FOXBORO, Mass.—The play that might have saved Kansas City’s season was called “Heisman.” It respected history.
That’s because it was 80 years old.
Kansas City’s offensive coordinator, Matt Nagy, is a football-history nerd, and he brings ancient plays to coach Andy Reid sometimes. Penn called this play in a game in the forties against Columbia. Nagy saw the grainy footage of it and fell in love. In this particular game, against the defensively astute Patriots, Kansas City was smitten with “Heisman” because the offense was struggling mightily, because even the great Bill Belichick couldn’t have his defense instantly stymie a play it couldn’t even imagine, and because KC had a college option quarterback, Jerick McKinnon, just dying to throw the first touchdown pass of his eight-year NFL career.
“Heisman” had been in the KC gameplan for five straight games but not called; Reid just felt the time hadn’t been right. But in a scoreless game, at the New England four-yard line, on a first-and-goal, Reid thought it made sense. He’d have two more chances on this series to get a TD if it failed.
The play looked … weird. McKinnon lined up behind center, squatting low. To his immediate left was Patrick Mahomes, in a compact three-point stance. “Maybe the first time in that stance since I ran the 40- at the Combine,” Mahomes said later. Blocking tight end Blake Bell lined up behind left tackle, wideout Rashee Rice flanked left, tight to the formation. At the snap, McKinnon took the ball and Mahomes sprinted left; McKinnon faked a pitch to Mahomes while both Bell and Rice sprinted right—Bell to block and Rice to look for a shovel-pass from McKinnon. And McKinnon followed Mahomes, sprinting left.
But wait.
Before McKinnon began his leftward gallop, he pitched the ball onto the right hip of the hard-charging Rice, who took the ball and ran through the right guard-tackle hole for the easiest touchdown he’ll ever score.
You have to watch the replay four times before you get the full effect. What’s this weird Mahomes positioning? They’re not gonna snap it to McKinnon are they? They’re not gonna pitch it to Mahomes, are they? That’s why it worked. New England has a smart defense, but the Patriots can’t watch a replay four times to figure out what the offense is doing on a play no one, even the great Belichick, has ever seen called in a football game.
“It’s tough to stop,” Reid said. “When we thought about it, I’m going, ‘That one we can do.’ Those guys worked hours on the ball-handling and stuff. McKinnon, he was a quarterback, an option quarterback at Georgia Southern. He had the option to hand off, but he wanted to pass. So he does, and it works. He’s crazy. Comes up to me after the play, all excited. Does a chest-bump! He’s nuts.”
Kansas City 7, New England 0. On the way to 27-17, which could have been 34-17 but Reid called off the dogs out of respect to Belichick.
One more wrinkle, the kind of wrinkle that makes players love to play for Andy Reid. When they had the mechanics of the play down, Mahomes thought of left guard Joe Thuney, who played his first five seasons for the Patriots. This was his first game back in Foxboro. He’d played some center for the Patriots in 2020. Mahomes suggested: Hey, Thuney played for the Patriots, and now he’s going back to Foxboro. Let’s switch him and Creed Humphrey and let Joe snap the ball.
Reid thought: If Thuney can do it, cool; we’ll switch Thuney and the center, Humphrey, for this snap. It’ll be fun for Thuney.
Perfect snap, perfect everything. It hasn’t been that way often for the Chiefs in this star-crossed season, and plenty went wrong on a raw afternoon with Christmas in the air in eastern Massachusetts. But lots of teams would like to be suffering with a 9-5 record this morning, on the verge of an eighth straight AFC West title, with the imaginative Reid calling plays, with the great Mahomes executing them. Kansas City’s not perfect. But there are no perfect teams in the NFL in 2023. So beware of this flawed one.
***
When Mahomes left the Kansas City locker room to meet the press near dusk Sunday, locker mate Blaine Gabbert reflected on this week, and this season. KC came in 8-4, losers of four of six, and the offense was wounded. It continued Sunday, even in a win. Per Next Gen Stats, KC receivers have dropped 26 passes from Mahomes this year; the quarterback with the next-most drops has 19. Next Gen estimates that those 26 drops have led to 332 expected yards lost. The most egregious one Sunday was by Kansas City’s precocious offense-killer, Kadarius Toney, who bobbled a perfect throw from Mahomes with nine minutes left in the game—right into the hands of Pats linebacker Jahlani Tavai. A ridiculous, careless miscue that instantly cut a comfortable 17-point lead to 10 … and caused an angry Mahomes to look like he wanted to make Toney walk back to Kansas City after the game.
Gabbert was Tom Brady’s backup on the Super Bowl Bucs. He’s one of football’s most thoughtful players. I asked Gabbert, Mahomes’ backup and confidant, how the best player in football was handling the constant miscues on offense.
“In any NFL season, in any player’s career, every team each season has to find new ways to win,” Gabbert said. “You have to evolve. They’re used to being extremely explosive here. They’ve been probably the best in the NFL in the last seven years at big plays. Defenses know that. It’s kind of a chess match back and forth. We’re just trying to find different ways to win. How can we attack this defense in a different way than, let’s say, in years past.
“Patrick knows every single season’s different and you have to find different ways to win. This year, we know that a punt isn’t necessarily the worst thing, right? We just gotta grind out these grimy wins.
“There’s eerie parallels between this season and the season that we had in 2020 in Tampa, where you gotta find different ways to win, and we ended up winning the Super Bowl. We had this conversation I think earlier this week.”
Mahomes, in a quiet hallway outside the locker room, surprised me a bit with his answer when I asked about Gabbert’s analysis, and this choppy, choppy offensive season. “I actually think it’s been really good for me as a player,” he said. “You want to score every drive, but we haven’t, obviously, and we’ve had our struggles. It’s helped me grow not only as a player but as a person. What I got from Blaine, who I think got it from Tom, is you gotta find a way to win the ugly games. Because there are going to be ugly games. I understand a little bit more now, so now let’s clean up these little miscues and transition into the rest of the year. That’s what we talk about. We can do it.”
Mahomes the sometimes obnoxious competitor has shone through on the last two Sundays. I came here to take his temperature after he went ballistic on the field at the end of the loss to Buffalo, bitching endlessly about an offensive-offside penalty on Toney that likely cost Kansas City the game last week.
He told me he never saw a replay of Toney’s infraction while he was still on the field. So clearly, Mahomes could not have seen what appeared to everyone else who watched it an obvious penalty by Toney. But whatever it was, he said, “I’ve got to learn from it. I’ve got to be a better person, a better man. If I had it to do over again, I wouldn’t go off on the ref the way I did. I’d calm down and just talk to him.”
The $50,000 fine levied by the league, he understood. “I saw how I acted,” Mahomes said, “and you’ve got to deal with the consequences of your actions. I was taught that at a young age. Now I move on. I try to be better from it.”
What’s missing for Mahomes is the deep game he used to flourish in with Tyreek Hill. Rookie Rashee Rice is an excellent prospect, but with a 4.51-second 40 time, he’s not going to be a classic deep threat. Clyde Edwards-Helaire, in the absence of the injured Isiah Pacheco, gave KC one of his best games with 17 touches for 101 scrimmage yards and a touchdown. Edwards-Helaire’s not a make-you-miss back, but he, McKinnon and Pacheco can be a three-headed backfield to take pressure off the quarterback. Reid needs that.
But this is an imaginative team with the best quarterback leader in the game. Every new drive, Reid says, begins with Mahomes telling the other 10 guys in the huddle, “Let’s be great—right now.” What’s different is that every drive’s a struggle. Every one. When there’s isn’t an element of deep speed in an offense, even Mahomes is going to struggle being explosive.
That’s what makes the Kadarius Toney situation so vexing. The guy’s got 4.39 speed. He had a 65-yard punt return and crucial fourth-quarter touchdown catch in the Super Bowl 10 months ago. Reid leads the league in patience with him, and late Sunday, the coach seemed ready to give him even more chances after his totally careless missed-catch-turned-interception. Said Reid: “He’s really a good kid and a good teammate. But you can’t do what happened today. He knows that.”
It’s got to pain Reid—and Mahomes—that their fate could be tied to a player as risky as Toney. But in the words of that famous New Englander across the field Sunday, it is what it is. You remake your team in March and April, not December.
There’s a real chance Mahomes will have to go on the road for a playoff game or two to get to his fourth Super Bowl in five seasons. Discount the three teams tied for the AFC South lead, and discount Cleveland, two games behind Baltimore in the North with three to play.
Who’s got the edge for home field? Baltimore (11-3) is a game up on Miami (10-4) and two up on KC (9-5). But Kansas City (Raiders, Bengals, at Chargers) has an easier path than Baltimore (at Niners, Miami, Pittsburgh) or Miami (Dallas, at Baltimore, Buffalo). I say it looks like: 1 Baltimore, 2 Kansas City, 3 Miami, with the AFC South winner sliding in at four. Then: 5 Cleveland, 6 Buffalo, 7 Cincinnati. How delicious would a third Buffalo-Miami game of the year be on Wild Card weekend?
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column.