Arrowhead Pride
What kind of issues should we expect when Kansas City hosts Buffalo on Sunday?
Following the Kansas City Chiefs’ 23-14 Divisional round victory over the Houston Texans on Saturday, the team is once again headed to a postseason showdown with the Buffalo Bills — this time for the AFC championship.
Here are my three biggest offensive questions about the Chiefs in this matchup.
For years, Buffalo has used three pass rushers against Kansas City — and then assigned one of its linebackers to spy on Mahomes.
The goal has been to limit the number of escape hatches available to the quarterback when he’s on the move. The idea is to squeeze Mahomes into the pocket as much as possible — and if he tries to bail to either side, a fast linebacker is available to chase him. In each of the Bills’ regular-season wins over the Chiefs over the past three years, this strategy has worked.
The Bills did the same thing against the Baltimore Ravens’ Lamar Jackson in their Divisional round matchup. While Jackson was sometimes able to find some creases, Buffalo was largely able to keep him in the pocket, preventing him from making explosive plays with his legs.
So a similar approach against Mahomes seems likely — and the Chiefs must be ready for it.
Such an approach will give Kansas City one advantage: if the Bills rush only three, the Chiefs will have more time to make downfield throws. This also means wide receivers will have to create separation more often, because Mahomes won’t be able to buy as much time by scrambling; Andy Reid will have to open some downfield shots through scheme. Still, I think Kansas City’s passing game will have more opportunities for explosive plays.
When the teams played in Week 11, Buffalo played man coverage behind its pass rush, thereby trusting the spy to limit Mahomes while defensive backs had their backs turned. So I think this will be a good time to get Xavier Worthy and Hollywood Brown going underneath — and test the Bills' speed in the secondary.
When these teams last played, Kansas City had bad tackles arrayed against this pass-rushing strategy. Playing at left tackle, Wanya Morris was unable to stop Gregory Rousseau. He was consistently being pushed back into the pocket — or allowing Rousseau easy angles to turn the corner. On the right, Von Miller was compressing the pocket against Jawaan Taylor. Under these circumstances, Buffalo could prevent Mahomes from getting outside the pocket, step up into it or drift back to get an angle.
So the Chiefs will have to do better than they did in Week 11 — or even in the Divisional round against Houston. On Saturday, we saw some of Joe Thuney’s warts while playing at tackle. While he plays with good technique — an improvement over...
