Can Mahomes and the Chiefs revive the deep ball?
Examining the biggest question of the offseason for Kansas City's threepeat quest.
We’ve officially hit the NFL offseason, which means several things.
First (at least for this site), it means that we’ll finally have time to get to some bigger individual film reviews, which is always fun. Second, it means that we’ll finally start turning the page from last year (though of course the celebration of the Chiefs going back-to-back and establishing a dynasty will continue) and looking forward to the 2024/2025 season (we started last week by looking in-depth at both the offensive and defensive roster). And finally, it means it’s time for small stories to get blown up and examined from multiple angles.
Today, I want to do something of a blend of the latter two offseason specials I just discussed, taking a look forward and making a big deal about what is (on the surface) a relatively minor quote from Patrick Mahomes.
In case you didn’t see it, Mahomes appeared on the Pat McAfee show and doubled down on comments he’d previously made to the KC media that the Chiefs are looking to come back to the deep ball in 2024. It was an unsurprising and relatively innocuous statement on its surface, but this is the rare situation in which an “obvious” comment from the Chiefs’ QB contains a great deal of import for the offense (and team) as a whole. Enough that I think it’s worth talking about.
It’s no secret that the Chiefs struggled to connect in the deep AND intermediate portions of the field last season in the pass game. However, given the success the offense was able to eke out in the postseason in big moments and the fact that they, you know, won the Super Bowl, it’s easy to forget just how bad the problem was. And it was B-A-D.
Allow me to remind you with some of the articles I wrote last year.
On 11/23, I charted every single deep ball the Chiefs had attempted to that point and noted both how few they were even trying and how rarely they were successful (this is the one that may provide the most insight as to how bad things got last year in terms of stretching the field and creating big plays).
In the Week 11 Mahomes film review I noted how much the lack of help from the WR group was hindering Mahomes’ performance, including separating. Remember this beauty of a photo?
The Christmas-day fiasco against the Raiders was so ugly that it resulted in not one, but two different articles discussing what went wrong. A big part of it was the problems last year’s WR group had separating deep (among other things).
I wrote following the Chiefs’ late-season win against the Bengals that their hope of contending hinged on the deep ball and being able to connect for just a few big plays a game. Just a few. That’s how desperate things were.
In every single playoff preview article, one of the “key issues” I wrote about was whether the Chiefs could at least threaten the deep portion of the field.
Sorry for the journey through bad memories, but it’s important that you remember just how bad the Chiefs were at taking and hitting deep shots last year. Their most productive WR in that area for much of the season was Justin Watson. It wasn’t just “bad for the Chiefs in the Mahomes era.” It was legitimately terrible.
And that affected the offense in more ways than just the plays left on the field. In fact, it affected every single snap regardless of play call. It made life harder on not just Mahomes, but Andy Reid, the receiving weapons, the OL, and the runners. Because when you’re a team that can’t threaten deep, it changes the entire dynamic with opposing defenses.
Let’s talk about how that dynamic affected the way the Chiefs had to play on offense, some generalities regarding the “rules” of offensive playcalling/scheme vs defensive playcalling/scheme, and why it’s so important that Kansas City get back to stretching the field in 2024. Because it really isn’t just a mindless talking point that makes us drool over a single video of a deep ball against air. It’s the key story (along with whether the defense can mostly maintain its excellence) of Chiefs’ attempt to make NFL history with a threepeat.