Chiefs worst plays of 2019, Week 1: Gardner Minshew’s breakout

Worst Defensive Play

The Chiefs were electric in Week 1 of the 2019 season, as they blew past the Jacksonville Jaguars with speed and purpose. Sammy Watkins was all over the field, Travis Kelce exposed the weak linebacking core of the Jags. LeSean McCoy had 81 yards, and Patrick Mahomes was doing MVP things. This game was never winnable for the Jaguars, especially after Chris Jones leveled Nick Foles late in the first quarter and Jacksonville was forced to run with a rookie quarterback for the rest of the game.

That rookie quarterback, however, was the offensive rookie of the year snub, Gardner Minshew, and would go on to throw for 275 yards and 2 touchdowns against K.C.

Minshew turned out to be much better than anyone could have predicted, and the early season Chiefs’ defense was just starting to find their footing. This opened the door for Minshew to usher in the beginning of Minshew Mania.

The Chiefs’ worst defensive play of the game came with 9:48 left in the game, with the Chiefs up big on the Jags, 37 to 13. Despite this, Minshew and the Jags had something to prove and kept putting up a solid effort to score.

On this play, Minshew drops back and hits D.J. Chark between the numbers on the sideline for 35 yards—a massive first down for all the momentum. The Jags would ride this momentum to go down the field in just a few more plays and give Minshew his first touchdown of his NFL career.

What exactly happened that allowed this? Well, here is the play that Jacksonville is running.

The play may not look very special, but it serves quite a few purposes for the Jaguars: the X receiver runs a drag across the middle offering a quick checkdown route for Minshew against zone coverage—worth between 7 to 10 yards against man coverage if other receivers are well covered. The tight end crosses that drag route and runs a fade which can either chip the defender on the X or possibly confuse the defenders and cause a blown coverage. The running back stays in and blocks after seeing one of Spagnuolo’s signature blitz packages coming.

Specifically we are looking at the right side of the field, where the slot receiver is running a corner route, while the Z receiver is running a simple streak.

The Chiefs are showing single high safety, with a corner pressing the X receiver, and the LOLB is lined up on the inside of the TE. Everything the Chiefs are showing pre-snap should immediately tell Minshew that this is man coverage. The Chiefs however are running a zone blitz, rushing with the LOLB and CB, and dropping a DE and remaining secondary players into a cover 3 scheme.

This is a great play to run against a rookie quarterback who is taking his first snaps in the NFL. The pre-snap misdirection is sneaky and should draw exactly what they want out of Minshew: confusion in the pocket resulting in a sack or a pressured throw resulting in an interception. As long as the six defenders stay in their zones and communicate properly, and the deep defenders do not let anybody beat them down the field, this play should work near flawlessly.

The problem comes when a lack of communication and vision gives the Jaguars an opportunity.

Minshew is being rushed hard, and Frank Clark is about a yard away from delivering the boom on the rookie QB. Meanwhile on the right side of the field, the slot receiver is crossing through the number on his corner route, while the Z is transitioning between the first zone and the over-the-top defender. The slot is passing through Kendall Fuller‘s zone until he crosses the numbers, at which point he is in Bashaud Breeland‘s zone, but with no other receivers passing through Fuller’s zone, he has the opportunity to follow the slot receiver and take away that option.

This strategy should have worked, especially with Minshew being rushed the way he is. Typically, when an inexperienced quarterback makes the ill-advised decision to throw a pass while being rushed like this, it is wildly inaccurate and short, leaving the lurking corner to pick it off. (See Patrick Mahomes final two passes against the Rams in the 2018 season.)

So I go back and forth on whether this pass is so wildly overthrown and inaccurate that it just happened to fall in Chark’s lap here (Chark does have to come to a complete stop to make this catch), or if Minshew made one of the best passes I’ve seen with linemen in his face. Either way, Minshew hits Chark, who is 25 yards down the field and goes for another 10 after the fact.

How did the Y receiver get so wide open?

Fuller is in the right to follow the slot receiver out past the numbers, especially given the circumstances that he and Breeland communicate and understand that Breeland the sole responsibility of moving up with the streaking Y receiver. Somewhere during the course of the play, that does not get communicated, and Breeland lets the Y get past him. The ball is delivered before the safety is able to get into position to cover Chark.

How do the Chiefs fix this? Improved communication.

The Chiefs actually get much better about this as the season progresses, especially thanks to leadership from the landlord Tyrann Mathieu. When wide receivers are moving between zones, it is vital that corners make sure to communicate to the nearby zones that they are either sticking with them or letting them pass.