The Chiefs Ever Evolving Offense
The Chiefs' offense put the Bills' defense on their heels with elite execution and an ever-changing offensive gameplan from whistle to whistle.
In typical Kansas City Chiefs fashion, they saved their absolute best performance - at least offensively - for the biggest moment of the year, the AFC Championship Game. The Chiefs offense had been piddling around most of the season being efficient and good enough but rarely impressive. There were some signs of life later in the season but for every “good” there was an equal “bad” that occurred within the same game. Many fans were still holding out a belief there was a switch to be flipped even if it hadn’t been shown, and those fans got rewarded this past Sunday night in a big way.
Throughout the regular season the Chiefs’ offense hung right around 10th in most prominent advanced metrics and 12 in the ultimate stat, points for. They famously hadn’t scored over 30 points in a single game this season and there was some questions if that would be enough. Well in their victory over the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game, the Chiefs’ offense posted an EPA/play and success rate number that woulda ranked by and far first in the NFL’s regular season.
In one of the most predictable outcomes of all time, when the Chiefs’ offense really needed to step up - against an opposing offense that was going to score points - they did just that. What may be a bit more surprising is how they were able to do it, or rather how many different ways they were able to impact the game.
Let’s take a look at how the Chiefs’ essentially utilized different emphasis from drive to drive and quarter to quarter to score a season high 32 points against the Bills.
Breaking Down the Chiefs Ever-Changing Offense
Due to their offensive struggles during the year, the Chiefs’ offense didn’t enter the game with a clear “identity” which may have played into their hands. Instead of beating the Bills with a specific bread and butter gameplan, they dabbled in various different concepts and were able to find success with all of them. The first quarter started out with a heavy-RPO emphasis then flipped to short, quick passes outside the numbers to round out the half. The Chiefs’ came out a little flatter in the third quarter as the Bills’ adjusted their defense but then in the fourth quarter were able to lean on the power rushing attack before swapping over to all their favorite man coverage beaters. Everything worked.
First Quarter RPO’s
With the Bills coming out aggressive on the defensive side, the Chiefs went to an old staple, the RPO game. The Chiefs continue to dabble with the Read-Pass-Options every year but it’s been a few seasons since they had heavily leaned into their for their base offense. It appeared to really catch the Bills second level by surprise to see the Chiefs rip multiple RPOs on the very first drive of the game.
What added extra interest was the types of RPOs they were using. Some RPOs are true post-snap reads based on the reaction of a specific defender but the Chiefs appeared to be simply reading leverage pre-snap. Patrick Mahomes was just able to see space that could be exploited based on alignment and never even considered the run being live at the time of the snap. The second interesting part was the route concepts being utilized.
The first was a basic Curl-Flat to take advantage of the zone spacing outside. The second played off that and was a Slant-Bubble to take advantage of the space to the middle of the field. After putting the Bills on alert to these quick hitters, the Chiefs went with a more aggressive Slide/flat-Wheel-Glance RPO that attacks intermediate spacing a little more. You can see on the third play above, the Bills’ second level defenders are trying to take away the short pass while the Glance route settles in right behind them.
The concepts were clean but Juju Smith-Schuster’s effort after the catch can’t be understated either. Turning the 10 yard gain into a 30 yard gain forces a defense to look into the mirror and figure out how they want to defend this going forward, and that’s something the Chiefs counted as they immediately followed up this drive by mostly moving away from the RPO game.