Chiefs offensive line dominates and other overlooked aspects of Week 1

Despite the overwhelming amount of media coverage that the Chiefs received in Week 1, we look into the stories that have been largely overlooked.

When thinking about Thursday’s NFL kickoff, a few storylines come immediately to mind: Clyde Edwards-Helaire introducing himself to the league in impressive fashion, Chris Jones and Frank Clark picking up where they left off in Miami last season, L’jarius Sneed surprising absolutely everyone. These stories have been covered thoroughly by every sports outlet on the planet, and therefore have demanded the conversations around the game.

However, there exist other storylines that maybe just as important, if not more important, then the stories already circulating in Chiefs Kingdom. We wanted to take a look at those storylines and see what they mean for the Kansas City Chiefs and the season as a whole.

Analyzing snap counts

In the modern NFL, defensive coordinators will swap players in and out of the game quite often, typically to help keep them rested, but also to better set up the defensive personnel for the upcoming situation. Obvious running downs require some big boys to make tackles, while obvious passing downs require quick defensive backs with high football IQ.

When a player stays on the field for 100% of defensive snaps, it is a quite remarkable and notable feat. Not only did safety Tyrann Mathieu play every single defensive down, but he used that time to lead the Chiefs’ defense in multiple stat lines.

The Texans ran 59 offensive snaps, and Mathieu was on the field for every one of those. Daniel Sorenson came in behind him at 57 and rookie cornerback L’Jarius Sneed was next at 55. In those 59 snaps, Mathieu lead the team in tackles with 8 (6 solo, also leads team) and grabbed one hit on the QB (the hit that forced an interception). He also did not have a single missed tackle, not something that the rest of the defense would be able to say.

On the offensive side of the ball, it is a bit more normal for players to see 100% of snaps, with six Chiefs playing every offensive snap. However, what stands out on the snap count for the offense is who did not see many snaps.

Mecole Hardman played on 20 of the 69 offensive snaps (29%), and was only targeted once, a shovel pass which he would carry for 6 yards. The only receiver who had less snaps then Hardman was Byron Pringle, who had 6 snaps (9%) but also got one target (negated due to a defensive pass interference call, but a target nonetheless).