Coming into the 2022 NFL season, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes had two problems to solve. The first was the mastodon in the room: How would Mahomes, head coach Andy Reid, and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy create explosive plays in the passing game without Tyreek Hill, who had been traded to the Dolphins?
The second, and perhaps more important question: How could Mahomes, Reid, and Bieniemy transcend Mahomes’ issues against two-deep coverage? Those issues were discussed ad nauseam during and after the 2021 season, but for good reason. Last season, including the playoffs, Mahomes faced two-deep coverage (Cover-2, 2-Man, Cover-4, and Cover-6) on a league-high 389 dropbacks, completing 215 of 332 passes for 2,532 yards, 1,401 air yards, nine touchdowns, nine interceptions, and a passer rating of 85.6, which ranked 10th in the league.
This problem reared its head especially clearly in Kansas City’s 27-24 loss to the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship game. The Bengals famously dropped seven and eight defenders into coverage over and over, especially in the second half, and Mahomes was lost against it — in that game against two-deep coverage, he completed 11 of 17 passes for 90 yards, 41 air yards, no touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 53.6.
With Hill out of the picture and every defense prepping to stop Mahomes with the one thing that could consistently stop him, you’d imagine that Mahomes would see an equal amount of those coverages, and that he’d be similarly flummoxed by them.
Interestingly enough, neither has proven to be true. Mahomes has faced two-deep coverage on just 57 snaps this season, 17th-most in the NFL. And he’s ripped it to shreds in a relative sense. Mahomes has completed 34 of 50 passes for 425 yards, 260 air yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 107.5 — third-best in the league, behind Geno Smith of the Seahawks, and Jalen Hurts of the Eagles.
This Sunday, Mahomes and the Chiefs will face the Buffalo Bills, who are eager for revenge after last year’s divisional round loss, which was one of the more insane football games in recent memory.
This season, the Bills are tied with… the Chiefs in playing the most snaps of Cover-2 with 105 opponent attempts, and in those coverages, Buffalo has allowed 65 completions for 550 yards, one touchdown, three interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 66.8.
So, a great test for Mahomes, and his ability to beat what once has been his Kryptonite. How has Mahomes learned to get past it so far and so well this season?
(All metrics courtesy of Sports Info Solutions unless otherwise indicated).
There was a plan this offseason.
In August, Mahomes and Reid spoke with Kevin Clark of the Ringer about the lessons Mahomes learned from his 2021 season. Coverage, obviously, came up a lot.
“He was able to see some different coverages a little bit, more zone than what he’s seen in the first few years,” Reid said of his quarterback. “And so he worked through all that, and now he’s got a whole package of things in his head to counter.
“It was variations [of Cover 2], and it was important he saw those and as a professional—they’ll help him down the road. There’s not a whole lot left people can show you.”
For Mahomes, getting past this problem was all about the process.
“First you watch the tape and figure out what defenses are doing to you, and then you kind of coach up the scout team,” Mahomes said. “Tell them, ‘Hey, let’s do this and make me make the right decision. Instead of getting that touchdown that we think we’re gonna get, take that away and make sure I get back down to my read.’”
So far, that process has brought about a very different quarterback.
Elimination and isolation.
Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup show is fond of saying that one of the traits of top-level quarterback play is the ability to eliminate what isn’t there, and to isolate what is. Mahomes has done a much better job with this in 2022. One reason this is the case against two-deep stuff is that Mahomes seems to be looking at defenses this season from the bottom up, as opposed to from the top down. He’s not starting with the end of the coverage; he’s reading through the matchups, x-ing out the progressions that don’t work, and confidently pinpointing what’s going to be open. And when you have Mahomes’ combination of velocity and accuracy, more things are open to you than to most other quarterbacks.
On this 25-yard pass to receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling in the Chiefs’ 41-31 Week 4 win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Mahomes is aided by receiver Juju Smith Schuster’s orbit motion, and by the switch release to the right side. The threat of Smith-Schuster in the flat brings safety Antione Winfield Jr. down to cover there, and cornerback Carlton Davis is left guessing between Mecole Hardman and Valdes-Scantling. All Mahomes has to do is to pick up the open guy. It’s a big play in which the deep safeties don’t really work into the equation.
And on this 36-yarder to Valdes-Scantling, Mahomes is just gunning right for his target on a vertical route against Cover-2. Linebacker Lavonte David has to cover MVS up the chute, and he does a credible job of it, but Mahomes leads his receiver to a place where only he can catch the ball.
So, the approach to two-deep coverage seems to be, take the profit most of the time, and hit the gas when it’s appropriate.
Using heavy personnel to force the defense's hand.
The Chiefs have had either two or three tight ends on the field on 68 of Mahomes’ attempts this season. He’s faced two-deep coverage on just 12 of those attempts, completing seven passes for 45 yards. Hardly explosive or efficient, but at least Kansas City is using personnel to force teams out of two-high to the extent seen last season.
That said, Mahomes is making things happen with his tight ends, and it’s not just Travis Kelce. Against the Buccaneers, Mahomes threw touchdown passes to Kelce and Jody Fortson. The Chiefs also ran the ball 37 times for 189 yards and two touchdowns, which certainly helped to force Tampa Bay’s defense into run-fit looks.
“Yeah, I mean obviously it kind of puts defenses in a predicament where they want to put their base personnel on the field,” Mahomes said after the Bucs game. “They want to put out bigger people because we can run the football like we did today. When they don’t we have to be able to run it and when they don’t do that we have tight ends that can split out and run routes. I think you saw that today with Jody down there on the goal line against a Pro Bowl corner running a slant route and catching it in the end zone. You saw Noah [Gray] out there making plays. It shows that we have the tight ends and when we get Blake [Bell] back, we have another guy that can block and still make some catches as well.”
The touchdown to Fortson with 5:46 left in the third quarter was a nice indication of how the Chiefs are using different wrinkles with familiar schemes. Reid used to love the 3×1 set with Kelce as the Y-iso receiver to one side, and Tyreek Hill as the inside slot receiver. Here, Fortson was the Y-iso to the front side, and Kelce was the inside slot receiver.
The Chiefs motioned running back Isiah Pacheco out to the formation pre-snap, which forced safety Antione Winfield Jr. to come down and defend the flat. This also forced the Bucs to shade to the four-receiver side — both linebacker Lavonte David and safety Keanu Neal were frozen in place, waiting for the routes to develop, and that left Fortson with a one-on-one matchup against cornerback Carlton Davis. When Fortson ran the slant, there was nobody but Davis in off coverage to deal with it.
So, what happens when the Chiefs get single-high coverage against heavy personnel? Explosive plays. Mahomes has three completions this season of more than 20 air yards out of either 12 or 13 personnel, and this 35-yard completion to Kelce against the Cardinals in Week 1 is about as good — and about as obvious — as it gets. Kansas City had Kelce, Fortson, and Gray in a tight bunch to the right against Arizona’s Cover-3, and then, it was just about hitting the open spot in the zone. Mahomes and Kelce can do that all day long.
The run game isn't perfect, but it's better.
The Chiefs have run the ball 27 times this season against two-deep coverage. They’re not getting a ton of explosive run plays out of that, but they’re sustaining things better than they did last season. More importantly, they’re doing a better job of making defenses pay for rolling two safeties deep.
This nine-yard Clyde Edwards-Helaire run against the Cardinals shows how well it can work if you keep doing it. Here, Hardman’s pre-snap motion takes linebacker Isaiah Simmons out of the run fit, and the Cardinals have an even lighter box. Edwards-Helaire isn’t a top-10 back — his vision is sometimes suspect and he doesn’t have a ton of burst — but here, it’s pretty easy pickings once he hits the hole.
The Bills present their own problems, but they're walking wounded.
In two games against the Bills last season — Week 5 and that legendary divisional playoff game — Mahomes had mixed results against two-high stuff. In week 5, Buffalo threw it at him to a disproportionate degree — on 47 of his dropbacks — and Mahomes completed 27 of 40 passes for 231 yards, 124 air yards, no touchdowns, an interception, and a passer rating of 72.0.
The playoff game was a different story. The Bills run two-deep on 33 of his dropbacks, and Mahomes completed 19 of 27 passes for 199 yards, 94 air yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 131.7.
Kansas City also had success in the run game against two high safeties, as shown on this 20-yard Edwards-Helaire run.
The Chiefs had three run plays of 20 or more yards against the Bills in that game — two by Edwards-Helaire and one by Hardman. One was against Cover-2, one was against Cover-4, and one was against Cover-6. So, the Bills should be on the lookout for that. The addition of Von Miller certainly helps, and the Bills’ defensive line overall is a different and much better beast than it was last season.
One difference between Buffalo’s effective two-deep coverage in Week 5, and things falling apart in a relative sense in the postseason? The Bills didn’t have cornerback Tre’Davious White in the playoff game, which obviously moved the entire depth chart up for everybody else. White is still recovering from the torn ACL he suffered last season, and at this time, he is not estimated to return for this game. There’s also the matter of safeties Micah Hyde and Jordan Poyer, the NFL’s best duo at their positions. Hyde is out for the season with a neck injury, and Poyer is questionable for this game with a foot issue. Poyer is the best coverage safety in the NFL, so his return is of paramount importance..
Last week against the Steelers, the Bills were able to fool rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett into a Kaiir Elam interception, showing Cover-2 and morphing to Cover-2 after the snap. Obviously, Mahomes is a bigger problem for defenses than Pickett is, but you might see defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier throwing more disguised coverages at Mahomes, just to see how that goes. Here, it worked with Jaquan Johnson and Damar Hamlin as the safeties — Frazier is scheming around his injury deficits to an impressive degree.
Still, the larger issue is that Patrick Mahomes has learned to demolish the thing that used to upend him, and that should be very bad news for any team the Chiefs have to face. We can’t wait to see how it turns out in this game.
