Okay, watching the entirety of the tape, here's what happens and who I blame each play.
Spoiler!
Play 1: 0:00 of the video
The OL holds decent protection, but the play is a high/low design with tight ends, which will require an additional beat to get to. The high/low works, Gray is wide open as the second level swarms Kelce, but by then Pat is bailing on the pocket. Maybe Nagy shouldn't be dialing up slow-developing plays while the OL is struggling.
Pat is facing light pressure from Epenesa off Morris, and Trey is getting walked into Mahomes' lap by DaQuan Jones. But it's a pocket he can hang in. God awful throw by Pat as he scrambles out of the pocket, interception.
Entertainingly, a DE tries to lay it on Smith on the interception return. Smith bodyslams him, prompting a tussle.
Primary blame: Mahomes
Secondary: Smith, Nagy
Play 2: 0:28
Yeesh. The Chiefs leave in seven to protect and the Bills still get pressure with 4.
Hunt and Gray block Rousseau off the RT side as protection slides to the left. Worthy and Kelce are the only two who run routes but are swarmed. Hardman runs a wide open route to the flat. Pat makes the right read on the play but Epenesa stays in the passing lane and screws up the play, incomplete.
This was mostly a heady play by Epenesa, but Morris/Thuney should have done more to block him out of the lane. But the biggest problem was an enormous miscommunication by Taylor/Smith on doubling Ed Oliver. Smith starts bailing out of the double team to help Creed, which Taylor wasn't expecting. Oliver splits them and hits Mahomes on the play.
No one gets open. The Bills have every receiver covered very tightly. Mahomes hangs in the pocket, which has pretty good integrity until it starts to collapse. He attempts to buy time by scrambling to the flat and gets sacked. Bills rushed four with a LB spy.
Rousseau did get a quick-ish pressure across Morris' face, but Morris recovered and pancaked him. That did flush Mahomes however, who was wrangled by the spy.
Primary blame: the receivers
Secondary: Morris
Play 4: 1:06
Pat hangs in the pocket with penetration, and passes on an easy checkdown to Gray to kill a fantastic strike to Worthy down the field.
Morris gets help from a Gray chip, and Taylor shuts down a blitzer. Smith/Humphrey do great work against a stunt, Humphrey especially. Thuney does give up the pressure against Oliver in a 1-on-1, but it wasn't a fast pressure, and the play to Worthy was slow-developing.
Primary blame: maybe Nagy, for the slow developing play?
Secondary: Thuney
Play 5: 1:29
Carson Steele may need to be checked for blindness. Have we ever confirmed that he can actually see?
The Chiefs correctly spotted a blitz, as the Bills send six. The Chiefs left in seven to block. Steele was even assigned to slide to the unblocked DE (Rousseau), but didn't see him at all, instead opting to double a blitzer with Taylor. It is a ghastly error, Mahomes is immediately in trouble, and no WR is open yet because the play starts.
If that play can last one tick longer, which is probably what they had designed, JJSS is available for a drag route. Mahomes throws it away.
Primary blame: Steele
Secondary blame: no one
Play 6: 1:46
This was a beautiful, beautiful passrush from the Bills. They fake a blitz, but a LB stays as a spy and the DB peels off with JJSS, who takes a moment to realize it's not a blitz. The fake blitz is particularly devastating to Perine, who stayed in to help against it, and once he realizes he needs to leak out for Mahomes, it's too late.
Mahomes' drop may be the biggest issue here, as it's 11 yards deep -- I cannot fathom the Chiefs planned on an 11 yard drop? Morris sets for shallower, and Rousseau blasts past him. Meanwhile, Von Miller is putting the heat on Taylor and Oliver is owning Smith.
I just think the primary blame here is on the Bills for proplerly confusing the Chiefs.
This play had promise in several spots downfield, but an immediate pressure from Oliver up the gut blew it up. Mahomes has to scramble the sideline and make a great play, hitting Hendershot for a nice grab.
The Bills rush four, and it looks decent across the board with one massive exception: Smith gets manhandled by Oliver. Hunt even smartly chips Oliver as he busts through but it doesn't slow him down. Humphrey looks like he was supposed to double Oliver but gets there late -- maybe Smith was counting on him to be there, but it does just look like he lost the rep.
Primary blame: Smith
Secondary: Humphrey
Play 8: 2:31
This doesn't look like Mahomes was pressured at all. Not sure why this play was included.
Primary blame: no one
Secondary blame: no one
Play 9: 2:51
No one gets open. The Chiefs send out five receivers, and not a single one wins their rep, everyone blanketed by the Bills. The pocket looks like it has nice integrity, though Rousseau does get a slow-developing pressure on a stunt that Smith was slow to react to.
Mahomes rolls out and tries a shot to Hopkins, to no avail. Had Mahomes hung on for one additional moment, he did have a couple linebackers coming up on him, and could have hit Hendershot behind them.
Primary blame: the receivers
Secondary blame: Smith, Mahomes
Play 10: 3:13
Most of the receivers are covered, but the Chiefs kept in JJSS to block along with Gray. Gray splits out early (covered), JJSS splits out reeeeeally late (open, but Pat is scrambling).
There is some pressure up the gut eventually by Rousseau, but the Chiefs protection recovers. Pat scrambles out to the flats when there was no pressure for him to worry about. He also could have hit Hunt early in the play in the flat if nothing was there, or somehow found JJSS once he did eventually peel out. Instead he attempts to make a DT miss, and throws it away.
This is an odd play design by Nagy that asks Gray, Thuney (from the other side of the line) and JJSS to all block Rousseau at various times. It doesn't work initially, as Rousseau does move Pat off his spot, but it is eventually recovered.
Primary blame: Mahomes
Secondary blame: Nagy, the receivers
Play 11: 3:35
This is a great play by Mahomes that leads to a TD -- the receivers are initially blanketed, but by buying time, Mahomes allows Gray to find some daylight in the back corner, and hits him for the score.
The pocket is pretty good, had he hung in there. The pressure comes from Rousseau, who was to be left unblocked by design? Kelce gives Rousseau a healthy chip at the start, but Kelce's probably your best redzone threat, so what's going on here?
Hopkins is starting to come open towards the end of the play had Pat hung in there.
Primary blame: Nagy
Secondary blame: Mahomes, the receivers
Play 12: 3:56
Mahomes needs to be more decisive here. The Chiefs run three deep-ish routes, and the Bills have them outnumbered and covered. Sadly the best route the Chiefs have available on this play is a one-on-one that Worthy gets, but Worthy doesn't win. But with all the DBs dropping deep, Mahomes needs to make the early outlet pass to Gray, who is in the flat and has a little bit of green in front of him.
It doesn't help that Von Miller is pushing Taylor back. Rousseau also initially gets the better of Morris, but with Thuney's help, Morris recovers.
Mahomes does the best he can to buy time after missing Gray and scrambles around with a desperate, failed pass to Perine.
Primary blame: Mahomes
Secondary blame: Taylor, the receivers
Play 13: 4:18
The Chiefs are in desperation mode and trying to eat up yardage, which is somewhat skewing this play. Normally, I would fault Mahomes here for not taking the easier, shallower yardage in unmarked players, but he's trying to get chunk plays here, so I don't blame him for hanging in.
The pressure isn't even bad this play -- Von Miller gets across Taylor's face, but Taylor recovers. The Bills are doing a good job in coverage and the WRs aren't getting open. Nagy makes a questionable decision here, putting Hopkins on a mere go route.
Primary blame: the receivers
Secondary blame: Nagy, Taylor
Conclusions:
There are 13 plays here, but one of them is not a pressure, so there's 12 plays.
Mahomes either has the primary or secondary blame on exactly half of them. It is mostly him not hanging in the pocket when he could have -- once was for an absurd 11 yard dropback that his OL was not ready to protect against.
In the other thread, there was much ballyhooing about Trey Smith -- this seems justified. Smith was the primary or secondary blame-ee on five of the plays.
Not enough was made of this in the other thread, but the receivers share plenty of blame in this. Five of the plays became pressures because the WRs could not get open.
Anything involving bad play design I just put on Matt Nagy, for simplicity's sake. Nagy had a few boneheaded decisions, a couple times dialing up slow-development plays when the Bills are putting tons of heat on Mahomes, and a couple times dialing up weird protection schemes.
Steele made such a catastrophic error on one play, he may not even get a snap against Carolina.
Here's a surprise: Wanya Morris contributed to some of these issues in a secondary way, but not once in those 13 snaps did I view him as the primary reason the play collapsed. Not once!
Yesterday, 02:06 PM
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Breaking down the "pressures" film.
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