How Bill Belichick constructed the perfect secondary to slow down Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs

It’s like a well-rounded basketball team, capable of matching up with a variety of players.

I know I wasn’t the only one thinking it after the Chiefs dismantled the Ravens on Monday night: There isn’t a defense in the league capable of slowing down this offense. Not with that quarterback and that coach and those weapons.

I’m sure the Baltimore’s defense felt that way after the 34-20 loss. The Ravens were little more than a speed bump in the way of Patrick Mahomes and Co. racking up 517 total yards. I mean, at one point they scored a touchdown on an underhanded throw to freaking fullback. Another time, it was a tackle leaking out to catch a TD pass. Nothing the Ravens threw at them seemed to bother the Chiefs. When they blitzed, Mahomes quickly and calmly found an outlet. When they played man, the receivers had no problem getting open. Even when Baltimore’s rush pressured Mahomes, he found a way to make a play. At a certain point, you couldn’t help but feel bad for the Ravens defenders and defensive coordinator Wink Martindale.

We’re only three weeks into the season, and that performance had some pundits already asking if Kansas City was capable of running the table and getting through 2020 undefeated. Premature? Sure. Out of the realm of possibility? Certainly not.

The offense is that good.

But I might wait a week before I start putting the ’72 Dolphins on notice. Because Kansas City’s next opponent might just have a defense capable of at least offering some resistance — and not in the same way we’ve seen the Chargers and 49ers, with their unblockable defensive lines, slow down this Chiefs offense. The Patriots may not have the talented pass rushes those teams do — I don’t know if any other teams do — but there isn’t a team that can match New England’s talent and depth in the secondary.

It’s certainly the only defensive backfield that has proven capable of matching up with Kansas City’s seemingly endless cache of weapons.

It’s not just that the Patriots have a bunch of good defensive backs. It’s the diverse skill-sets Belichick has at his disposal that makes the secondary so unique. While some teams, including Pete Carroll’s Seahawks, chase prototypes at the cornerback position, the Pats have built their group of corners as if it were a basketball lineup. You have the quick guards (Jonathan Jones and Jason McCourty), the athletic wings (Stephon Gilmore and J.C. Jackson) and a big man (JoeJuan Williams). Safety Devin McCourty acts as a coach on the field (it’s not a perfect metaphor) and Kyle Dugger and Adrian Phillips are the enforcers (is that hockey?).

OK, it’s a convoluted metaphor, but you get my point: Belichick has a defensive back to match up with any type of receiver a team can throw at them. The versatility has allowed the Patriots to do what no other Chiefs opponent has been able to do: Match up with Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce and Sammy Watkins for a full 60 minutes and come out of the game with their dignity still intact.

Unsurprisingly, Belichick’s strategy for defending the Mahomes-led Chiefs has evolved over the three meetings. But what is surprising is that it’s become more simplified over time:

  • In the first matchup, during the 2018 regular season, Belichick played his favored man coverages with some Cover 0 blitzes mixed in. On key downs, the Pats doubled Kelce and tried to take him out of the game. It mostly worked, as the star tight end needed nine targets to get to 61 receiving yards. Unfortunately, that extra attention on Kelce allowed Hill to run wild and rack up 142 yards and three touchdowns.
  • In the second matchup, with a trip to the Super Bowl on the line, the Patriots had an extra set of eyes on Hill at all times. Belichick put his fastest corner, Jones, on Hill with Devin McCourty backing him up. Gilmore took Watkins one-on-one and Jackson was put on Kelce. Belichick also dialed up the pressure on Mahomes, sending blitzes on 16 of 36 dropbacks. The gameplan worked … initially. After shutting out the Chiefs in the first half, Reid adjusted and Kansas City scored 31 second-half points.
  • The third matchup, a 23-16 Chiefs win last season, was arguably the most successful one for the Patriots defense. And the gameplan was relatively simple. New England didn’t double anyone. The Jones-Hill and Gilmore-Watkins matchups remained the same, but Jackson was moved to DeMarcus Robinson with a mix of Devin McCourty and Patrick Chung on Kelce. The Pats obviously played a lot of Cover 1 man, but they mixed in a surprising amount of Tampa 2 and they hardly blitzed, which was a major deviation for last year’s team.

The simplified game plan, made possible by the talented secondary, worked! It was the third-worst performance of Mahomes’ career based on Expected Points Allowed and only the fourth time the Chiefs had been held under 24 points since the start of the 2018 season. New England lost but the defense was hardly to blame. In the words of Belichick, it had done its job.

That result should inspire some hope for Patriots fans who just witnessed the beating the Cheifs put on a very good Ravens defense and may be dreading Sunday’s matchup. New England didn’t have to double any receivers. It didn’t have to send extra rushers. And that allowed the Pats to deploy a free defender in the middle of the field who could help against the crossing routes that have given Chiefs opponents so much trouble over the years.

As I wrote in the offseason, it’s those concepts that make the Patriots pass defense so hard to beat. Most defenses, including the one in Baltimore, don’t have the personnel to employ such a gameplan. New England does.

This is where you point out that this year’s Patriots defense isn’t quite last year’s Patriots defense. After leading the league in Defensive DVOA, they’re sitting at 25th in Football Outsiders’ efficiency metric. That’s not necessarily a surprise. New England was due for some significant statistical regression and lost a number of key starters from the 2019 team. But the defense is playing at a higher level than the numbers imply. The poor early returns are largely based on an awful showing in Seattle.

In that game in Week 2, Russell Wilson threw five touchdown passes and averaged 0.35 EPA per plan. Whenever he needed to make a play, he made it and it never looked difficult. In fact, it looked a lot like what we saw out of Mahomes on Monday night.

But the gameplan Belichick will devise for Mahomes will look nothing like the one he put together for Wilson, whose unique game limits the use of the strategies that have made the Pats defense so good in recent years.  For instance, Belichick couldn’t play a lot of man coverage, because Wilson is always a threat to break the pocket and if everyone in coverage has their back turned to the defense, he’ll run forever. When Belichick did play man, he had to commit a defender to spy the quarterback, so there goes that free defender helping out in the middle of the field, making it harder to track receivers running across the field. When he played zone to keep eyes on Wilson, he had to settle for the traditional “spot down” variety rather than the “pattern matching” zones he typically prefers.

Mahomes and this Chiefs defense present their own challenges, but Wilson is just the worst possible matchup for a Belichick-coached team. Wilson thrives in chaos. He does not follow the traditional rules of quarterbacking — and he’s so exceptionally good out of structure, he doesn’t need to. While Mahomes is certainly good out of structure and can make logic-defying throws, that isn’t necessarily the case with his mental process. If there’s any time and space in the pocket, he takes advantage of it. If a receiver appears to be covered downfield, he moves onto his next read. Belichick at least knows how Mahomes will try to beat him and can plan accordingly. Wilson, with his unmatched improvisational ability, presents a challenge the Patriots aren’t really built to take on. Mahomes may be the best player on the planet, but Belichick will feel more comfortable putting together a game plan to slow him down.

With the personnel losses, it will be a bit more difficult for Belichick to put together that plan. He lost his matchup for Kelce when Chung opted out, but Williams and Dugger have emerged as his tight end-stoppers, so that won’t be too much of an issue. But not having Donte Hightower in the middle of the defensive front will make defending the Chiefs run game with minimal numbers a bit harder. And not having Danny Shelton around will also hurt. He was a key cog in the Pats’ pass rush plan in last year’s game. Rather than getting off the ball and trying to cave in the pocket, New England’s interior rushers tried to control their blockers and keep their eyes on Mahomes and track his movement. When he started to move, they attacked.

Shelton’s rare combination of strength and athleticism made him an ideal candidate for the role.

There’s also a new challenge to deal with in the Chiefs offense: Mecole Hardman has emerged as a key member of the team’s receiving corps, giving Reid another impossibly fast receiver to deal with. In the 2019 match-up, he really only saw the field when Hill needed a breather, so the Pats could just put Jones on him. On Sunday, we’ll likely see a lot of snaps with both Hardman and Hill on the field at the same time, and Jones obviously can’t be in two places at once. My guess is that the Belichick will have Jason McCourty and Jackson split time on the second-year speedster. Neither corner is as fast as Hardman, but neither will have to chase him the field all game, which should help them keep up.

The Chiefs are coming off one of the most dazzling offensive performances we’ve seen in recent memory. The last time the Patriots defense played a quarterback this good, it was run off the field. But football is a game of matchups, especially at the NFL level, and no defense matches up with Kansas City quite like the one Belichick has built in New England.