I still do not have an answer.
I have spent more hours than I care to admit trying to come up with a way to slow down Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Tyreek Hill and the rest of the Kansas City Chiefs offense. I have poured through books about the sports, flipped through every single defensive playbook I can get my hands on, and spend many a night simply pacing around my office trying to come up with a plan.
Recently, during a phone call with Doug Farrar I started to walk through some options about “taking away what they do best” and “making them fight left-handed” when Doug had a simple response that stopped me in my tracks:
“But their left hand is Travis Kelce.”
Still I forge on, pouring through notes and film trying to find an answer. A student of history and a fan of the “Indiana Jones” films, I envision myself as a younger Henry Jones, pouring through scrolls and ancients texts trying to find the Holy Grail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzE6-WZtOi4
Of course, when I find myself just staring at this for hours:
Hell if I know. pic.twitter.com/VJPMj03l9X
— Mark Schofield (@MarkSchofield) September 30, 2020
I feel less like Henry Jones, and more like Charlie Day:
“Look, if you’re plus-one in the box, you get a double-team on both Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, and have an athletic nose tackle who can spy Patrick Mahomes, you can do this.”
Again, it seems like there are simply no easy answers.
But it does not mean the search is over.