The Chiefs' trio of Worthy, Hopkins, and Brown should terrify the NFL
Brown's return gives Patrick Mahomes a tough trio to stop, and it showed vs the Texans.
I wanted to write about Hollywood Brown’s return on its own. I really did.
It’s a story worth telling. After suffering a frightening injury on his very first preseason catch, the veteran WR who came to Kansas City to prove something (on a one-year contract) was finally back in the lineup. And his impact was felt immediately, with 5 catches for 45 yards on a day he saw more action than I expected and a few clutch plays (we’ll come back to that).
But the thing about football is that it’s a game of domino effects. I’ve often compared it to being in a room full of levers that are interconnected. When you pull one lever, you pull another. And adding Brown to the WR room always had the potential to be that one piece that pulls enough of the other levers to make everything work better (similar to Charles Omenihu and the pass rush). Just a little more space. Just a little better execution. Just a little more speed to the spot. And suddenly things might all look like they’ve opened up for an offense that has struggled to find its identity amid a slew of injuries.
And we saw a glimpse of that against a good Texans defense. It wasn’t just about Brown. It wasn’t just about DeAndre Hopkins. And it wasn’t just about Xavier Worthy’s continued growth in responsibility and execution. It was about all those things coming together to help the offense have, despite Mahomes playing on a bad ankle (which affected his accuracy a few times), one of its most complete days of the season while overall negating a good Texans pass rush and CB group.
And so I don’t want to talk about one guy. I want to talk about all three of the Chiefs’ new trio. Because while they play different roles, each of them looked essential against Houston in executing those roles, and they complement one another in a way that makes the offense very, very tough to deal with.
It’s tough to even know where to start, so let’s begin with Brown, who played quite a bit more than I expected in his first action back and was featured pretty heavily (second on the team with 8 targets). That includes getting it done on one of the first high-leverage plays of the game, a 4th and 1 on Kansas City’s first drive of the game.
The route combinations here are a thing of beauty, and designed to grab open space for Brown while taking advantage of the attention that goes elsewhere in this offense. But there’s more to it than just that, and it’s demonstrative of where Brown’s savviness in route running (along with his natural speed) are a perfect fit for what Reid wants his guys doing.
Watch Brown’s movement as he starts to get into the route. He could be running a crosser (farther down the field and over the top of Kelce) or a drag (more parallel to the line of scrimmage and underneath Kelce). The beauty in how he runs the route is he starts off faking as though he’ll be going over the top of Kelce (right behind Worthy), thus getting deeper on a crossing route and letting the defender in the area think that Brown won’t be his responsibility. However, he cuts back and goes underneath, getting into space with no one around him.