It is amazing to consider that Sunday’s AFC Championship game marked Chiefs defensive lineman Chris Jones’ 13th postseason appearance, and he didn’t have a single sack in his first 12 playoff performances. This included Kansas City’s win over the 49ers in Super Bowl LV — a Jones game so dominant, it could be argued (as I did) that he should have been named the gane’s Most Valuable Player. You can completely disrupt an offense without sacks, and Jones has done it more often than most.
That said, when Jones finally broke his sack drought against the Bengals on Sunday, he did it with authority. Jones had two sacks, and he also had three quarterback hits and five quarterback hurries. Cincinnati’s injury-ravaged offensive line, which looked impressively solid against the Bills in the divisional round, had no shot of keeping Jones at bay. Nor did the rest of Kansas City’s defensive line fail to eat. Joe Burrow was pressured on 21 of his 49 dropbacks. Burrow took five sacks, and under pressure, he completed just five passes on 13 attempts for 81 yards, no touchdowns, both of his interceptions, and a passer rating of 20.5.
Others on that Chiefs line got their work in, but Jones was the superstar. The Bengals tried just about everything to stop him short of double-teaming him on every play (it was about half the time), and nothing worked. Jones played all over the line, and got pressures from the left and right edges, and from the left and right defensive tackle gaps.
“Yeah, he’s so good,” Burrow said of Jones after the game. “He makes it so hard on you. He’s so big, strong and physical. He really understands what you’re trying to do to him up front. You have to give them credit, they had a really good rush plan. They let their big-time pass rushers go to work.”
There was an element of last year’s AFC Championship game that stuck in Jones’ craw all season long, and he was more than ready to prove his readiness this time around.
“I think I planned for this game – my whole offseason was dedicated to this game. I missed a few big plays last year, unfortunate they were able to move forward, and I put that on my shoulders. So this offseason, I dedicated my whole offseason to making sure that when that moment calls, for me specifically, that I’ll answer the call.”
Not that Jones played badly in that game — he had six quarterback hurries in 34 pass-rushing snaps — but this time around, he cranked things up several levels.
As for that first sack (and the second), Jones claimed not to care about it (and them).
“It’s been a lot made by you guys,” Jones said with a laugh. “Y’all make it bigger than what it is. I really personally do not care about stats in the playoffs. My job is to make sure that I play hard, play physical, set a different side of the line of scrimmage and make my teammates around me make plays. Rather it’s taking the double team the whole game or rather it’s getting the one-on-one and winning. I think you guys blow it out of proportion. It doesn’t really matter to me, but I’m glad that you guys can have another story that Chris Jones finally got a sack.”
Well, in that spirit, let’s get past the obvious and dive into what Jones did in what amounted to a perfect pass-rush clinic.