Why the Chiefs Offense is So Darned Good

Why the Chiefs Offense is So Darned Good – I was recently looking over the way FootabllOutsider.com has the individual wide receivers in the NFL ranked and Tyreek Hill wasn’t in their top ten. No, he is ranked #12. Beyond that, the next best K.C. WRs who was ranked by them were Demarcus Robinson at #53, followed by Sammy Watkins at #68. While I disagree with their unique stats, it raised a question for me: if the Chiefs WR corp is not elite, then why is the Chiefs offense so darned good? That’s what I’ll take a look at here today.

Another search for WR rankings and ratings produced and article by USAToday.com who has Tyreek Hill ranked as the second best WR in the NFL right behind Julio Jones. That piece offers this about Hill:

“… Hill missed four games due to injury in 2019, he still managed to post 58 catches, 860 yards and seven touchdowns. The stats don’t do his game justice, though. Hill’s ability to take the top off any defense at any time is unrivaled.”

The very next thing mentioned in that piece is what most Chiefs fans already think they know: “With the most gifted passer in football on his side, there is practically no ceiling for what he can do.” A clear reference to QB Patrick Mahomes II.

However, that raised another important question: if Patrick Mahomes is so good, and the reason for that is not necessarily because of his wide receiving corp: then why is this offense so darned good?

Before leaving the Chiefs WR corp hanging out there as if they are less than elite, it would be an injustice to their talent level to say that. Why? Because not everyone thinks the Chiefs WR group is less than elite, including ProFootballFocus.com. PFF ranks the Chiefs collection of WR as the second best in the NFL, behind only the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. PFF says of the K.C. wideouts:

“The collection of talent the Chiefs have assembled around the best quarterback in the NFL is bordering on unfair. Tyreek Hill has rare speed and change-of-direction ability that makes him a nightmare for opposing defenses, and his 1,765 receiving yards on passes 20 or more yards downfield since 2017 (over 500 more than the next closest wide receiver) are a testament to that. Travis Kelce is right up there with George Kittle in the conversation for the game’s best tight end, and if you look at the past five seasons, no tight end comes close to his 155 receptions of 15 or more yards. The weapons extend to players like Sammy Watkins, Mecole Hardman and even someone like Clyde Edwards-Helaire out of the backfield now. This Chiefs offense is going to remain very difficult to defend.”

I disagree completely with their “conversation” about George Kittle being better than Travis Kelce as Kittle just finished his 3rd year in the NFL averaging 962 receiving yards per season while Travis Kelce has averaged over 1,000 yards each year throughout his 6-year active career. Plus, he’s done something no other TE in history has by achieving four 1,000+ receiving yards seasons in a row.

So, is the Chiefs offense great because of the receivers… or… more because of their QB?

In a piece by Timo Riske for PFF in the week after the AFC Championship game called, “Patrick Mahomes is Having the Best Postseason in the PFF Era” in which he states:

“Patrick Mahomes might be on the verge of playing the best postseason we’ve ever seen, and one could fill a whole article with the superlatives, starting with averaging 0.58 expected points added per pass play while already having nine of his passes dropped in only two games (12% of his passes were dropped). In the AFC title game, he didn’t register one negatively graded throw, and his overall PFF grade through the first two postseason games is a whopping 95.7 — easily the highest among the twelve playoff quarterbacks.”

Riske said Mahomes was having an offseason that, “stands out among his peers” and offered up this graphic:

Being a good regular season QB is one thing, but performing at crunch time is exactly why I agree with Michael Travis Rose when he says, he thinks Joe Montana is the GOAT. 100% rate of Super Bowl victories out does a 66% rate every time in my book too… thank you very much Mr. Rose! So far, Mr. Mahomes is 100% in his SB attempts… so we’ll see how things go from here on out, but it’s looking good so far.

A Confluence of Great Football Decisions

While Patrick Mahomes is all they say he is — which is greatness in the making — and the wide receiving corp is one of the best in the league, it takes more than that to say that a team, and especially an offense, is, great.

Clark Hunt swooped in and hired Andy Reid to be the new Head Coach of the team just 5 days after the Philadelphia Eagles played their last game of the 2012 season. Hunt was busy that day also firing GM Scott Pioli. When Hunt brought in new GM John Dorsey, he also announced that the HC and the GM would be reporting to him directly and separately. That decision turned out to be a big one as just 3 years later, Hunt replaced Dorsey with current GM Brett Veach, who is now the youngest GM to help guide a team to a Super Bowl victory.

Those decisions were crucial to the Chiefs current success on offense as Brett Veach is widely credited with bringing Patrick Mahomes to the attention of Andy Reid… and… then the Chiefs traded up to the 10th spot in the 2017 NFL draft to take him. The rest of ongoing history.

The Reid Option

It’s often noted that Andy Reid believes in his players and asks them to “be themselves.” Apparently, Clark Hunt believes in Andy Reid and that has paid off in a giant way. Clark calls Reid one of the best coaches in NFL history and who’s to say he’s not right? AthlonSports.com has ranked Reid as the 15th best HC in NFL history and says of him:

“Reid has consistently been a head coach for longer than any of his peers in the game today and is one of only five coaches to lead two different teams to the Super Bowl.”

15th seems low to me and pro-football-reference.com agrees with me. Here, Reid is 7th among all coaches in NFL history in win totals:

They also show that Andy Reid has been winning at a high percentage rate and ranks 7th best all time as well:

So, the Chiefs have an elite group of WRs… including a TE for the ages… a QB who may turn out to be the best of all time… plus a coach who knows how to win… and a talent evaluator who knows talent when he sees it. Could there be anything else to push the offense over the top?

Yes. Excellent Coaching.

Great Coaching

This doesn’t just include Andy Reid, it includes all the coaches and coaching hires he’s made while in K.C.. However, to get a perspective on how good the coaching is, let’s take a look at a player: Kareem Hunt. While in Kansas City, RB Kareem Hunt won the rushing title as a rookie. Yes, he fumbled his first carry, but… he didn’t fumble the ball again the rest of that season. Before he was jettisoned for lying (among other things) in November of 2018, Hunt had 2,151 yards rushing in just over a year and a half, 27 games which included yards per carry averages of 4.9 and 4.6 in 2017 and 2018 respectively. However, in his 8 games in Cleveland in 2019, Hunt rushed for only 179 yards in 8 games with a 4.2 ypc average. The difference? Coaching, pure and simple.

Coaching also sets up the right atmosphere for success and the environment to thrive. Hunt got that in K.C. but, not in Cleveland. Who’s responsible for that? The lion’s share must fall on Andy Reid’s shoulders and the coaches he sets free to do their jobs… like Deland McCullough, the Chiefs RB coach.

Since Hunt left town, his replacement, Damien WIlliams, who was previously a backup RB for the Dolphins, has gone far beyond expectations. Some could argue he was the Super Bowl MVP and he was certainly as dominant as Patrick Mahomes throughout the 2019 postseason: 290 rushing/receiving yards, plus 6 TDs in three games. The difference between the Dolphins and the Chiefs? That should be glaring by now.

You can’t evaluate a whole offense without mentioning the offensive line. I would argue that RT Mitchell Schwartz is the best Tackle in the league. PFF says Schwartz is tied as the 5th best Tackle in football. Here’s what they said about him in December of 2019:

“Schwartz has been one of the more consistent offensive linemen in the NFL since being drafted by the Browns in the second round of the 2012 NFL draft. Since that time, Schwartz has played 1,000 or more offensive snaps and graded at 72.0 or higher each year. It’s been the last two seasons that he has really taken off, though. After receiving an overall grade of 83.6 last season, Schwartz has earned a nearly identical grade of 83.7 to this point in 2019.”

The offensive line as a whole had a down year in 2019, mostly due to injuries, so 2020 should be even better especially when you count draft pick Lucas Niang in the mix.

I recently heard a national analyst call the San Francisco 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan, “The best offensive football mind in the NFL.” The first thing that popped into my brain was, “If he’s the best, why didn’t he beat the Andy Reid led Chiefs in the Super Bowl?” The answer: Patrick Mahomes, Sammy Watkins, Tyreek Hill, Damien Williams, Travis Kelce, the OL, an improved defense, WASP (a great call, no matter who called it or approved the call).

It’s taken a lot of good fortune and hard work for the current Kansas City Chiefs to arrive at the summit as the league’s best offense. Is there any one thing that you can put your finger on to say, “That’s the reason?” No. Just thank your lucky stars that the Chiefs offense is so darned good! Cuz it is!

Laddie Morse — ArrowheadOne

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