How Steve Spagnuolo slammed the door shut on the Texans
The Chiefs' defensive coordinator did the thing again in the Divisional Round.
We’ve reached a point that it feels like every postseason is a wonderful sort of Groundhog’s Day for Chiefs analysis.
It feels like every year, I’m going to write about Travis Kelce being an all-time great. There will be the need to talk about Chris Jones being one of the greatest closers in playoff history. Andy Reid will have found a crack in the armor of the opposing defense and just ripped it apart. And of course, Patrick Mahomes will have done something incredible that warrants marveling at (there are too many articles on that particular subject to link in one sentence because, you know, he’s Patrick Mahomes).
And Steve Spagnuolo is going to… well, we all know that Spags is inevitably gonna Spags, and I’m going to write about it.
The Chiefs defensive coordinator has been long known to be one of the best in the business. He’s perhaps the most successful defensive coordinator in NFL history, the only DC to win four Super Bowls and the only one to win one with two different teams (so when I say “perhaps,” I mean “pretty much certainly”). His name has become synonymous with not only playoff success, but aggressive blitzes, disguising coverages on the back end, and individualized game plans (which are what directly result in all that playoff success).
Few DCs in the league are as capable as Spags is at finding weaknesses in opponents’ protection schemes and exploiting them. He’s also excellent at making quarterbacks guess wrong presnap vs what he’s actually doing post-snap.
The above clip is a terrific example of the mind games Spags plays. Look at the alignment C.J. Stroud sees right before the snap.
Spags is showing three potential blitzers here (the arrows) in (from top to bottom) safety Chamarri Conner (from the slot but aligned more like a LB), linebacker Nick Bolton, and safety Justin Reid. Note that Reid initially lined up in the box as essentially another ‘backer, but then right before the ball is about to be snapped he goes up to the line and threatens the A-gap.
This creates all sorts of problems for Houston’s protection. They in theory have seven bodies for pass protection if you keep in the RB and TE, but the problem is sorting through who should be blocking where, and under what circumstances. That kind of “sorting” through the protections is something the Texans have struggled with all season.
And Spags knows it.