When the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers face off on Thursday night to start Week 2 of the 2022 regular season, everybody will be talking about Patrick Mahomes and Justin Herbert. And with good reason — Mahomes just demolished the Cardinals in Week 1, and the Raiders didn’t have too many answers for Herbert, either. But there are other matchups within the matchups, and things you see on tape as you go along.
Regarding this game, what you want to watch for is the Chiefs’ run game versus the Chargers’ run defense. Two things that did not work well at all last season, and both teams are looking to turn those trends around as quickly as possible.
In their Week 1 rematch against a Raiders team that absolutely blew their run defense out of the ballpark and took them out of the playoffs as a result, the Chargers allowed just 64 yards on 13 carries from Josh Jacobs and Brandon Bolden. Limiting Jacobs (especially) took a specific schematic constraint that worked, and we’ll get into that in a minute, but as well as that went, the Chargers had best be ready for a Chiefs run game that all of a sudden does not at all resemble the gimmick-heavy stuff they were trying to make work last season.
Brandon Staley, the Chargers’ head coach, defensive mastermind, and noted light-box advocate, was asked on Tuesday why the Chiefs are such a great red zone team. His answer really applied to all levels of the field.
“Because you have to defend all five people and the quarterback. Any time all five people are a legitimate threat to do something with the football down there, and you have to account for the quarterback, you’re maximizing your chances of being an outstanding red zone team. They run the football well down there because they can run it, and they can get the RPO version of the game, so they can change the math, even the math out down there. They’re an outstanding screen team. A very, very tough cover. That’s why they’re such a good football team.”
That’s Staley’s challenge. The challenge facing Kansas City head coach Andy Reid and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy is how to best deal with a Chargers team that will understand everything they’re bringing to Arrowhead Stadium on Thursday night.
Here’s how that might look once it’s game time — and why Staley may be outnumbered no matter what he calls.