from coverage this will force him to either make the leap to elite postseason passer or send him to the 2023 offseason with a clear priority to work on.
3
Clear room for Isiah Pacheco to shine
The Eagles’ pass defense was the top-rated unit in the NFL in 2022, per Football Outsiders’ DVOA metric. Their run defense, however, ranked 21st.
That creates an opportunity for a rookie seventh-rounder to shine two weeks after Philadelphia battered another rookie seventh-rounder (Brock Purdy). Isiah Pacheco carved up the Jaguars’ 11th-ranked run defense en route to 95 yards on just 12 carries in the divisional round. He also gained 26 yards on 10 handoffs versus the Bengals and their 14th-ranked unit a week later.
Unlocking his ability to sprint for big games isn’t paramount to a win, but it’s a viable strategy, especially if it can limit the damage Mahomes takes in the pocket. Way back in Week 10 the Commanders served Philly its first loss of the season thanks in large part to an offense that controlled the ball for more than 40 minutes of game time — even while gaining barely more than three yards per carry. Washington was also buoyed by untimely turnovers and missed calls — including a play that featured both when Dallas Goedert fumbled after being egregiously facemasked — but racking up a significant play disparity is never a bad strategy.
Pacheco can do this. He runs like you’d expect antagonists to flee in a horror movie. Every step conveys urgency and aggression, and his 0.74 yards over expected per carry — a measure of how he performed versus how an average running back would be expected to do, per NFL’s Next Gen Stats — was a top-8 number and more than players like Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs or Jonathan Taylor.
But his success hinges significantly on the room his offensive line can clear for him. 3.2 of his 4.9 yards per carry came before contact — fifth-highest among 41 qualified running backs. His 1.7 yards after contact ranked only 26th.
Can offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy concoct a game plan that uses the Eagles’ pass rushing aggression against them? Will Kansas City run more on what appear to be throwing downs in an effort to scramble Philly’s circuits and strike at one of its few weaknesses? No matter what, getting Pacheco moving, especially with Jerick McKinnon averaging 1.7 yards per carry in the playoffs, will be a boon for Mahomes and the Kansas City offense.
