Titans safety Kevin Byard breaks down Chiefs’ offense for Super Bowl LIV

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.”