The Philadelphia Eagles need to add two speedy wide receivers in free agency. Breshad Perriman and Demarcus Robinson would be great fits.
It is a well-known fact the Philadelphia Eagles need to add speed to their wide receiver room this offseason.
DeSean Jackson was electric for the Eagles in 2019, but he only really played one game all season. It is a no-brainer for the Eagles to keep Jackson for the 2020 season, even with his $8.6 million salary-cap hit.
Jackson showed, when healthy, he still has the juice. The connection from quarterback Carson Wentz to Jackson was special in the limited time we got to witness it. There is clearly some risk in bringing back Jackson, mainly because of his age and coming back from his injury that ended his season, but it is one the Eagles need to take.
Keeping Jackson will be great, but that should not factor into their team-building decisions this offseason. The Eagles need to add the fastest receivers they can, but they need to do it before the draft, and they need to add more than one.
Luckily for the Eagles, the free agency period features some pretty fast receivers, but two, in particular, should peak the Eagles interest the most based off of skill, fit, age, and the potential contract.
A lot of Eagles fans love the idea of adding Robby Anderson to the offense, but with reports circulating that Anderson could get around $14 million or more a year, the Eagles should pass. Actually, it should be a hard pass at that price. Anderson is a good player, but his production doesn’t warrant such a big contract. The Eagles have far too many holes to overpay for Anderson. The extra money they save can go to a cornerback in free agency or someone they trade for and extend instead, like Darius Slay.
The first receiver the Eagles should sign in free agency is a former first-round pick and former Tampa Bay Buccaneers receiver, Breshad Perriman. After being drafted by the Ravens in the first round of the 2015 NFL Draft (26th overall), Perriman struggled to remain healthy and be productive when healthy, so he was cut before the 2018 season. After bouncing around from the Washington Redskins to the Cleveland Browns, the Buccaneers signed him before the 2019 season to a 1-year, $4 million deal.
Hoping to finally shed the bust label, Perriman didn’t disappoint. In 14 games, he caught 36 passes for 645 yards and six scores, all career highs.
The second receiver the Eagles should add in free agency is former Kansas City Chiefs receiver, Demarcus Robinson. A potential contract for Robinson could hover around 3-years, and almost $16.5 million, or around $5.5 million a year.
Robinson, who is only 25 years old, is entering his fifth year in the league and has been a solid player for the Chiefs the last two seasons, catching 54 passes, for 737 yards, and 8 touchdowns. The former fourth-round pick out of Florida would transition to the Eagles smoothly with Doug Pederson being an Andy Reid disciple. Robinson played behind Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins, but Hill was out 4 weeks early in the season, which gave Robinson a bigger role.
In those 4 weeks, Robinson caught 16 passes for 281 yards and 3 scores. A bigger role in Philly would be a match made in heaven for Robinson and the Eagles.
Adding Perriman and Robinson this offseason should be a high priority for the Eagles. The two receivers would be great additions to the offense. Both of them are young, have a ton of upside, and their contracts shouldn’t be crazy. Adding two speedy, young, receivers for less than $15 million a year combined would be a great move for the Eagles, especially pairing them up with Jackson.
If they head into the 2020 NFL Draft without adding a speedy receiver in free agency, they could be in trouble. However, if they did add Perriman and Robinson before the draft; Roseman and the Eagles will have a much easier time drafting at the end of April—and it is exactly what they should do.
According to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, Colorado’s Laviska Shenault, one of the top wide receivers in the upcoming NFL draft, has been diagnosed with osteitis pubis — inflammation of the pubic bone — but won’t require surgery.
Wide receivers are impacted by the offensive scheme they play in and of course, the quality of their quarterback. Their total numbers are greatly aided playing in an offense that has to (or at least wants to) throw the ball a lot. Michael Thomas on the Ravens would still be very good. But he probably would not be catching 149 passes if he played for the Ravens. These metrics are very interesting in assessing player talent and value since they measure characteristics outside of just catches and yards. Particularly when a receiver is young and still improving. Having a great quarterback is a tremendous advantage for generating stats, but that doesn’t matter much when considering yards after catch, broken tackles and drops.
Notable Wide Receivers
A.J. Brown – The rookie came on strong for the Titans with Ryan Tannehill as the starter and his measurables attest to just how good he was. His 20.1 yards per catch was tops and he ranked among the best at almost every category. Barring some unforeseen change to their offense, Brown looks like everyone’s sleeper pick for 2020.
Chris Godwin – He was a delightful surprise last year taking advantage of not being Mike Evans but he clearly did plenty on his own – not just enjoying lesser coverage. He was sure-handed with top marks in all areas and was more reliable than almost any other receiver.
Amari Cooper – He’s angling for a big payday and he had several nice showings. But compared to other wideouts, Cooper’s only top mark was how far down the field he caught the ball – not what he did with it after the catch.
Curtis Samuel – Another receiver that some expect to be a sleeper. But he did not rank highly in anything and troublesome were his drops and low yards after the catch. His 51% catch rate ranked dead last among 50-catch receivers.
Deebo Samuel – The rookie had a promising season that started slowly and his lower marks came from the short passing scheme and a higher number of dropped passes. But Samuel improved during the season and ended up with a 70% catch rate and rated great in yards after catch (8.3) and broken tackles (7).
Julian Edelman – He contended with injuries during the season but it was still disappointing to see him with the highest drops and one of the lowest yards after the catch. Maybe Edelman is getting old. Maybe Tom Brady is not throwing the same ball.
Mohamed Sanu – Bad marks across the board. Are we sure Tom Brady still has it?
Terry McLaurin – The rookie was effective on a bad offense and even ranked highly in yards per catch.
Tyler Lockett – His 75% catch rate was second only to the pass sponge Michael Thomas. And he only dropped two passes all year.
A total of five Chiefs made the annual list from PFF celebrating the top 101 players in the NFL.
Pro Football Focus has released its annual list of the top 101 players in the NFL. The list is comprised solely based on player performances during the 2019 season and postseason. They also don’t take into account positional value in their rankings.
In 2018, the Chiefs had seven players rank among the 101 with six in top 40. This time around only five players made it onto the list and three players in the top 40. Let’s go through what PFF had to say about each of the players, and I’ll provide my own take on their rankings.
Kyle Terada-USA TODAY Sports
No. 4 Patrick Mahomes:
“Patrick Mahomes was the reigning league MVP this season, but we really didn’t see that player until the postseason due to a list of injuries he suffered. A dislocated kneecap looked like it could torpedo his year, but he missed just two games and then started to find his best play late in the campaign. Heading into the Super Bowl, his postseason grade was the best we had ever seen from a quarterback, and while he struggled more in the big game, he still made several critical huge plays and was rightfully named the game’s MVP. Mahomes had 32 big-time throws over the season and finished with a PFF grade north of 90.0 for the second straight season.”
I know that PFF only takes the current season into account when creating these rankings, but it feels like Mahomes’ Super Bowl-winning season should be ranked higher than his MVP-winning season. When you consider the adversity he faced with injury and the comebacks that Mahomes had to mount during the postseason, Mahomes should easily be moving up in this list and not down. Of course, I’m not sure those things are accounted for when it comes to PFF’s grading system.
Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs are Super Bowl champs thanks to a couple of huge plays down the stretch in the fourth quarter last Sunday night in Miami.
And none were bigger than that long pass from Mahomes to Tyreek Hill on 3rd and 15 that helped lead to a TD that shifted the momentum in the game.
Now we know more about that play-call and how Mahomes asked for it while the refs were reviewing a previous play.
This “wasp” pass play went for 44 yards and was the same play they used for a big gain against the Patriots in the AFC title game last year.
Check out this video below to see just how locked in Mahomes was on making sure they could pull this play off. It’s so darn fascinating watching the QB calmly ask offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy if they can have the time/protection to run the play and then how he’s able to pull it off under such pressure.
Also, it shows what an incredible leader Mahomes is, as he makes sure Hill is ready to make a big play:
The Chiefs won Super Bowl LIV by staying true to their offensive plan, and unleashing what they had learned through tape study.
Every coach studies opponent tendencies. The most effective coaches put their players in the best possible positions to attack those tendencies and win. In their 31-20 win over the 49ers in Super Bowl LIV, the Chiefs’ offensive coaches, led by head coach Andy Reid, offensive coordinator Eric Bienemy, and quarterbacks coach Mike Kafka, did a masterful job of creating big plays when they were most needed. This was never more evident than on the Chiefs’ two most explosive plays of the game — the 44-yard pass from Patrick Mahomes to Tyreek Hill with 7:13 left in the fourth quarter, and Mahomes’ 38-yard completion to Sammy Watkins with 3:44 remaining.
Each play was desperately needed. Kansas City was down 20-10 on the drive that contained the Hill catch, and the Chiefs ended that drive four plays later with a one-yard touchdown pass to Travis Kelce. The Hill catch came on third-and-15 from the Kansas City 35-yard line, and it pushed the ball to the San Francisco 21. Three Mahomes incompletions followed, but a 20-yard pass interference call against safety Tarvarius Moore set the ball at the one-yard line for the Kelce score. Without that Hill catch, though, the game likely has a very different result.
The Watkins catch came on second-and-7 from the San Francisco 48-yard line. It put the ball at the San Francisco 10-yard line. Mahomes then ran for six yards, was sacked on the next play, and then found running back Damien Williams for a five-yard score. That put the Chiefs up 24-20 and gave them the lead they would not relinquish.
(Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
Perhaps the most interesting thing about both plays is that they played specifically to San Francisco’s defensive tendencies, and Kansas City’s coaches and players were smart enough to dial them up even as their offense had been severely challenged to that point by Robert Saleh’s squad. Early in the game, San Francisco kept him to shorter stuff with their pass rush, which he told me after the game.
“That was just how the game turned out,” he said. “Those guys were getting upfield — obviously that’s a lot of great defensive linemen, and they were covering downfield. So, we hit some short stuff, and when I saw their safeties coming up [in the box], we tried to take some shots later on in the game.”
The 44-yard Hill play has all kinds of levels to it. As ESPN’s Dan Orlovsky explained, the Chiefs love to test defenses with a play with a three-by-one set in which Kelce and one of their speed receivers (Hill in this case) will each run inside routes, with the outside receiver (Watkins in this case) running either a go route or an in-cut based on the coverage.
There’s a version of the play, also based on attacking coverage rules, in which Hill runs what looks like the inside route, and then, he’ll break out to the corner route. That was what broke San Francisco’s defense up.
“They were playing this kind of robber coverage all game long, where the safety was coming down and robbing our deep crossing routes,” Mahomes said. “We had a good play call on where [tight end Travis] Kelce did a little stutter deep cross. We had Tyreek getting one-on-one with that safety, and the biggest thing is that we needed really good protection. It was a long route. It was actually the same play we ran against New England in the playoffs last year [in the 2018 AFC Championship Game], getting him down the sideline. We had great protection, I put it out there, and Tyreek made a great play.”
Rolling it back to the Chiefs’ 2018 AFC Championship loss to the Patriots was a fascinating reveal by Mahomes, coming as it did right after the Super Bowl win. Compare Hill’s 44-yarder in the Super Bowl…
…with this 42-yard play against the Patriots. It’s the same concept, flipped to the other side of the field.
Get the defense thinking Hill’s going to run the crosser based on tape, have him blast to the corner, and there’s just no way the deep safety is going to be able to adjust to that.
Another wrinkle here — Kafka told Peter King of NBC Sports that in the first half, the Chiefs ran a version of the play that had Hill staying inside on the crosser. One example of a similar concept is this 10-yard pass to Damien Williams with 4:59 left in the second quarter. Here, both Hill and Kelce work inside, and linebacker Kwon Alexander (No. 56) bumps Hill near the line to affect his route before taking off to try and tackle Williams. Ward, meanwhile, is skating off to the deep third of coverage.
This defensive iteration might have worked more effectively than the one the 49ers had on the 44-yarder.
The Chiefs have an implicit understanding of how Hill’s speed off the line and through his routes affects coverage, and they’re brilliant at exploiting it. The 49ers had done a great job of combining pass rush and tight coverage, but this is about when the Chiefs started raining down Kryptonite all over the field.
(Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
The Watkins play was interesting more in s specific matchup and technique sense. After the game, Watkins referred to a 65-yard completion from Aaron Rodgers to Davante Adams in the NFC Championship game as fodder for how the Chiefs would challenge Sherman specifically.
“I just knew it was one-on-one from film study,” Watkins said. “On a play where he was covering Davante Adams, I saw [Sherman] coming off an inside release when he’d been playing heavy outside the whole game. I knew Pat could make the throw, and that’s why we work on those types of situations.”
And then, the dagger.
“I just thank Davante Adams because I saw him kill [Sherman] on the inside release.”
Devastating, and accurate. Here’s the Adams play. Watch how Adams (No. 17, bottom of the screen) takes an outside jab step on Sherman, gets Sherman going one way, and then takes it inside.
And now, the Watkins version. It’s the same outside-to-inside jab step, and a similar result. As great as Sherman as been throughout his career, quick angles are the best way to beat him off the line.
Another common denominator here is how the safety over Sherman (Jimmie Ward in both cases) has eyes to the strong side of the formation before coming back. That leaves Sherman with iffy help over the top. When Watkins mentioned the one-on-one, that likely means the Chiefs saw Ward’s involvement to the three-receiver side (probably working off Kelce, who went in motion and back pre-snap), and could win to that side of the field.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
Perhaps the most admirable aspect of what the Chiefs put together late in Super Bowl LIV was that, when they were down 20-10 late in the fourth quarter, they didn’t coach scared. They didn’t implode. They had studied what the 49ers did — and perhaps more importantly, what they couldn’t do — and unleashed the right concepts when they were needed the most.
Coming back from double-digit deficits in each of their three postseason games? Well, that’s not great for the blood pressure, but if there’s one thing the 2019 Chiefs proved true, it’s not how you start, but how you finish. And if you want to finish with the Lombardi Trophy in your hands, you’d better get cracking on the tape.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
The 49ers had Patrick Mahomes right where they wanted him. And then they found out what the rest of the NFL already knows.
MIAMI — Before tonight, Patrick Mahomes had thrown two or more interceptions in an NFL game exactly three times: Against the Rams, Jaguars, and Patriots, all in the 2018 season. Before tonight, Patrick Mahomes had never thrown a postseason interception. Before tonight, to make Patrick Mahomes look mortal, you basically had to hope he’d leave the field. Before tonight, Patrick Mahomes had never faced a defense that had him bamboozed as the San Francisco 49ers’ defense did.
And yet, even with the 49ers up, 20-10 going into the second half of the fourth quarter, there wasn’t a single individual on the Chiefs’ sideline who didn’t believe their quarterback wouldn’t lead them to victory in Super Bowl LIV.
Because there is Patrick Mahomes and there is everybody else, and the 49ers learned that the hard way tonight. The Chiefs scored three touchdowns in a five-minute stretch in their usual whipsaw fashion, ending with Damien Williams’ 38-yard touchdown run with 1:12 left in the game, and that was the proverbial dagger in Kansas City’s 31-20 victory. It was the franchise’s first Super Bowl victory in 50 years. Mahomes, who finished the game with 26 completions in 42 attempts for 286 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions, became at age 24, the youngest Super Bowl MVP in the game’s history.
(Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
Give it to the 49ers’ ravenous-for-a-while defense, though — they did everything they could to beat Mahomes and his explosive offense into submission. They sacked Mahomes four times, created four tackles for loss, bombarded him with eight quarterback hits, and seemed to have him on their radar for a pressure on every snap. At the half, Mahomes had been restricted to throwing mostly short passes, he told me, because the 49ers’ pass rush made it that way. And hearing Mahomes say that a defense bent him to its will is a highly unusual event.
“That was just how the game turned out,” he said. “Those guys were getting upfield — obviously that’s a lot of great defensive linemen, and they were covering downfield. So, we hit some short stuff, and when I saw their safeties coming up [in the box], we tried to take some shots later on in the game.”
(Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports)
The 49ers did vary their usual Cover-3 and Cover-4 looks, and defensive coordinator Robert Saleh dialed some great stuff up to try and — well, if not confuse Mahomes, to at least delay his usual deadly responses when it’s time to make deep throws. Over and over, while the pressure was closing in, San Francisco would vary its safety looks — presenting Mahomes with single-high pre-snap looks to then morph into two-high concepts — and at times, vice-versa. The vice was closing for a while.
Limited to 12 completions in 18 attempts for 104 yards in the first half, Mahomes tried to take his shots later on. It did not always go well. He threw one interception to linebacker Fred Warner on a weird read on an attempt to receiver Tyreek Hill…
…and then, another pass to Hill bounced off the target and landed in the hands of cornerback Tarvarius Moore — a guy who had played a total of 155 coverage snaps all season.
It was the first interception of Moore’s career, the first time Mahomes had thrown more than one pick in a game since Week 11 of the 2018 season, and San Francisco’s resulting touchdown made the game 20-10, and seemed to put the thing in the bag for a defense that had Mahomes on the ropes.
Of course, every team the Chiefs have played in the playoffs thought they had the Chiefs on the ropes. The Texans had a 24-0 lead in the divisional round, and lost. The Titans had a 10-0 lead in the conference championship round, and lost. The 49ers had 10-0 and 20-10 leads, and then all hell broke loose.
It could be that like Rocky Balboa, Mahomes is the kind of fighter who has to get hit a few times before he wakes up, and then, he just starts beating the living daylights out of the defense unfortunate enough to be on the other side of the equation.
“That team, that’s kind of how they’ve been all year,” 49ers head coach Kyle Shanahan said. “They’re not a team that does it every drive. They get a little bit hot and cold. They can score very fast. That’s why there were two playoff games where they were cold to start and they were down, and by halftime, they fixed it in both games. That’s how the team is. That team doesn’t do it every time, but it was a matter of time.”
Shanahan, the Falcons’ offensive coordinator in their infamous 28-3 collapse against the Patriots in Super Bowl LI at the end of the 2016 season, now has to deal with the reality of another blown double-digit lead in a Super Bowl.
For the Chiefs, such handicaps seem like minor obstacles at best, as long as Mahomes is on their side.
Kansas City defensive tackle Chris Jones, who deflected three Jimmy Garoppolo passes and might have taken the Defensive MVP award if such a thing was given in the Super Bowl, sounded like a cross between a Baptist preacher and Muhammad Ali when describing his quarterback, and the belief his teammates have in him.
“There was no doubt in my mind we were gonna win,” Jones exhorted. “We went down 10, the game went a little shifty up and down, but there wasn’t a doubt in my mind. We got ‘MVPat’ on our side. We’ve got the fastest and best receiver corps IN THE LEAGUE [emphasis very much his]. And our defense? Sack Nation, baby! They’re gonna make a movie about this!”
When they do, the turning point of the plot will inevitably be Mahomes’ 44-yard completion to Hill with 7:13 left in the game. The Chiefs had third-and-15 at that point, still down 20-10, and
“They were playing this kind of robber coverage all game long, where the safety was coming down and robbing our deep crossing routes. We had a good play call on where [tight end Travis] Kelce did a little stutter deep cross. We had Tyreek getting one-on-one with that safety, and the biggest thing is that we needed really good protection. It was a long route. It was actually the same play we ran against New England in the playoffs last year [the 2018 AFC Championship game], getting him down the sideline. We had great protection, I put it out there, and Tyreek made a great play.”
Patrick Mahomes' 44-yard completion to Tyreek Hill (on 3rd & 15) traveled 57.1 yards in the air, Mahomes' longest completed pass by air distance this season.#SBLIV | Powered by @awscloudpic.twitter.com/WrtEarc4VT
All-22 tape from that New England game shows how the Chiefs and Hill (at the top of the screen) confounded the Patriots with it. Hill was in the outside slot in both instances; the Chiefs just flipped the play this time around.
Another kill shot was the 38-yard completion to receiver Sammy Watkins with 3:58 left in the game. Watkins beat cornerback Richard Sherman downfield on a straight press coverage matchup — the kind Sherman usually wins.
“I just knew it was one-on-one from film study,” Watkins said. “On a play where he was covering [Packers receiver] Davante Adams], I saw [Sherman] coming off an inside release when he’d been playing heavy outside the whole game. I knew Pat could make the throw, and that’s why we work on those types of situations.”
That put the ball on the San Francisco 10-yard line, and the Chiefs scored the go-ahead touchdown three plays later on a five-yard pass to running back Damien Williams.
Sherman was as quiet after the game as you’ll ever hear him; that Watkins touchdown certainly weighed on his mind, as did several others he and the rest of the 49ers will replay over and over in their heads all offseason. But there was no shame in San Francisco’s performance; they simply came up against a quarterback who is uniquely engineered to pull victory out of the jaws of defeat at a level and with a frequency we may never have seen before.
Earlier this week, Hall of Fame quarterback Kurt Warner told me that Mahomes may become the most complete quarterback the NFL has ever seen. As sloppy as this performance was at times, it was actually a huge part of that progression. Mahomes faced an absolutely elite defense that had his number, and in the end, it still didn’t matter.
Patrick Mahomes was going to win this game, and as long as he believed it to be so, the belief would become reality. That he can wrap something as hard as winning a Super Bowl around that displays, more than ever, how uniquely incredible he is.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
Trying to make a big play with his team down, Patrick Mahomes threw an uncharacteristically misguided interception in Super Bowl LIV.
Kansas City’s first possession of the third quarter in Super Bowl LIV was fraught with issues. The Chiefs started at their own nine-yard line and got to their own 46-yard line when 49ers edge-rusher Nick Bosa caused a Patrick Mahomes fumble with a sack. The fumble was recovered by Kansas City, but it put the ball back at the Chiefs’ 39-yard line, with third-and-12 to face.
And then, Patrick Mahomes, who had played it safe through most of the game, turned the ball loose, attempting a downfield throw to receiver Tyreek Hill, and linebacker Fred Warner picked it off.
This was… not a good throw. Mahomes was trying to avoid pressure, and while he may have seen Warner, he certainly didn’t seem to properly estimate the risk.
Warner, who’s a massively underrated coverage linebacker, made my list of unheralded players who could make a massive difference in the Super Bowl. Referring to his interception of Aaron Rodgers in the NFL Championship game, in which he followed receiver Davante Adams all over the field on a quick screen, Warner made it sound like no big deal.
“They just threw a little bubble screen out into the flat, and I was in pursuit, and he happened to cut it back, and our defense does a great job of pursuing to the football.”
Richard Sherman, pressed to remember the play, was more enthusiastic.
“He’s confident! I mean, he was a DB before. That translates really well for him. He had never played Mike linebacker before he got to the NFL, but Saleh thought he was really smart and he could get it done, and he was right. Everything he thought about Fred has come to fruition. He’s really smart, he gets the defense lined up, he recognizes formations and routes. He’s really cool in his diagnosis, and he can run.”
Indeed. The interception not only stopped the Chiefs in their tracks, but it also gave the 49ers the opportunity to put more points on the scoreboard. This they did, with a one-yard touchdown run by Raheem Mostert at the end of a six-play, 55-yard drive. That put the 49ers up, 20-10.
How can the 49ers stop the explosive Chiefs offense in Super Bowl LIV? Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard offers his ideas from experience.
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MIAMI — Over the past three seasons, no defensive player in the NFL has more interceptions than Titans safety Kevin Byard, and it’s not particularly close. Cornerbacks Marcus Peters and Darius Slay are tied for second with 13, behind Byard and his 17 picks since 2017. The Middle Tennessee State alum, selected in the third round of the 2016 draft, led the league with eight interceptions in 2017, his first season as a full-time starter. But Byard hasn’t just kept the pace up with interceptions; he’s also expanded his game to become one of the NFL’s most versatile defensive backs.
Last season, per Pro Football Focus, Byard played 690 of his 1,321 snaps at free safety. He also moved to the box on 386 snaps, played slot cornerback 182 times, moved out to wide cornerback 49 times, and even had 14 snaps along the defensive line. As he told me this week, being a modern defensive back is as much about versatility as it is about production.
“In today’s football, it’s tough to be a guy who can only play in the box or can only play in the post,” he said. “The more versatile you can be for your team, the longer you’ll be able to play. Every offseason, I figure out what I can work on, and I especially feel I can be better in my man coverage. Every time we play a great tight end, I want to be able to tell my coaches, ‘Hey, I want to cover this guy.’ Being able to cover tight ends in man coverage, or even receivers in the slot when they come out with four-receiver sets, playing in the post, playing deep in two-high sets, things like that — my versatility [comes from] a lot of hard work in the offseason.”
Tennessee Titans free safety Kevin Byard intercepts a pass against the Baltimore Ravens in the first quarter of an AFC divisional-round playoff game on Jan. 11. The Titans beat the Ravens, 28-12. (Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports)
And now, another offseason. In Miami for his endorsement of Campbell’s Chunky Soup, on whose behalf he has helped feed people with 10,000 bowls of soup in his own community, Byard sat down with me prior to Super Bowl LIV to talk about the Chiefs offense. It’s an offense his Titans tried to stop twice this season, and as we all know, that’s never an easy task.
Tennessee won the teams’ Week 10 matchup, 35-32, but Patrick Mahomes still completed 36 of 50 passes for 446 yards, three touchdowns and no interceptions. The Nov. 10 game marked Mahomes’ first game back on the field since he suffered a dislocated kneecap on Oct. 17, and though he wasn’t as mobile as he would be later in the season, he still was able to execute insane plays like this 63-yard touchdown pass to receiver Mecole Hardman.
Fast-forward to the AFC Championship Game, which the sixth-seeded Titans reached by upsetting the top-seeded Ravens in the divisional round by — among other things — frustrating Lamar Jackson with late-disguised coverages, and Tennessee’s defense had to be encouraged by their prospects. The Titans got out to leads of 10-0 and 17-7 against the Chiefs. Then, the full version of Mahomes did his thing. Not only did he complete 23 of 35 passes for 294 yards and three more touchdowns, he also delivered this incredible 27-yard touchdown run that put the Chiefs up, 21-17, and gave them the lead they would never relinquish.
Byard’s Titans gave it their best, but after a 35-24 loss, Byard is on the outside looking in. Despite that disappointment, he was willing to discuss the inner workings of the Chiefs offense from a player’s perspective.
“They present a lot of challenges, man,” Byard said. “They have so much speed all over the field with Tyreek Hill and Mecole Hardman, but they also have the best tight end in the league, in my opinion, in Travis Kelce. They also have a really good run game as well. Then, you have the MVP behind the center, so … great offense.”
This 8-yard pass below from Mahomes to Travis Kelce on third-and-10 with 3:43 left in the first quarter caught my eye for a number of reasons — the way coverage switched from a man pre-snap perception to a zone pressure look, and how Byard (No. 31, at the bottom of the screen) was right over Kelce (No. 87) pre-snap before things changed.
“I was,” he recalled. “So, actually, a lot of the things we wanted to do in the first quarter were to try and give them man coverage looks. We gave them a ‘corners over’ look here, because when they see corners over, they will anticipate man coverage over the tight end. We looked like man here, but actually wound up playing zone. I’m giving Kelce a man look and then dropping back into zone … but that’s the dangerous thing about Patrick Mahomes, man. He was able to find holes in that zone coverage. We stopped them here on third-and-10, but they were able to convert on fourth down.”
The coverage underneath the single-safety look was interesting, so I asked Byard to break that down — which was my latest reminder that if you ever think football is simple, ask a professional to tell you what really goes on from a detail perspective.
“What happens here is, I’m playing flat to the left [Byard is the left flat defender], and my safety who’s in the post [Amari Hooker, No. 37] fills to the left. He’s showing middle of the field, but playing half-field, and the cornerback at the top [Adoree’ Jackson, No. 25] is playing what we call a ‘weave half’ — he’s playing the flat, but he’s actually the middle runner. Our two hook defenders [nearer the middle of the field] are trying to ‘play with eyes,’ trying to read the quarterback. Mahomes was able to complete the pass, but we were able to stop him short on this play.”
The next play was another where Byard showed man pre-snap and dropped back post-snap, and Mahomes hit Kelce in the void for a 4-yard gain. That drive ended with an 8-yard touchdown pass from Mahomes to Tyreek Hill, Kansas City’s first points of the game, and the beginning of the deluge.
Later on that drive, Mahomes tried to hit Kelce in the end zone from the Tennessee 13-yard line. Byard was once again right over Kelce, this time in man coverage, and he did not agree with the defensive holding call he got on this play.
“I mean, I didn’t even know the referee threw the flag until they started calling it,” he said. “I thought it was a good coverage. We were in man on this play — post-man coverage. I think Kelce did a good job of dipping his shoulder. He’s just a really crafty guy when it comes to running routes. I thought I did a good job of contesting him, and I honestly didn’t know it was holding. We were both just fighting, but the way he runs his routes, he does a great job of being able to sell that contact so the referees can throw the flag.”
At this point, by any statistical measure or tape observation, Mahomes is as impossible to defend as any player in the NFL. How would Byard suggest the 49ers manage it in Super Bowl LIV?
“Get after Mahomes, that’s what I would say. [The 49ers] have a really great front four with all those first-round draft picks, so get after Patrick Mahomes, and do not let him play backyard football.”
That’s easier said than done, as is everything when dealing with the Chiefs’ offense at full strength. The possibilities are more hypothetical at times, and even the game’s top defenders — such as Byard, whom I ranked as the best at his position last June — can be left grasping at straws.
Touchdown Wire editor Doug Farrar previously covered football for Yahoo! Sports, Sports Illustrated, Bleacher Report, the Washington Post, and Football Outsiders. His first book, “The Genius of Desperation,” a schematic history of professional football, was published by Triumph Books in 2018 and won the Professional Football Researchers Association’s Nelson Ross Award for “Outstanding recent achievement in pro football research and historiography.”
Analyzing 2020 Super Bowl prop betting odds and lines for the first half money line between the San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs.
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The San Francisco 49ers and Kansas City Chiefs meet at Super Bowl LIV on Sunday at 6:30 p.m. ET. Below, we analyze the betting odds and lines at BetMGM to see which side will be leading after the first half.
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People say that championships are decided in the second half but, leaving out the three first-half ties, the team with the lead going into halftime has a 38-12 record in the Super Bowl.
Throughout the season, the Chiefs have been a better first-half team:Kansas City has a +7.9 point differential compared to San Francisco’s +5.4 point differential. The Chiefs have a higher first-half possession share percentage at 49.5% versus 49ers’ 49.1%. Powered by offensive eruptions, the Chiefs have jumped out to a lead in the first half in three of their last four postseason games, scoring 21, 28 and 24 in those games. Also, the Chiefs have led going into halftime in 13 games, while the 49ers have led in 11 games after the first half.
However, where I give the 49ers the edge, is their ability to play balanced football and the Chiefs’ struggles against the ground game. Granted they did well against Tennessee Titans running back Derrick Henry in the AFC title game—giving up just 69 rushing yards on 19 attempts. However, they were 23rd in rushing yards allowed per game, 29th in yards per rush and the 29th-most efficient rush defense plus had the 28th ranked defensive line in adjusted line yards, according to FootballOutsiders.com.
Furthermore, I’m going to take a glass half empty approach to factoring the Chiefs’ postseason first-half leads into this handicap. While they’ve held the lead in three of their past four playoff games, the Chiefs have also fallen behind by double-digits in three of those first halves. Their defense is ranked 28th in first quarter points allowed, and the 49ers are ranked third in first quarter points scored. San Francisco’s second-ranked defense in points allowed in the second quarter (actually tied for second with the Chiefs) should help rein in the Chiefs trademark second quarter onslaught. So basically the 49ers should be able to jump out to an early lead and utilize the run game to hold that lead.
BET 49ERS (-106) ON THE FIRST HALF MONEY LINE.
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