Anatomy of a Super Bowl Berth: How the Bills can fool Patrick Mahomes in the red zone

Patrick Mahomes has been a monster in the red zone this season, but the Bills may have a way to fake him right out of that.

Fooling Patrick Mahomes into an interception isn’t easy, but it isn’t impossible. With 10:42 left in the third quarter of the Chiefs’ 17-14 Week 16 win over the Falcons, Mahomes had third down at the Atlanta seven-yard line. He tried to sneak a slant to tight end Travis Kelce through Atlanta’s Red-2 goal-line zone coverage, but linebacker Foyesade Oluokun (No. 54) had other ideas.

The neat trick Oluokun showed Mahomes on this play was to deceive him into thinking that Oluokun was cheating to the three-wide side of the formation. Had this been the case, Mahomes would have had an easy pitch-and-catch to Kelce as Oluokun vacated his area.

Instead, Mahomes took the bait, and the result was an interception that might have been a 99-yard pick-six were it not for receiver Tyreek Hill, who turned on the jets and caught Oluokun from behind, forcing a fumble out of bounds.

“That’s the heart and the championship swagger you need on a team,” Mahomes said of Hill’s tackle. “Battling though injury already to be out there in that game, and to make that tackle on that little pick… you have to have those types of guys on your team if you want to win football games.”

Well, yeah, that helps. DK Metcalf would agree.

The All-22 angles of DK Metcalf’s tackle of Budda Baker are truly epic

But if you can put your quarterback in situations where he’s not throwing red zone picks and forcing his top receivers to run 4.2-second 40-yard dashes to prevent defensive touchdowns, that’s also good.

And this is where Mahomes might be in a bit of trouble, because the Bills — the team Mahomes will face in the AFC Championship game this Sunday — have a knack for fooling quarterbacks into pick-sixes with route-jumping prowess. Specifically, we’re talking about nickel cornerback Taron Johnson, the 2018 fourth-round pick out of Weber State whose previous claim to fame was as the guy who got hit in the head with a football during his scouting combine drills.

Oof. In any event, things have gone much better for Mr. Johnson of late. This season as the Bills’ primary slot defender, per Pro Football Focus, he’s allowed 65 receptions on 90 targets for 681 yards, 297 yards after the catch, one touchdown, two interceptions, and an opponent passer rating of 88.2. And yes, both of his interceptions this season were pick-sixes.

There was this 51-yarder against Ben Roethlisberger in Week 14…

Initially, Johnson is covering tight end Eric Ebron as the top target in Pittsburgh’s bunch formation, which has Roethlisberger believing that he’s got Smith-Schuster underneath. But Johnson does a brilliant job of working down to Smith-Schuster and jumping the route, and that’s your ballgame.

Then, there was this 101-yard pick-six of Lamar Jackson with 58 seconds left in the third quarter of Buffalo’s divisional round win over the Ravens — the game that took them to Mahomes in the first place.

“Coach made a good call, and I’m just reading the eyes of the quarterback,” Johnson said after the game. “I have the seam in the coverage, and he took me to the back side, and all I did was cheat. He didn’t see me, so the ball came to me. I took it, and made the play.”

Here, the Bills are playing “Red 2” — as ESPN’s Matt Bowen explains it, a five-across red zone coverage in which the cornerbacks open and sink to carry the outside routes, the safeties shuffle through their run-pass keys and drop down on any shorter routes, the Mike linebacker opens to the passing strength and matches to the inside vertical seam, and the nickel defender (Johnson) reads the quarterback — as Johnson said.

Mahomes will no doubt get his shots in the red zone against the Bills — in the regular season, per Pro Football Reference, he threw 23 touchdowns to two interceptions in the red zone, and 21 touchdowns to one interception inside the opponent’s 10-yard line. But when he’s in the red zone against Taron Johnson, he may want to remember how Foyesade Oluokun faked him out in Week 16 for that one pick, and how Taron Johnson has become a pick-six machine by hiding his intentions until the last second, reading the quarterback, and jumping the route.