Three things we learned from Chiefs snap counts vs. Bengals
By Matt Conner
It feels a bit weird to say, but we’re officially done with any and all statistics from the 2021 NFL season for the Kansas City Chiefs. Just like that, the team’s pursuit of a Super Bowl was over once the Cincinnati Bengals kicked a field goal in overtime at Arrowhead Stadium to take the AFC Championship. At that point, it was all over. No more football would be played for this roster.
Because of this, we wanted to make sure and go over the last round of snap counts for the season to see what they can tell us (or not tell us). How a team divides its snaps is quite telling of several things for a player—showcasing how much a team believes in a particular prospect or how severe an injury might be.
Looking at a body of work over time and keeping track of snap counts can also give way to trends on how a player is earning more trust from the coaching staff (and thus gaining more playing time) or vice versa. You can suddenly see which veterans are declining, which rookies are gaining steam, or where competition is really breaking out at a particular position.
Let’s go over the snap counts in the final game of the season to see what we learned about playing time for the Kansas City Chiefs.
The snap counts for the final game of the season are largely in line with what you know about the Chiefs already. After all, they arrived at this game with a pretty standard formula—with the same set of starters on both sides of the ball largely holding up for the season. But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn a thing or two (or three in this case)
On with the snap counts from the Bengals vs. Chiefs from Sunday night.