Chiefs Failing to Protect Mahomes

The Chiefs got absolutely hammered by the Titans last Sunday. The score was 27-3 and it didn’t even feel that close. Kansas City turned the ball over a bunch of times and never got going on offense. It’s the kind of loss that has a lot of people writing them off completely, and frankly I can understand why people have lost the faith.

That being said—and I apologize to Chiefs fans reading this—I really didn’t think the offense looked that bad. I understand they only scored three points, and maybe this is because I’ve watched a lot of truly helpless offenses for this column over the years, but I still think Kansas City is very capable of being a good offense. The turnovers are killers and have to stop. There are also some issues in pass protection, but it’s not as bad as many people would lead you to believe.

Let’s focus on the pass-protection struggles. The biggest issue moving forward is Orlando Brown at left tackle. This is my third time writing about the Chiefs and the first game I thought Brown looked awful on the left side. When I revisited Kansas City two weeks ago I thought he looked much better. This week was a regression towards that Week 1 performance. It wasn’t as bad as the opener, but there’s certainly some cause for concern going forward.

The issue with Brown is he looks very uncomfortable in space, which is suboptimal for someone playing left tackle. Look at how quickly Brown (57) goes from pass-setting to scrambling and just hoping to run the defender by the quarterback. The problem with that is that NFL edge rushers are more athletic than Orlando Brown—maybe not in a pound-for-pound sense, but in a faster and more agile sense. When you turn pass protection into a chase game, “faster” and “more agile” are tough to overcome.

Brown isn’t going to be able to chase these guys around and out-athlete them. He needs to be able to stick with his pass set and cut people off at the point. It cannot be one-and-a-half kick-steps and then turn and run. Again, these defensive ends can run faster than you. Too often when Brown is asked to kick out to wide rushers, the technique breaks down and you end up with scenes like the one above. The Chiefs need Brown to get more comfortable in space, and they need it quickly if they’re going to turn the season around.

The other big problem for the Chiefs Sunday was right guard Trey Smith, who struggled a good bit in pass protection as well.

This was the worst game I’ve seen from the rookie Smith (65), who has started every game for Kansas City this year. First things first: at some point you have to intercept the pass-rusher and change his course or stop him in his tracks. Smith doesn’t kick wide enough here and the defender never has to alter his course to the quarterback. Smith seems to be setting on the inside half, but he never even makes it that far. At no point does his outside foot get between the pass-rusher’s feet.

Aside from not kicking out far enough to get between the rusher and the quarterback, Smith’s hands are nowhere near strong enough. He simply places his hands on the rusher and does nothing to stop the momentum or knock the rusher off his desired path. From there, Smith just kind of leans on the rusher. He’s not driving his feet in an attempt to widen the rusher or run him by, he’s just leaning on him like a drunk on a lamp post. The Chiefs need more from the rookie.

One thing that has gotten a lot of scrutiny online, but I thought looked pretty good last week, is their screen game. The Chiefs got pretty consistent yards with a few different screens against the Titans.

This is a well-run tight end screen to Travis Kelce (87) that picked up a first down. I love what right tackle Mike Remmers (75) does on this play. He does a great job of sliding down and playing physical on the defensive tackle to get him on the ground. That defensive tackle was in a good position to sniff the screen out, but Remmers totally wiped him out. The Chiefs offensive line needs more of that physicality.

After the knockdown, you can see Remmers and center Creed Humphrey (52) stay square as they shuffle at the line of scrimmage. It’s tougher than it looks to wait patiently like on this screen play while you’re silently counting in your head before you can release upfield. Most screens are on a count (count to 3-Mississippi before releasing, for example), but with how they’re both shuffling and the timing of it all, I wouldn’t be totally shocked if they were waiting on a “go” call from Kelce instead of counting. Regardless, this was very well executed.

Here’s another screen that went for a good chunk of yards for the Chiefs. This is your basic halfback screen that every team in the NFL has. It’s a three-man screen with the three interior offensive linemen getting out on the blocking. It looks like a 2.5-count screen, meaning the linemen count to two-and-a-half before releasing.

The general rule of thumb on these screens is that the first guy out (usually the play-side guard or center depending on who has to deal with pass-rushers) kicks out the widest guy. The second guy out leads up the alley. Finally, the last man out peels back to look for any defensive linemen that sniff the play out.

Let’s start with Joe Thuney (62) at left guard, who is the peel-back guy. You can see he checks behind the play to see if there’s any defensive linemen back there. There aren’t really any, so he wheels back around up-field and actually gets a block on the safety. That’s a great job of executing your primary assignment and then just finding someone to block once that has been cleared.

Because of how Tennessee plays it, both the center and right guard essentially make kickout blocks. Smith (65) just barely gets there in time, but does make a solid block on the linebacker trying to fill, and Humphrey (52) stays engaged with his man in space. This was a 15-yard gain and another one of three or four screens Kansas City ran that went for 8-plus yards.

The other aspect of the Chiefs offense that isn’t worth even talking about this week is their running game. Taking out quarterback scrambles, the Chiefs ran the ball six times, and one of those was a reverse (a successful one) to Tyreek Hill. I know that passing is more efficient than running, and the Chiefs were down big basically the entire game. So I get the reasons, but six rushing attempts is a joke—especially when those six attempts went for 38 yards. Some semblance of token balance couldn’t possibly hurt.

I really do think the Chiefs offense will be fine. It was a bad game, but it was also a game where they only had six real possessions (I’m not counting the fourth-quarter possessions because the game was over by then). On those possessions they had two punts, two turnovers, and two field goal attempts. Again, it was a bad game, but I’m not willing to write this unit off based on six possessions.