Who is to blame for the Chiefs' protection issues? Well... not who you think.
Looking at every pressured dropback against the Bills to try and diagnose the problem.
Following the Chiefs losing their first game of the season to Josh Allen and the Bills, a great deal of the discourse regarding the game centered around protection. Or lack thereof.
The problem, the narrative went, was that Buffalo was able to get such consistent pressure on Patrick Mahomes that the offense wasn’t able to function. When I say “narrative” it generally has a negative connotation here, so I’d like to note that this was my opinion watching the game live as well. It certainly appeared that Mahomes spent much of the day under duress with crushed pockets and/or pressure that forced him to bail and scramble (often into the area of a spy).
However, after re-watching the game I started to have my doubts. Out of curiosity, I asked Chiefs fans on Twitter/X what they thought the primary issue was against the Bills. The results were about what I expected based on the general conversation surrounding the game.
It’s worth noting many replied saying it was a combination of factors, but the largest share of the “primary” blame fell on tackles Wanya Morris and Jawaan Taylor. Following that was Mahomes, then the receivers, then last the interior OL. There were also plenty of “write-ins” for Matt Nagy and Andy Reid, essentially blaming the play calling. I’d thought that the issues were more the OL in general, then receivers, then Mahomes (in that order) upon my first viewing of the game.
But upon re-watching, something nagged at me watching a few snaps, especially early, and I started to doubt my initial impression of the game (I cannot state strongly enough how different games often look upon review when compared to watching it live, with emotion and a condensed view affecting things). Snaps like this made me wonder if the entire narrative surrounding the game was mistaken.
We’ll come back to this individual snap in a moment, but the short story is that I started to seriously doubt as to whether the narrative about the amount of pressure the Bills were able to generate was accurate. And so (you guessed it) to the film I went to try and find answers.
What made the most sense was to re-watch every dropback on all-22, charting plays in which there was pressure on Mahomes (for any reason) and then looking at the situation and why that pressure occurred. I was most interested in things prior to the final drive of the game because those types of desperation drives (down 2 scores with 2 minutes to go) are prone to pressure every single snap given the defense has no fear of the run game whatsoever and the offense is limited in its available play calls. The biggest question I wanted to answer the question of “what’s the problem” in as accurate a way as possible when it came to the offense facing pressure vs the Bills.
I’ve now done that, and I won’t keep you in suspense. The most consistent problem wasn’t the tackles (though they of course had a few bad snaps). It wasn’t the receivers (though they, too, had a few bad snaps for sure). And it wasn’t the play designs. The biggest two problems on plays the Chiefs faced pressure? Patrick Mahomes and Trey Smith.
That’s a tough pill to swallow regarding two great players, but it is what it is. Let’s talk about it.