Arrowhead Pride
The Week 10 game was a heavyweight matchup between the Kansas City offense and Denver defense.
Sunday’s Week 10 matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and Denver Broncos had it all.
The two teams exchanged punches for 60 minutes, resulting in the Chiefs scratching out a 16-14 lead with six minutes left. The game ended with an amazing special teams play that prevented the Broncos from winning with a last-second field goal. As the playoff races take shape, that one play could have significant consequences for both teams.
There are a dozen different aspects of this game that I could have covered, but I decided to concentrate on the Kansas City offense against Denver’s elite passing defense. The Chiefs ended up being 7-16 on third down against defensive coordinator Vance Joseph’s unit — but both sides were going all-out, producing some of the best football plays you’ll ever see.
Let’s take a look at what went down.
On one of the game’s early third downs, we saw what can happen if a defense turns its back on Kansas City quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
Denver is playing Cover 2-man — that is, two safeties deep with man coverage underneath. This allows them to take away wide receiver Xavier Worthy’s dig route and tight end Travis Kelce’s out-and-up pattern — but there’s only one defensive lineman who can deal with a quarterback scramble. Mahomes feels the space and runs for a first down.
When the Broncos blitzed, Mahomes was could consistently find Kelce underneath to move the chains. While Kelce doesn’t have the same downfield juice or tackle-breaking ability he once did, he still has an elite ability to feel space and separate himself from man coverage underneath.
Here we see the Broncos send five rushers from a Cover 1-man alignment. Kelce runs a whip route. He’s able to get the safety to overrun his angle — and then smoothly flip his hips outside for the first down.
On the last big third down of the game, Mahomes beats the blitz again.
This time, Denver sends a blitz from depth, hoping to knock the Chiefs out of field goal range. Mahomes recognizes that since the blitz will come late, he can bail way back and launch the corner route to DeAndre Hopkins, who is getting open as the safety busts the coverage — and no one is there to cover him.
Joseph had great plans to stop the Chiefs on third down — including when Kelce aligned in the slot. He would drop a weak side safety over the isolated wide receiver. This allowed him to double Kelce with a zone defender, putting four eyes on him and taking away his middle-of-the-field routes.
Upfront, Joseph had also designed some awesome pressures. On this one, he’s anticipating Mahomes will bail to the right. He wants a free lineman there to cut off the quarterback’s angle. So as his...
