Film room: How the Kansas City Chiefs can defeat the Detroit Lions

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Matt Patricia is all about players that can play numerous positions and it shows up all over the field and frequently. This will be a big key to beating the Lions defense is getting those favorable matchups.

Christian Jones – Jones lines up as an edge defender, middle linebacker, and Will linebacker. At 250 pounds, the Eagles did a good job of getting him matched up with running backs coming out of the backfield and vertical downfield.

Jahlani Tavai – Another player that plays the edge and inside the box who really struggles in zone coverages. He’s a good player to target when lined up on the edge as he is unable to take on OL blockers and will get pushed out of the way.

On the back end, Patricia uses three safeties quite often using Quandre Diggs as another Will linebacker frequently. Tracy Walker and Will Harris will also rotate down to cover in man coverages frequently. It’s rare to find any of these three in the same area as they are rotated consistently.

The defensive front is going to be interesting to watch. Patricia likes to run mostly out of a 4 down linemen set or 3 down linemen with 1 standing edge but deploys the 3 down linemen and 2 outside edges quite often as well. A’Shawn Robinson and Snacks Harrison in the middle is likely one of the most dominating run-stuffing linemen duos in the league.

Robinson will take on double teams without giving ground with his outstanding anchoring ability but is also athletic and long enough to move laterally and keep blockers off of his chest to maintain leverage and throw them aside. Harrison is the penetrating player of the two and trying to have your center climb against Harrison is a recipe for disaster. His awareness and quick explosive step off of the snap gets him into the backfield immediately when teams try this.

Trey Flowers and Devon Kennard are the most common along the edge and Flowers’ ability to win with power and pure violence in his pass rush is remarkable. He’s still coming into his own in Detroit, but he’s still a monster on the edge. Patricia will also drop one of them into coverage out of the 3-4 look most often to disrupt routes coming across the middle.

The entire DL plays with a nasty and violent attitude to get off their blockers. Snacks and Robinson are not your pass-rushing defensive tackles so don’t expect much from them in that area but Strong is explosive out of his stance to get into the gap before the OL can and if Hand can play he is a good second-year 3-tech type to rush the passer as well. Daniels has been good against the pass but putting him in on running downs is a mistake as he gets mowed over too often.

The Lions were very aggressive stacking and doubling Ertz this past week. With Jackson and Jeffery out, Ertz was the key focus and they beat him up. They won’t be able to do the same against KC considering the number of weapons but keep an eye on Kelce as we know Patricia likes to take away TE’s first.

Tendencies – The Lions defense will rush with just three often and bring blitzing LB’s while dropping DL fairly often as well. Man coverage across the board is the main key to Patricia’s defense and he will match his corners up against specific receivers for most of the game.

How to take advantage – The best way to attack, which is great for Kansas City, is using the running backs in the passing game coming out of the backfield or out wide. They don’t have the speed at the linebacker position and with players the size of defensive ends rotating inside the box frequently, it’s not hard to take advantage of those matchups. Linebackers struggle to do anything outside of flowing and short passes to the flat. They cannot carry downfield. The entire defense looks extremely uncomfortable in Zone coverages so you will likely see them give up most of their big plays during these plays.