The Kansas City Chiefs defense is playing much better than you think

Kansas City had a great scheme to limit Lamar Jackson

Through two weeks of the regular season, it was very clear that tight end Mark Andrews and rookie wide receiver Marquise Brown were Jackson’s favorite targets and it wasn’t even close. Combined for the first two weeks, Brown hauled in 12 catches for 233 yards and 2 touchdowns while Andrews caught another 16 for 220 yards and 2 touchdowns. Spagnuolo put together a great scheme in order to take both of those targets away for the most part in the passing game.

The Chiefs defense limited Brown to only 2 catches on 9 targets for 49 yards. Most of that came on a 31-yard gain late in the game during garbage time in which cornerback Bashaud Breeland struggled to adjust and locate the ball over his head. That’s not really a knock on Breeland, given the good placement and Brown’s ability to track and catch the ball over his head along the sideline. Andrews finished the day with 3 catches for 15 yards on 7 targets.

For most of the game, Breeland was tasked with covering Brown on the left side of the defense and did a pretty good job of staying with him despite Brown’s elite speed as a vertical threat. Much like the game against Oakland, the defense played a high number of Zone/Man mixed schemes along with Zone coverages that allowed cornerbacks, especially Charvarius Ward, to press at the LOS and carry their receiver downfield if they stayed vertical in Cover 3 and 4 coverages.

The defense also executed a number of post-snap changes showing one look pre-snap and then changing to another following the snap to confuse Jackson. Here the Chiefs show no help over the top looking to blitz with man coverage across the defense especially after Jackson sent his receiver in motion. Once the play was snapped, Kansas City moved to a Tampa 2 type look with Ward and Breeland dropping to the deep halves of the field, Fuller dropping to the deep middle underneath the high zones, and the safeties and linebackers dropping to the shallow zones.

They also would free up Mathieu with these types of changes allowing him to play a robber role and jump routes underneath coming up with 3 pass breakups on the day. Allowing Mathieu to play this robber role is exactly what the Chiefs brought Honey Badger to Kansas City for which is to make plays. While he didn’t come away with an interception, he was very close multiple times demonstrating his elite closing speed.

Using Mathieu and the disguised post-snap changes really hampered what Jackson was able to do through the air for most of the game. The second-year quarterback struggled when his first two reads were covered coming out of his drop and was often panicking inside of a clean pocket dropping his eyes looking to run when there was no one around him.

Spagnuolo not only took away his top targets for much of the day forcing him to overthrow his receivers daring Jackson to beat them deep over the top but also took away his comfort zone to hitch routes over the middle. When you look at Jackson’s throwing chart from Week 3 and compare it to the following weeks, you will notice that he was unable to make plays across the middle like he was accustomed to.

Until the final three drives of the game, Jackson had less than 60 passing yards on the day. It wasn’t until the final three drives when Jackson was just throwing it up for anyone to grab and his receivers just so happen to make a play despite a poorly thrown ball.

Overall, coverage has been much better these last couple of weeks, especially against Baltimore when the quarterback was unable to get the pass out in two seconds, which is something that many lose sight of due to box score analysis that include garbage time plays.