What happened with the Chiefs' receiver group? Looking beyond the drops
I went back and reviewed every snap on all-22 to try and make sense of KC's lackluster performance
Now that the dust has started to settle on a pretty wild Week 1 in NFL action, we’ve seen enough weird results to know that anything can happen this early in the season.
Of course, that like comes as a small comfort to Chiefs fans who watched Kansas City’s offense stumble (well, drop, but you know) in a very winnable game against the Lions. Given that the Chargers lost a wild game against Miami and Denver managed to out-incompetent the Raiders, it’s frustrating to see the team miss a chance to get a leg up in the division early.
I already wrote at length about the fact that Kadarius Toney and Skyy Moore both had (Toney more than Moore) disastrous drops, mental errors, or failed contested catches against the Lions that in a very real way cost Kansas City the game. It’s safe to say that had Toney in particular caught even one of his drops, the Chiefs likely win the day (particularly the pick-six or final drive drops).
But beyond even beyond that, much of the discussion surrounding the offense has been relatively negative, with a lot of people (including excellent analysts like The Athletic’s Nate Tice and
’s Matt Lane, whom I now have the pleasure of calling a colleague) noting that there were times that the offense just looked… OFF in terms of spacing and timing. People saw it with Toney’s drop when he and Richie James crossed at the exact wrong moment. And watch Toney and Moore on this RPO.
Seeing receivers have this sort of spacing/timing issue is highly unusual in an Andy Reid offense, and there were a few other plays with some similar problems. And then, of course, there were multiple snaps in which Patrick Mahomes appeared to have plenty of time to survey the field and couldn’t find any open receivers. That led to many fans asking me what was going on down the field.
And so, as I did my usual charting of Mahomes’ dropbacks (that’ll come later this week), I decided to also keep an eye on every one of the Chiefs’ significant receiving options (including the tight ends) and give some observations about how was struggling, who was succeeding, and what some of the issues were surrounding the offense against the Lions OTHER than catastrophic drops.
Let’s talk about what went wrong against the Lions, some things that went right, and what I think the path forward should be for Andy Reid and company after a weird Week 1.