Chiefs Kingdom: It’s Time
by Ransom Hawthorne | January 12, 2019
Fear. It’s as real a part of the Kansas City Chiefs experience as the perennial, crushing, playoff loss. Fans would be nervous regardless of the opponent, heck Mariota completed a pass to himself, en route to beating the Chiefs, but the Colts are even worse. A thorn in the flesh that pleas to the football Gods have failed to alleviate. No lead will erase those nerves, if 28 points wasn’t enough in 2013, who’s to say the Indianapolis Colts can’t come back, down by even more. After years of heartache, it’s time for a change. We’ve left 34 years of not drafting a QB in the first round behind. It’s time to leave 25 years of home playoff agony behind too. The Chiefs have real weaknesses, but so do the Colts, and it’s time to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. Patrick Mahomes is the MVP, and the Chiefs can, and should, win this game.
Drive Stats: Offense
The first problem you run into, when you try to analyze the Colts, is that they haven’t played a team that remotely resembles the Chiefs, since week five, when they played the New England Patriots. For the purpose of this week’s analysis, I primarily looked at how their defense performed vs the Texans, Giants and Patriots: teams with real QBs. I wanted to concentrate on recent games, but I didn’t include their playoff match, because Houston was so banged up. In those three games the Colts allowed the opposing offense to outperform their season averages, by 117%. If this trend holds true, vs the Chiefs, that would mean a whopping 3.8 points per drive. As Chiefs average 10 drives per game, it’ll likely translate to 38 points. More than enough to win any playoff game… at least, that is, if you have a defense.
Defensive Drive Stats
In their last four games the Colts have outperformed their opponents average points per drive allowed by 134%. That’s impressive. Against Chiefs awful defense, should that trend hold, it would translate to 3.23 points per drive. Colts average one more drive per game, than Chiefs. Since KC has let opponents have the ball last a few times, recently, I think that trend may hold, leading Colts to best Chiefs in the drive category, with 11. Even with this being the case, the number of points Chiefs defense should allow is a mere 35 points. That’s enough to keep the game interesting, but it shouldn’t be enough to overcome the league’s best offense.
Colts Defensive Concepts
Chiefs fans have been clamoring for Sutton to simplify the scheme to his player’s strengths. That’s something Colts DC, Matt Eberflus, has done with quality results. However, they’ve done so against literally the easiest schedule, in the NFL. The Colts run cover 2, and they don’t really switch that up much, if at all. Teams, who’ve had success against the Chiefs, have generally done so with a lot of cover 1, cover 0 and disguised coverages. K.C. has absolutely picked apart simple zone defenses, like the Colts run. It’s always possible that Indy comes in with a much different game plan than usual, to attack the Chiefs offense, but that sort of drastic change tends to lead to blown coverages and missed assignments. For Eberflus, it’s a catch-22: maintain the scheme that lets your defense play best, even though it’s a really bad match-up for them with the Chiefs offense or… make drastic changes and hope your players can digest a new playbook and execute it with limited prep time. However you slice it, the Colts will have their hands full.
Colts Offensive Concepts: Pass Blocking
Every stat needs contextualization. Every amazing accomplishment scrutiny. Indy’s OL has gone from one of the worst pass protecting units, in the NFL… to one of the best and GM CHris Ballard will win executive of the year because of it. Certainly, he’s done a quality job of shoring that OL up, but it’s also worth noting that Colts schedule has done them a HUGE favor in that regard. Indianapolis has played just four games against teams in the top 15 (in sacks) and 50% of Andrew Luck’s sacks came in those four games. The Chiefs defense finished the year tied for first in the league in sacks while the Colts haven’t even faced a team that’s top 5 in that category. Certainly their OL is improved, but don’t be surprised if they have their shakiest outing of the year against Dee Ford, Justin Houston, Chris Jones and Allen Bailey, in Arrowhead: where the loudest crowd in the world can negate Luck’s great hard count.
Wild Card: Turnovers
In any game that should be decided by a single score, turnovers can be a huge factor. Both Chiefs and Colts have been adept at creating turnovers on defense, averaging .155 turnovers per drive (tied 4th). On offense, Chiefs have been average (15th) giving up .11 turnovers per drive. The Colts have struggled, in this area, giving up .142 turnovers per drive (25th). Keeping in mind, again, that Colts have played a much easier schedule… the Chiefs should absolutely have the advantage, in the takeaway department. Turnovers are always a little bit fluky though. Opportunities will exist, for both teams, if either is able to outperform their seasonal averages, it could be the deciding factor in today’s game. The Chiefs can’t afford to drop game sealing interceptions anymore.
A Bonus Thought
After spending much of the season in the limelight, the refs have suddenly realized they’re the supporting cast, not the lead actors. This drop in called penalties could be a great help to the Chiefs. Their offense really hasn’t benefited from a ton of penalties, while their defense has been killed by them. If the boys in black and white decide to “let em play”… the Chiefs defense might finally achieve that landmark classification: average. Might not sound like much, but with this offense, it could be all they need.
Chiefs Kingdom: It’s Time
There are plenty of reasons to believe Chiefs can win this game. It won’t be easy, but this is the playoffs, it shouldn’t be. Patrick Mahomes isn’t just a change in draft philosophy for Chiefs, he’s a change in mentality. If you believe that Mahomes can get the job done on 3rd-and-15, or 4th-and-9, why not believe that he can beat the Colts. The old boogie-man is about to meet the new one and I think I know how it ends. It’s time to believe again. Go Chiefs. Beat the Colts.
Ransom Hawthorne — ArrowheadOne
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