Great article and thank you for your work on this. I forgot about the bad punts and seeing the drops made me realize that it was a group loss. Hopefully the team will rally and be better next year.
Such a great article, as always! FWIW, your level-headed analysis and Nate's high-pitched voice are the reason I listen to Time's Ours podcast every week. Keep up the great work! :D
Really? Nate's high pitched voice? The one thing that tempts me to turn off the podcast. I don't like yappy little dogs either. Give me a German Shepherd. But, yes, love Seth's analysis.
I wouldn't go this far. Mahomes played well enough to win. The offensive gameplan was so, so, so, so, so, so, so bad. Reid calling TOs right before the half that was heavily responsible for the TD before half hurt too. Imagine that Darrell drop was when the game was 21-12...
They definitely had enough things go wrong that you'd need to change a few of them, starting with OL play then working your way up to game plan on offense AND defense, as well as contested catches.
I knew this was going to hurt to read but glad I did. As always, I learn so much from your film analysis. Not surprised about stat comparisons to 2018. I'm surprised you only charted 8 franchise throws.
Worst protection you've ever charted in an NFL game. Wow.
Receivers not winning contested catches...why? That's not normal for Chiefs receivers Something TB specifically did or just bad day?
KC's receivers are low-key not amazing contested catch players outside of Hill/Kelce. Hill is generally excellent in those situations and Kelce is streaky.
To some extent, we saw what Mahomes looked like at Texas Tech which made Veach, Reid, etc. fall in love with him. He went into games with inferior athletes week after week and made incredible plays that sometimes came off and sometimes didn't but were always breathtaking.
There was no doubt after that game that Mahomes was the best player on that field on Sunday. My feeling was sort of reminiscent of the loss we had to Tennessee in the 2019 season that dropped us to 6-4, with the Raiders right on our heels, and both Baltimore and New England looking completely dominant. That was Mahomes' first game back from injury, and we got beat on the weirdest few minutes of the Mahomes era (which is saying something) and I came out of that loss thinking we were unbeatable.
I came out of the Super Bowl thinking Mahomes is unbeatable. Not only is he the most physically gifted thrower of the football I have ever seen, but he has absolutely the perfect mentality of any player I have ever seen. Either Sunday or Monday during his presser, a reporter asked him when he knew they were not going to win, and his answer was when they were intercepted inside the 2 minute warning. And you could tell this was not BS. Tell him at the two-minute warning that he had no timeouts, needed three touchdowns and a two point conversion, and his mindset is, "So you're saying there's a chance."
I watched the game again last night. My wife thought I was nuts to relive it all. My uncle was the biggest Chiefs fan I have known, and he died in 2016. I told my wife after the replay that I just feel lucky to be alive and a Chiefs fan today. Mahomes has lapped the field as the best player in the game.
That's a really good analogy in terms of similarity to what we'd see at Tech. Dealing with a complete mismatch (this time in terms of game plan and OL rather than entirety of talent like when he faced LSU in college).
They'll get another shot with Mahomes, to be sure. He's got the mentality and isn't going to forget that game. He's started his career in the AFC title game, the Super Bowl champ, then the Super Bowl runner up. I can't wait to see what he does next!
Andy Reid isn't McCarthy. Don't let one game ruin what's been an incredible 3 seasons! I know it's really tough to not have that fear though, for sure.
Can you please do a similar quarterback review of Tom Brady? I will forever have to hear that "Brady beat Mahomes when it mattered most", and I'd like a little ammunition to fire back.
Seth probably has a better answer than I do but IMHO the best ammunition is just this: Tampa's entire team played their A+ game and the Chiefs outside of Mahomes and Chris Jones played a C- or worse game. I'm pretty sure it was Seth actually who wrote an article basically saying "The Chiefs can't be beat if they play their A game; the best an opponent can do is play their A game and hope the Chiefs have an off game" and that's exactly what happened.
If the Chiefs catch all those passes and have a few less penalties etc. then they would have won the game.
Anyone who watched that game should know better. That's actually a good litmus test for people who you should and shouldn't listen to.
Brady played a really good game, he just didn't have to do anything that was very hard after the first quarter given the way the gameplans worked out (ie their offensive game plan being excellent and being able to lean on that lead with a variety of play action and quick throws to the middle of the field). There were also, um, a few penalties involved lol.
To the point of your intro - Why I'm not a big fan of trying to "Money Ball" Football.
Even though I grant that there is a ton of value in them as a *tool* in football, and, I can appreciate trying to create a "subset" industry in NFL Analytics- just that, as you said, it's deeply, *deeply* flawed. (And, especially, as a Dodgers fan, I am a big advocate for the Sabermetrics being utilized for baseball)
To be as succinct as I possibly can- my most basic of examples as compared to baseball (which is the root of analytics) being:
- Sample Size (as you did). There are more plays in ONE GAME of baseball than a single football team will have in an entire season. And DECADES more of data to pull from and apply. And to a game that has changed relatively very little over it's 150 years of existence.
- Who is Playing LF is Almost Entirely Meaningless. When assessing launch angle & bat speed vs spin rate of a righty slider-heavy pitcher, nobody cares who plays left field (ANY position) on any given pitch. But when analyzing success on runs to the B-gap on 2nd & 3- Aaron Donald 1000% matters. Literally every player on that field matters. Formation matters. That specific team's tendencies matter. SO MANY THINGS MATTER in the success of any given play.
- The Existence of Errors. Like you said, the nuances don't matter in football when tracking the "success" or "failure" of where that ball ends up being spotted at the end of the play. Baseball is incredibly structured. It's fair, it's foul, it's hit, it's missed, it's out or safe, etc.. And if something goes array and what should have happened 99% of the time doesn't b/c 1 person messed up- there is a space on every scoreboard at every baseball field with the letter "E" that tells you- this was an aberration. That wasn't a successful play even though it wound up in our favor.
It's why I'm a fan of what you do. You literally chart and assess every nuance. Even THEN you're constantly, "hey. it's impossible for me to know X but this is what *I* see." It is literally impossible for any one person to be able to do that on a weekly basis for the entire league let alone to try to play catch-up to accurately apply the past to assess the present and predict the future. That's why I HATE national sports media and only really listen to the "beat" guys. Everyone you see on national media is too busy talking about the games to actually watch the games they talk about.
There's a lot of room for analytics in football to explain some things that are much more efficient and move the needle a lot more. The thing to do is be careful about where you deem it as dispositive and where you don't.
I think the NFL still has a ways to go to catch up to utilizing analytics the way they should, but there are huge limitations in looking at individual games. That said, I'll still utilize them happily as a good way to frame things when grinding film on every snap isn't possible!
I can write a Chief of the West Coast newsletter style dissertation on my feelings of both pros & cons but my comment is really the absolute most bare bones & basic consternations with football & analytics (in the "Money Ball" type sense). And I think some folks grossly miss-the-forest-for-the-trees and wind up really doing the "analytics world" a huge disservice with some pretty absurd takes with obvious "box score" analyses. (Want to make sure I make clear I am NOT referring to you even remotely)
Thank you for the reassurance! In Mahomes we trust. And for good reason. Now to draft a great receiver and a couple of very good O linemen. Has to be depressing for the team to have to start at ground zero after getting so close but I am confident they will rise to the occasion. We are blessed and every other fan base should be rightfully jealous.
First off, I'm a fan of yours, and this is a great article.
However, could you please elaborate on how you've charted only 1 potential INT in a game in which there were 2 *actual* interceptions? I would have thought potential INTs would always be greater than actual INTs.
Sure! For starters, I don't include actual picks in the potential pick number, as the number of actual picks is known.
However, I don't pin either of those picks on Mahomes. The Hill one was in a perfect spot and he let the defender reach over him and knock it down. The Kelce one was placed where Kelce could go up and get it and he allowed the defender to outmuscle him. So honestly, even had neither of those actually BEEN picked I wouldn't have charted them as such. The potential pick was a different play.
Good article Seth. Frankly I think the poor gameplan from Reid/Bieniemy in conjunction with a great gameplan from Todd Bowles is to blame for the Chiefs offensive struggles in the Superbowl.
That being said I think Mahomes shoulders some of the blame of the ineffective gameplan and lack of adjustments. I'm being hard on him, but to some degree or another he is complicit.
The next step in his development is to transcend Reid's scheme even further, become even more of a coach on the field. The question is can Reid swallow his ego enough to get out of Patrick's way and let loose of the reigns?
The problem with blaming the gameplan is that it ignores the central issue with the Chiefs all night: They have 4 backup OLineman and 2 (or 3?) of them were playing out of position. Hindsight is 20/20 and if the Chiefs receivers catch passes but we still come up short 31-28 or something do we blame the gameplan? I don't think so.
The likely reasoning is that they determined that was the best gameplan they had for the lineman they were working with. Changing it is very complex and assumes you can trust everyone on the field to be able to adjust accordingly. It's very hard to trust that 4 backup lineman playing together for the first time can make those kinds of adjustments.
With the players they had to work with they had to out-scheme the Bucs D to have a shot. What happened was the opposite. The Chiefs offensive coaches were stupid and stubborn and they paid the price by getting embarrassed on an international stage.
My opinion is that with a better offensive gameplan they could've won or at minimum kept it competitive.
It was absolutely a game in which one side just did a better job than the other at adjusting from the prior game and coming in with a superior plan. That's going to happen sometimes when you face really good coaches, and it unfortunately happened Sunday.
I have no idea how much say Mahomes has in those things tbh.
It's amazing to think that flipping 3 plays results would have been all it took for the game to be up in the air. Catch two TD's that got dropped and lineup onside for a FG, that's an 18 point swing on a 22 point loss. You don't have to talk yourself into "well if the refs this" or "if the gameplan had just done that" everything else can stay the same and at 13:43 of the 4th it's TB 27 KC 23.
Hey Seth - I counted 3 dropped TDs. The ones to Hill and Williams that you charted, plus the one to Demarcus Robinson towards to front right side of the Endzone. (That one hit at least one of D.Robs hands, didn’t it?).
Did you have the D.Rob one down as uncatchable?
(Did it even happen? I can’t find it anywhere in the highlights on YouTube... am I going crazy???)
It ABSOLUTELY happened and was an incredible throw. It hit Robinson in one hand and could've maybe been arguably catchable. But it would've been an amazing catch, so I didn't count that one.
Seth great article. You mentioned the drops and there were too many, but I have a question about drops. Tyreek is a tremendous weapon, but he seems to drop at least 1 pass every game and no one talks about it. Is it lack of consentration or what? At first I thought it was nerves because he dropped one early in a couple of games but that pattern wasn't consistent. Puzzling and no one talks about it
I'm not sure it's quite as common as that, especially given his volume and his tendency to make tough catches. That said, he does at times try to trap the ball rather than attack with his hands, and it occasionally catches him. I wouldn't say he has great consistency with his hands, to be sure.
Great article and thank you for your work on this. I forgot about the bad punts and seeing the drops made me realize that it was a group loss. Hopefully the team will rally and be better next year.
Such a great article, as always! FWIW, your level-headed analysis and Nate's high-pitched voice are the reason I listen to Time's Ours podcast every week. Keep up the great work! :D
Really? Nate's high pitched voice? The one thing that tempts me to turn off the podcast. I don't like yappy little dogs either. Give me a German Shepherd. But, yes, love Seth's analysis.
How dare you, sir!
:)
So you don’t like German Shepherds?
hahaha love 'em, just like I love Nate's tirades. Easily the best dude I know in media.
It's Nate's giggle that gets me.
Haha thanks for the kind words!
I told my son after game that we should have won it....Mahomes played his ass off.
I wouldn't go this far. Mahomes played well enough to win. The offensive gameplan was so, so, so, so, so, so, so bad. Reid calling TOs right before the half that was heavily responsible for the TD before half hurt too. Imagine that Darrell drop was when the game was 21-12...
Well...its my belief.....¯\_(ツ)_/¯
They definitely had enough things go wrong that you'd need to change a few of them, starting with OL play then working your way up to game plan on offense AND defense, as well as contested catches.
I knew this was going to hurt to read but glad I did. As always, I learn so much from your film analysis. Not surprised about stat comparisons to 2018. I'm surprised you only charted 8 franchise throws.
Worst protection you've ever charted in an NFL game. Wow.
Receivers not winning contested catches...why? That's not normal for Chiefs receivers Something TB specifically did or just bad day?
KC's receivers are low-key not amazing contested catch players outside of Hill/Kelce. Hill is generally excellent in those situations and Kelce is streaky.
To some extent, we saw what Mahomes looked like at Texas Tech which made Veach, Reid, etc. fall in love with him. He went into games with inferior athletes week after week and made incredible plays that sometimes came off and sometimes didn't but were always breathtaking.
There was no doubt after that game that Mahomes was the best player on that field on Sunday. My feeling was sort of reminiscent of the loss we had to Tennessee in the 2019 season that dropped us to 6-4, with the Raiders right on our heels, and both Baltimore and New England looking completely dominant. That was Mahomes' first game back from injury, and we got beat on the weirdest few minutes of the Mahomes era (which is saying something) and I came out of that loss thinking we were unbeatable.
I came out of the Super Bowl thinking Mahomes is unbeatable. Not only is he the most physically gifted thrower of the football I have ever seen, but he has absolutely the perfect mentality of any player I have ever seen. Either Sunday or Monday during his presser, a reporter asked him when he knew they were not going to win, and his answer was when they were intercepted inside the 2 minute warning. And you could tell this was not BS. Tell him at the two-minute warning that he had no timeouts, needed three touchdowns and a two point conversion, and his mindset is, "So you're saying there's a chance."
I watched the game again last night. My wife thought I was nuts to relive it all. My uncle was the biggest Chiefs fan I have known, and he died in 2016. I told my wife after the replay that I just feel lucky to be alive and a Chiefs fan today. Mahomes has lapped the field as the best player in the game.
That's a really good analogy in terms of similarity to what we'd see at Tech. Dealing with a complete mismatch (this time in terms of game plan and OL rather than entirety of talent like when he faced LSU in college).
They'll get another shot with Mahomes, to be sure. He's got the mentality and isn't going to forget that game. He's started his career in the AFC title game, the Super Bowl champ, then the Super Bowl runner up. I can't wait to see what he does next!
I am terrified we're going to be watching Aaron Rodgers 2.0 and squander this man's talent.
Andy Reid isn't McCarthy. Don't let one game ruin what's been an incredible 3 seasons! I know it's really tough to not have that fear though, for sure.
Can you please do a similar quarterback review of Tom Brady? I will forever have to hear that "Brady beat Mahomes when it mattered most", and I'd like a little ammunition to fire back.
Seth probably has a better answer than I do but IMHO the best ammunition is just this: Tampa's entire team played their A+ game and the Chiefs outside of Mahomes and Chris Jones played a C- or worse game. I'm pretty sure it was Seth actually who wrote an article basically saying "The Chiefs can't be beat if they play their A game; the best an opponent can do is play their A game and hope the Chiefs have an off game" and that's exactly what happened.
If the Chiefs catch all those passes and have a few less penalties etc. then they would have won the game.
Also, y'know, 4 backup Olineman against arguably the best DLine in football is 'not great, Bob!'
Anyone who watched that game should know better. That's actually a good litmus test for people who you should and shouldn't listen to.
Brady played a really good game, he just didn't have to do anything that was very hard after the first quarter given the way the gameplans worked out (ie their offensive game plan being excellent and being able to lean on that lead with a variety of play action and quick throws to the middle of the field). There were also, um, a few penalties involved lol.
To the point of your intro - Why I'm not a big fan of trying to "Money Ball" Football.
Even though I grant that there is a ton of value in them as a *tool* in football, and, I can appreciate trying to create a "subset" industry in NFL Analytics- just that, as you said, it's deeply, *deeply* flawed. (And, especially, as a Dodgers fan, I am a big advocate for the Sabermetrics being utilized for baseball)
To be as succinct as I possibly can- my most basic of examples as compared to baseball (which is the root of analytics) being:
- Sample Size (as you did). There are more plays in ONE GAME of baseball than a single football team will have in an entire season. And DECADES more of data to pull from and apply. And to a game that has changed relatively very little over it's 150 years of existence.
- Who is Playing LF is Almost Entirely Meaningless. When assessing launch angle & bat speed vs spin rate of a righty slider-heavy pitcher, nobody cares who plays left field (ANY position) on any given pitch. But when analyzing success on runs to the B-gap on 2nd & 3- Aaron Donald 1000% matters. Literally every player on that field matters. Formation matters. That specific team's tendencies matter. SO MANY THINGS MATTER in the success of any given play.
- The Existence of Errors. Like you said, the nuances don't matter in football when tracking the "success" or "failure" of where that ball ends up being spotted at the end of the play. Baseball is incredibly structured. It's fair, it's foul, it's hit, it's missed, it's out or safe, etc.. And if something goes array and what should have happened 99% of the time doesn't b/c 1 person messed up- there is a space on every scoreboard at every baseball field with the letter "E" that tells you- this was an aberration. That wasn't a successful play even though it wound up in our favor.
It's why I'm a fan of what you do. You literally chart and assess every nuance. Even THEN you're constantly, "hey. it's impossible for me to know X but this is what *I* see." It is literally impossible for any one person to be able to do that on a weekly basis for the entire league let alone to try to play catch-up to accurately apply the past to assess the present and predict the future. That's why I HATE national sports media and only really listen to the "beat" guys. Everyone you see on national media is too busy talking about the games to actually watch the games they talk about.
Anywho... Go Chiefs!
There's a lot of room for analytics in football to explain some things that are much more efficient and move the needle a lot more. The thing to do is be careful about where you deem it as dispositive and where you don't.
I think the NFL still has a ways to go to catch up to utilizing analytics the way they should, but there are huge limitations in looking at individual games. That said, I'll still utilize them happily as a good way to frame things when grinding film on every snap isn't possible!
No argument.
I can write a Chief of the West Coast newsletter style dissertation on my feelings of both pros & cons but my comment is really the absolute most bare bones & basic consternations with football & analytics (in the "Money Ball" type sense). And I think some folks grossly miss-the-forest-for-the-trees and wind up really doing the "analytics world" a huge disservice with some pretty absurd takes with obvious "box score" analyses. (Want to make sure I make clear I am NOT referring to you even remotely)
Thank you for the reassurance! In Mahomes we trust. And for good reason. Now to draft a great receiver and a couple of very good O linemen. Has to be depressing for the team to have to start at ground zero after getting so close but I am confident they will rise to the occasion. We are blessed and every other fan base should be rightfully jealous.
First off, I'm a fan of yours, and this is a great article.
However, could you please elaborate on how you've charted only 1 potential INT in a game in which there were 2 *actual* interceptions? I would have thought potential INTs would always be greater than actual INTs.
Sure! For starters, I don't include actual picks in the potential pick number, as the number of actual picks is known.
However, I don't pin either of those picks on Mahomes. The Hill one was in a perfect spot and he let the defender reach over him and knock it down. The Kelce one was placed where Kelce could go up and get it and he allowed the defender to outmuscle him. So honestly, even had neither of those actually BEEN picked I wouldn't have charted them as such. The potential pick was a different play.
Great unbiased review of our super-human QB. It's unlocked so I'm sharing it with at least 170k.
Go Chiefs!
Share away!
Remmers had that Madden 21 AI going for him...
Good article Seth. Frankly I think the poor gameplan from Reid/Bieniemy in conjunction with a great gameplan from Todd Bowles is to blame for the Chiefs offensive struggles in the Superbowl.
That being said I think Mahomes shoulders some of the blame of the ineffective gameplan and lack of adjustments. I'm being hard on him, but to some degree or another he is complicit.
The next step in his development is to transcend Reid's scheme even further, become even more of a coach on the field. The question is can Reid swallow his ego enough to get out of Patrick's way and let loose of the reigns?
The problem with blaming the gameplan is that it ignores the central issue with the Chiefs all night: They have 4 backup OLineman and 2 (or 3?) of them were playing out of position. Hindsight is 20/20 and if the Chiefs receivers catch passes but we still come up short 31-28 or something do we blame the gameplan? I don't think so.
The likely reasoning is that they determined that was the best gameplan they had for the lineman they were working with. Changing it is very complex and assumes you can trust everyone on the field to be able to adjust accordingly. It's very hard to trust that 4 backup lineman playing together for the first time can make those kinds of adjustments.
With the players they had to work with they had to out-scheme the Bucs D to have a shot. What happened was the opposite. The Chiefs offensive coaches were stupid and stubborn and they paid the price by getting embarrassed on an international stage.
My opinion is that with a better offensive gameplan they could've won or at minimum kept it competitive.
It was absolutely a game in which one side just did a better job than the other at adjusting from the prior game and coming in with a superior plan. That's going to happen sometimes when you face really good coaches, and it unfortunately happened Sunday.
I have no idea how much say Mahomes has in those things tbh.
It's amazing to think that flipping 3 plays results would have been all it took for the game to be up in the air. Catch two TD's that got dropped and lineup onside for a FG, that's an 18 point swing on a 22 point loss. You don't have to talk yourself into "well if the refs this" or "if the gameplan had just done that" everything else can stay the same and at 13:43 of the 4th it's TB 27 KC 23.
Phew, hadn't thought of it in those terms.
Hey Seth - I counted 3 dropped TDs. The ones to Hill and Williams that you charted, plus the one to Demarcus Robinson towards to front right side of the Endzone. (That one hit at least one of D.Robs hands, didn’t it?).
Did you have the D.Rob one down as uncatchable?
(Did it even happen? I can’t find it anywhere in the highlights on YouTube... am I going crazy???)
I believe that was Sammy and not Robinson. But I can't find the play either now so.... maybe we're both crazy!?
Lol!
It ABSOLUTELY happened and was an incredible throw. It hit Robinson in one hand and could've maybe been arguably catchable. But it would've been an amazing catch, so I didn't count that one.
Chuck H.just now
Seth great article. You mentioned the drops and there were too many, but I have a question about drops. Tyreek is a tremendous weapon, but he seems to drop at least 1 pass every game and no one talks about it. Is it lack of consentration or what? At first I thought it was nerves because he dropped one early in a couple of games but that pattern wasn't consistent. Puzzling and no one talks about it
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I'm not sure it's quite as common as that, especially given his volume and his tendency to make tough catches. That said, he does at times try to trap the ball rather than attack with his hands, and it occasionally catches him. I wouldn't say he has great consistency with his hands, to be sure.