The Kansas City Chiefs had the cupboards full heading into the AFC Championship game against the Buffalo Bills. With a largely healthy roster coming out of the previous week's win over the Houston Texans in the divisional round, the Chiefs had plenty of positional flexibility for their game plan—and the creativity showed in a 32-29 win over the Bills.
But the use of some players (and the lack of use of others) did provide some surprises in the conference showdown. We thought we'd take a look at the snap counts to highlight some surprises on both offense and defense for the Chiefs from Sunday's big win.
Joshua Williams
The Chiefs third-year cornerback was vying for more reps at midseason after Jaylen Watson's ankle injury robbed him of the season's second half. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo's attempts to reconfigure the secondary featured Williams and Nazeeh Johnson as the principal contenders for Watson's old role.
Over time, Williams won out and looked very good for the Chiefs down the stretch as he made a considerable leap forward in his own progress. Against the Bills, however, Williams was a no-show, at least on defense.
Williams played more special teams reps than any other player against Buffalo with 23 overall, but the Chiefs chose not to utilize him on defense. The same was true against the Houston Texans in the divisional round. All of this is a bit surprising since Johnson is still getting reps (and even starting the game before bringing in Watson in relief) in the postseason.
Jaden Hicks
Chiefs Kingdom is already pretty high on Hicks with a keen awareness that his trajectory looks quite good for the future. But the Chiefs are already heavily dependent upon the rookie safety and it showed on Sunday night against the Bills.
The Chiefs played Hicks on 50 snaps against Buffalo, good for 68 percent of overall snaps. Bryan Cook, meanwhile, was behind him at 59 percent of snaps.
The Chiefs employ three-safety looks the majority of the time, so there's plenty of playing time to go around for all, but Hicks has already leaped up the depth chart higher than most fans would have predicted this early.
All of this bodes well as the Chiefs look ahead to an offseason where Justin Reid is a free agent, giving them at least more flexibility than they might have had if they'd not taken Hicks in the fourth round last April.
DeAndre Hopkins
When the Chiefs made the decision to acquire wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins during a mid-season deal to bolster the position, the belief was that Patrick Mahomes would lean heavily on such an accomplished pass catcher. The Chiefs WR corps at the time was depleted by injury and it made sense to give the Chiefs such a big physical target to take heat off of Travis Kelce.
While Hopkins was certainly a nice in-season boost, this postseason has been a bit surprising for just how little the Chiefs are leaning on him. That's not to say his presence isn't appreciated even now, but his playing time has been less than expected and his productivity scant.
On Sunday, Hopkins had only 12 total snaps on offense, which is only one more than Justin Watson. That's good for only 18 percent of all offensive plays.
JuJu Smith-Schuster
There's no arguing that the Chiefs must be very glad they gave JuJu Smith-Schuster as much playing time as they did. The veteran wide receiver came up huge for the Chiefs with two big gains in the first half, one for 31 yards and another for 29.
That sort of productivity was a big leap for Smith-Schuster after totaling just 231 yards in the entire regular season. Outside of an outstanding showing against the Saints in Week 5, Smith-Schuster only had 101 yards to his name for the year. Yet against the Bills, Patrick Mahomes hit JSS for 60 yards.
The productivity was a result of the Chiefs putting Smith-Schuster on the field for 38 snaps, the most he's had since Week 15. His presence had to surprise the Bills a bit since he only got 20 snaps in Week 11 against them in the regular season.