After the weirdest season in NFL history, the Super Bowl is as comforting and familiar as any matchup we could have imagined. It's the Buccaneers and the Chiefs, but from the quarterback perspective, it's the defending champ against the most successful player in league history. It shouldn't be a surprise that Patrick Mahomes and Tom Brady are in Tampa for the 269th and final game of this remarkable campaign.
Most of the pregame hype has focused on the two quarterbacks, and given their track records, you can understand why. When these two teams met in Week 12, Mahomes and Brady combined to throw for 807 yards and six touchdowns. Each team's star wide receiver had a multi-touchdown game, as Tampa Bay's Mike Evans scored twice late after Kansas City's Tyreek Hill racked up an unreal 269 receiving yards and three touchdowns on the way to a 27-24 Chiefs win. It's tough to imagine this rematch turning into a defensive battle.
At the same time, as I've thought more and more about this game, I've been focused more on the defensive coordinators. Tampa's Todd Bowles and Kansas City's Steve Spagnuolo are two of the most creative, fertile minds in the business, and they've had two weeks to piece together creative game plans. They've both had to shape-shift their respective defenses from week to week this season to deal with different quarterbacks and offensive styles, and they'll have to do it again for Super Bowl LV.
More than anything, I've thought about how Bowles might try to accomplish what has seemingly been impossible. How on earth do you try to stop the Chiefs? I'm not sure there's any way to shut down Mahomes & Co., but I have a few ideas for how Bowles could try. Let's start there and work through all the different angles for a mouthwatering matchup:
Jump to a section:
• What does Atlanta have to do with this?
• How Mahomes has owned in the red zone
• Where the Bucs' defense has the edge
• A strategy Tampa should try: Hold
• How to (try to) defend Hill and Kelce
• Brady struggles under pressure ... right?
• Where the Chiefs have mismatches
• How Brady and the Bucs will counter K.C.
• No risk it, no biscuit? Why coaching matters
• My final score prediction
Tampa's plan to stop the Chiefs involves ... the Falcons?
In our Super Bowl previews, we have a habit of latching onto something less-heralded teams did during the regular season for a more successful team to copy on the bigger stage. Before Super Bowl LII, I wrote about how the 3-13 Giants used a muddle huddle and tempo to try to keep the Eagles from rotating their deep defensive line. The Patriots adopted heavy doses of tempo and went no-huddle for long stretches of the game against the Eagles, and Brady threw for 505 yards and three touchdowns in the 41-33 loss.
The following year, I mentioned how the 6-10 Lions spread their defensive ends wide and crowded the line of scrimmage with their linebackers to slow down the Rams' vaunted outside zone rush concept. The Patriots adopted what became more widely known as a 6-1 front in Super Bowl LIII, and Rams coach Sean McVay didn't have any Plan B. Los Angeles was held to just 260 yards in a 13-3 loss.
Well, the Patriots aren't around for this Super Bowl, but I wonder whether the Buccaneers will be looking toward a division rival for some inspiration in how to slow down the Chiefs. The 4-12 Falcons were barely watchable for most of the season, but coordinator Raheem Morris was able to coax an oft-frustrating defense to 14th in defensive DVOA by the end of the campaign. Atlanta was the only team to hold Mahomes and the Chiefs under 20 points, and while its offense wasn't able to hold up its end of the bargain in a 17-14 defeat in Week 6, there is one thing the Falcons did that stood out to me as something the Bucs might be able to use on Sunday.
That something is a heavy dose of what's known as sim pressures. (They're also called creepers, but I can't bring myself to say creepers out loud when I talk about football.) Sim pressures are a more moderate version of the zone blitz concept Dick LeBeau brought to notoriety with the Bengals and Steelers in the 1980s and 1990s. Both concepts rely on the same premise, with the defense dropping one or more defenders off the line of scrimmage into coverage while rushing players from the second level toward the quarterback.
You might notice that the word "blitz" is conspicuously absent from the newer concept. A sim pressure is exactly that: It's simulating the benefits of a pressure package without actually sending extra men at the quarterback. Instead of rushing four men across the offensive formation like a typical pass rush, a sim pressure uses overloads and leverage to create mismatches and confusion in the protection scheme, just like a blitz. Unlike a blitz, though, a sim pressure allows the defense to drop seven into coverage and play something safe.
Sim pressures are nothing new to the NFL. The Titans broke Baker Mayfield with sim pressures in Week 1 of the 2019 season, while the Patriots used them to make Sam Darnold see ghosts on Monday Night Football in Week 7 of the same season. The Chiefs had seen sim pressures heading into the Falcons game.
It was clear that the plan for the Falcons in this game was to confuse the Chiefs in pass protection. They crowded the line over and over again with mug looks, occupying both A-gaps (the holes on either side of the center) with linebackers. Sometimes, they sent the house. Other times, they sent more traditional zone blitzes. I counted 10 sim pressures from the Falcons during the game, and many of them were successful in disrupting the Chiefs on offense.
Here's one example. This is a third-and-5 for the Chiefs in the first half. Atlanta is crowding the line of scrimmage with six defenders, including the mug look I mentioned above. At the snap, two of the defenders drop off, including linebacker Deion Jones (45) and 291-pound defensive tackle Grady Jarrett (97). Jarrett immediately chips Travis Kelce (87) and actually drops into coverage, as you can see below:
Two sim pressures from the Falcons. On this third-and-5, they get a 3v3 to the right of the center and Williams isn't able to get a clean block on Oluokun (54), who pressures Mahomes. Jarrett (91) drops into coverage(!) and tracks down Hardman's pivot route for four yards. pic.twitter.com/VAsXznj2Nu
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) February 1, 2021
Up front, while the Falcons are rushing only four defenders, they use the leverage of the center to gain an advantage. Austin Reiter (62) turns left at the snap, which cues Foyesade Oluokun (54) to rush through the A-gap. The left guard and center are essentially wasted blockers on the play, as they don't actually block anybody. The Falcons end up with three rushers against two linemen and a running back, an advantage they use to pressure Mahomes. The Chiefs star throws a pivot route underneath to Mecole Hardman (17), but Jarrett and Kendall Sheffield (24) are there to make the tackle short of the sticks.
Later on, a sim pressure almost turned into a turnover. Here, Atlanta is in its nickel package, with its linebackers off the line of scrimmage. After the snap, the Falcons drop three of those six players into coverage and play Cover 2. They rush the other three linemen and send corner Isaiah Oliver (26) on a slot blitz. On paper, the Chiefs should be able to block four with five linemen, but because right guard Andrew Wylie (77) is left without anybody to block on his side, the Falcons end up with three rushers to the left of the center against two linemen.
Later on, the Falcons show pressure at the line but drop into Cover-2. They overload with a slot blitz to the left, giving them 3 rushers vs. 2 blockers to pressure Mahomes, who rushes his throw. Tuloti-Mariner (91) drops off the line and is in perfect position but drops the pick pic.twitter.com/CsK8JOUoOz
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) February 1, 2021
Oliver has a free rush, Dante Fowler Jr. (56) gets underneath left tackle Eric Fisher (72), and the Falcons get their rushers in Mahomes' face. Meanwhile, defensive lineman Jacob Tuioti-Mariner (91) has dropped off the line and into zone coverage. Mahomes tries to hurry his checkdown to Sammy Watkins (14), but Tuioti-Mariner is directly in his throwing lane and drops what would have been an interception.
I wonder if we will see a heavy dose of sim pressures in passing situations from the Bucs on Sunday. They're not a team that typically uses sim pressures as frequently as the Falcons did against Kansas City, and I don't think I saw the Bucs run one against Kansas City when these two teams played in Week 12.
At the same time, the Bucs have the personnel to run more of them. They have a wildly athletic defensive line and a pair of rangy linebackers in Lavonte David and Devin White. They've had two weeks for Bowles to install new looks, giving him twice the typical prep time. In a game that projects to be a shootout, the chance of unexpectedly having a defender in one of Mahomes' throwing lanes is probably worth the occasional mismatch with a defensive lineman in coverage. Bowles will have to try something out of the box, because the Bucs didn't have many answers for the Chiefs earlier this season.
Can the Bucs stop the Chiefs in the red zone?
You might have noticed that the Chiefs have been difficult to stop during the postseason. There's a reason why. During the regular season, since Mahomes took over as the starter in 2018, they have converted 63.3% of their red zone trips into touchdowns. That's good, but it's not otherworldly; they rank eighth in the league over that time frame, and much of that comes because of a second-placed finish in 2018. They were 20th in red zone efficiency in 2019 and 14th this season.
In the postseason, however, opponents basically have been hopeless in the red zone against the Chiefs. In Mahomes' seven starts, they have thrived in the red zone:
I've stripped out a possession against the Titans in which the Chiefs kneeled on the ball with the game won, but you can see the difference. In Mahomes' only playoff loss, the Patriots beat the Kansas City in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, but Brady & Co. needed to score 37 points (and win the overtime coin toss without ever handing back the ball) to do it. The only team to slow down the Chiefs in the red zone was the Browns in the divisional round, which is one of the reasons Kansas City scored only 22 points in that game.
Chad Henne came on the field after Mahomes was injured on the final red zone possession of the game, but the Browns still held the Chiefs to a 50% conversion rate on Mahomes' four trips to the red zone. If you're looking for clues from how Cleveland stopped them, well, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. One of the stops came because time ran out, as they hit a 16-yard pass to Tyreek Hill to set up a field goal with five seconds to go in the quarter. The other saw Mahomes fail to hook up with Le'Veon Bell on a wheel route when the former Steelers running back had a step on his defender for what would have been a score.
Should the Buccaneers feel hopeless about their chances of stopping the playoff Chiefs in the red zone? No. For one, they might have been this great in the red zone in January by sheer chance. If their "true" red zone conversion rate is 63.3%, the chances that an offense would score 25 touchdowns in 31 tries by sheer chance is 3%. I don't believe that Kansas City is saving many of its scoring concepts inside the red zone for the playoffs, outside of maybe getting more aggressive with Mahomes on designed runs.
More conspicuously, one of the few teams that has been able to stop the Chiefs in the red zone during the regular season was ... the Buccaneers, who forced Reid's team to go 0-for-3 in the red zone earlier this season. If you're wondering how Hill can go for 269 yards and three touchdowns and the Chiefs ended up winning by only three points, it's because they didn't score touchdowns inside the red zone.
What was Tampa's secret? Well, at first, it got lucky. After a Watkins catch on the first red zone possession got the Chiefs to the 1-yard line, Reid dialed up a Philly Special variant where Mahomes took the snap and then ran into the end zone. Kelce ended up with the ball on a reverse and had his choice of Mahomes wide open in the end zone or a path toward running the ball in; he got caught between two minds and ended up throwing the ball at the lone defender on that side of the field for an incompletion.
After that, the Chiefs ran five red zone plays across three possessions and the Bucs got pressure on every one. Jason Pierre-Paul attacked Mahomes on a third-and-goal naked bootleg and forced a throwaway and a field goal. On the next red zone trip, Mahomes was strip-sacked by Shaquil Barrett on first down, with the Bucs recovering the ball. On the third and final drive, the Bucs pressured Mahomes three straight times to force throwaways. Each time, they used twists up front to create awkward angles for the Chiefs' blockers, who weren't able to hold up.
Pressure alone isn't always enough to stop the Chiefs in the red zone. We've all seen Mahomes extend plays and run away from free rushers before eventually finding an open receiver for a touchdown. The Buccaneers will have to get pressure reliably and make it count by keeping Mahomes from escaping the pocket to either scramble or create a new passing lane. They'll have to exploit what is likely their biggest mismatch in this game on paper.
Which team can win on the edge?
The Buccaneers have invested heavily in their front four. General manager Jason Licht used a first-round pick on underrated run-stopper Vita Vea and has nearly $37 million of Tampa's cap invested across its other three starters up front. Ndamukong Suh joins Vea in the middle, but on the edges, the Bucs have to feel like they have a huge advantage. Their duo of Barrett and Jason Pierre-Paul has been awesome this postseason, ranking third and fifth in pass rush win rate.
On the other side, the Chiefs would typically feel like they could hold their own at tackle, given the presence of former first overall pick Eric Fisher and 2018 All-Pro Mitchell Schwartz. Unfortunately for Kansas City, they'll be on the sideline. Schwartz has missed most of the season with a back injury and isn't expected to play on Sunday, while Fisher tore his Achilles in the AFC Championship Game.
Instead, the Chiefs will be protecting Mahomes with major question marks. On the left side, they are expected to start Mike Remmers, who had been filling in for Schwartz at right tackle before Fisher's injury. Remmers has played for seven teams in eight seasons, and while he once started for the Panthers in Super Bowl 50, it wasn't a pleasant experience, as Remmers was ripped apart by Broncos star Von Miller, who was named the game's MVP.
On the right side, the Chiefs are expected to move guard Andrew Wylie to tackle. The former undrafted free agent played tackle at times at Eastern Michigan, but he primarily has been a guard at the pro level. Stefen Wisniewski, who started for Kansas City in Super Bowl LIV last season, will step in at guard; he signed with the Steelers last offseason, started in Week 1, and then went down with a pectoral injury. Wisniewski missed most of the year before rejoining the Chiefs, where he has played 162 offensive snaps over six games.
Last year, I highlighted Wisniewski as a possible weak point against a dominant 49ers offensive line. He wasn't the problem, though; Fisher struggled mightily against Nick Bosa, who might have been named MVP if the 49ers had held onto their lead. Of course, after slowing the Chiefs for most of the first three quarters, Bosa and the rest of the pass rush gassed out in the fourth. Once the pass rush dissipated, Mahomes and the rest of the offense took over.
At times, Mahomes can be the offensive line's best friend and worst enemy. His ability to make unimpeded rushers miss, extend plays and move around the backfield, has covered up for mistakes or missed blocks up front. His habit of drifting well past traditional drop points to buy time for his receivers to get open helped turn around the Super Bowl, when he dropped 13 yards behind the line of scrimmage on third-and-15 before finding an open Hill for 44 yards.
That habit also can make it difficult for his tackles to set the appropriate depth for their pass sets, given that edge rushers can just run right by them to get to Mahomes if they set for a traditional five- or seven-step drop. The Chiefs are rightfully going to indulge his improvisational instincts given how successful they've been, but one of the trade-offs is that it's easier for opposing edge rushers to tee off on the star quarterback.
Mahomes' mobility will matter more against the Buccaneers than it did against the Bills, who don't have the same caliber of edge rushers. The reigning Super Bowl MVP was clearly limited against the Browns, both through sailing his passes and limping through plays as a runner. A week of rest and a custom orthotic helped him get back to something resembling normal against the Bills. He should be closer to 100 percent as the Super Bowl starts, but any aggravation of the injury would make things more difficult given the likely mismatches coming up front.
One other way the Chiefs will help their tackles is to apply a classic football trope: "If you can't block them, read them!" They will have plays in which they leave those edge defenders unblocked and read them with an option. More frequently, they'll use the incredible speed of Hill and Mecole Hardman to outflank them on jet sweeps and tap passes. The Chiefs faced a dominant edge rusher in the divisional round in Myles Garrett and used a tap pass to run past him; Garrett eventually tackled Hardman, but it came 42 yards downfield. Reid will take that one every time. Watching those guys move across the formation slows down the first steps of those edge rushers and chasing Hill and Hardman tires them out.
Should Tampa defenders clutch and grab?
There is one other strategy the Bucs should consider. I don't want to endorse cheating or suggest that they need to cheat to win a big game, but successful NFL teams aren't naive. When there's an advantage to be had, smart teams lean into those opportunities. In the 2020 season, it's clear there has been a major opportunity. As my colleague Kevin Seifert put it before the postseason began, "Hold. Hold everyone. It's not cheating if they're letting you do it."
Seifert was referring to offensive holding, but if you watched the NFC Championship Game, you recognized that the lax attitude extended to other penalties. The referees begrudgingly called for offsides and 12 men on the field, but their flags stayed put when it came to judgment calls. The crew in that game seemingly wasn't willing to call defensive holding, illegal contact or pass interference, which led to some aggressive coverage downfield by Bowles' defensive backs. The Packers responded in kind, but Green Bay corner Kevin King was whistled for pass interference on a critical third down with 1:46 to go, helping seal the win for the Buccaneers.
The AFC Championship Game was called more like a typical game, and Super Bowl official Carl Cheffers called penalties at a slightly higher rate than league average this season, but there's still an opportunity here. While illegal contact and defensive pass interference calls were slightly up in 2020, defensive holding calls were way down. On a roughly similar number of dropbacks, officials went from calling 335 holding penalties in 2019 to just 244 this season.
As I wrote about last year, we generally see referees call penalties less frequently in the Super Bowl than we do during the rest of the season, including what is now a 16-season run without a single illegal contact penalty. It's incumbent on the Buccaneers to challenge the referees early in this game, even if that means running the risk of an early holding or pass interference call. If it's clear that the officials are being told to let the game play out and don't intend to call those sorts of defensive penalties, the Bucs need to lean in and get aggressive with Kansas City's receivers. They should also try to get away with holding up front to help facilitate those twists and defensive line games. Like Seifert said, in between the lines, it's not cheating if they let you do it.
Can they stop the Chiefs' mesh?
One other thing to watch for is my favorite pass concept. I've written about mesh in the past, the Air Raid pass concept in which two receivers cross over the middle of the field. Typically, the concept also includes a wheel route up the sideline, a "sit" or "settle" route where a receiver gets in behind those two crossing wideouts, and some sort of deep shot on a post or go. Just about every team in the league runs mesh, including the Bucs and Chiefs.
In the NFC Championship Game, though, the Packers took it to an almost absurd extent. They hit Allen Lazard on the sit route for a big gain during their two-minute drill when the Bucs left him wide open. Matt LaFleur noticed. He went back to it again for the touchdown pass to Robert Tonyan, who was also on the sit route. On the next possession, facing third-and-2, LaFleur called mesh again, with Rodgers hitting Jamaal Williams on the wheel route for a big gain. The Packers scored another touchdown, but on the next third down the Packers faced, LaFleur ... called mesh yet again. This time, even though Lazard got open as one of the crossers, the pass pressure got home and sacked Rodgers.
Bowles wasn't seeing anything new, although LaFleur changed the formations and the receivers to mix up what was coming. I'm pretty confident Reid and offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy noticed. Don't be surprised if the Chiefs challenge the Buccaneers with mesh in a key moment, especially if Tampa is playing a lot of two-high looks on defense.
Why will the Bucs be in two-high defensive shells? Well, you have to look back to what happened last time these two teams played ...
How to cover Hill and Kelce
This section heading might have been a little optimistic. There is no great way to cover Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce, but we've seen defenses find the wrong ways to do it, including these very Buccaneers earlier this season. The Bucs likely can't afford to make the same mistakes Sunday.
The guy who took most of the blame for Hill's huge performance was cornerback Carlton Davis, who otherwise had an excellent season. The initial idea was that Tampa Bay had foolishly left Davis in man coverage against the star receiver and paid the price, but it's not quite that simple. Davis wasn't always in true man-to-man coverage against Hill, but some of the alignments the Chiefs used and the coverages the Bucs went with to try to stop them left Davis isolated against Hill with disastrous results.
Hill scored three touchdowns. On the first, the Buccaneers are actually in Cover 3, which means Davis is responsible for one-third of the field deep. The Chiefs lined up Hill from a reduced split, which made it harder for Davis to use the sideline as help against Hill running any sort of vertical route. Davis needs to get as deep as Hill gets, but that's just not possible given that Hill is running forward with a head start while Davis is backpedaling. The result was a 75-yard touchdown.
On the second score, Davis is at the line in man coverage against Hill in the 3x1 alignment the Chiefs love to use, with Hill lined up as the slot receiver and Kelce split out on the other side of the formation. Reid calls for vertical routes, and while the Bucs show a look with two deep safeties before the snap, they spin safety Antoine Winfield Jr. down to the line of scrimmage and switch to a single-high look after the snap. Hill alters his vertical route to run across the numbers and head toward the corner, taking him away from the safety help in the middle of the field. Mahomes looks off deep safety Mike Edwards and Hill runs away from Davis; the corner falls as Hill makes the catch, and Edwards has little hope of tackling Hill in the open field.
Tyreek's 44-yard touchdown from Week 12. The Bucs show a two-deep look before the snap and spin to a single-high look afterwards. Hill's vertical route carries him away from the single-high safety, and there's no way for Davis to keep up once Hill gets past him at the LOS. pic.twitter.com/QLmX8DZPz9
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) February 2, 2021
The third score, again, is with a single-high safety in the middle of the field. Winfield is deep this time, and Davis is in man coverage at the line again. With the Chiefs on the edge of the red zone, there just isn't enough time for Winfield to make it across the field and defend against anything vertical to Hill. Most 5-foot-10 receivers don't see many fades, but Hill has Davis totally turned around. The corner doesn't realize the ball is coming until it's too late.
Obviously, the Bucs can't line up in man coverage and have Davis follow Hill all around the field. I'm not sure there's a corner in the league capable of doing that given Hill's speed and Reid's creativity. The Bills tried to do that a little bit with Tre'Davious White in the AFC title game, and despite the fact that White has been one of the best cornerbacks in football for several years now, Hill lit him up. Davis might be better at it if the Buccaneers give him a second shot, but that's a recipe for a long touchdown from Hill.
More realistically, the Bucs can't play many single-high safety looks in this game. Every team is going to play single-high at some point during the game, but every snap in which the Bucs don't have two deep safeties is going to be a nail-biter for Bowles. This is going to be even more of a problem if the Buccaneers are without either one or both of their starting safeties, given that Winfield missed the Packers game with an ankle issue and Jordan Whitehead left midway through with a shoulder injury.
Playing with two high safeties, either in Cover 2 or quarters, means the Bucs will have to make some sacrifices. They'll be susceptible to the run, as teams like the Texans and Bills were this season when they chose to sacrifice and give up rushing opportunities. The Chiefs will be able to try to work them with RPOs and create opportunities over the middle of the field against David and White, the latter of whom was a frequent target for Mahomes the last time around. There's still no answer for what to do with Kelce, although I don't think there's really anybody in the league who has a good answer for him. By playing two-deep, though, the Bucs limit their chances of getting beat for a long touchdown, and those long scores cost them the game last time out.
They played a lot of two-man against the Packers, with two deep safeties and man-to-man coverage across the board on Green Bay's receivers. With as many as five eligible receivers on a given play, you can do the math. If they play two-man, while it will protect against the deep shots from the Chiefs, it will leave them with just four pass-rushers and prevent Bowles from blitzing. If the Bucs can get home with their front four or use sim pressures to create a pass rush with four, they can play safe coverage behind and take away as many big plays as possible. If not, Mahomes will sit around until a receiver gets open, scramble for yardage, and wait for the Bucs to blitz before taking his shots.
What's the Chiefs' plan for stopping Brady?
I suspect that the plan for Bowles and the Bucs' defense is to try to take away the Chiefs' big plays. The last time Brady went up against current Kansas City defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo in the Super Bowl (XLII), the then-Giants coordinator adopted a similar tactic. As the Blitzology account noted on Twitter, the game plan for Spagnuolo with the Giants in the 2007 season was to take away the deep shots, disguise his coverages and buy time for his front four to get home without allowing anything downfield.
That was a different offense and a different Brady. Thirteen years later, I wonder whether the game plan for Spagnuolo might be diametrically opposed to the one he used to upset the 18-0 Patriots. Spagnuolo will still try to disguise his coverages and get pressure, of course, but is he willing to lean into the strength of the Arians offense and dare Brady to throw deep?
Of course, not all deep passes are created equal. Leaving Brady open receivers or clear throwing lanes across the middle of the field isn't a good idea. In the first game, though, Spagnuolo had enough confidence in his cornerbacks to trust that they would be able to run with Tampa Bay's excellent receiving corps downfield. And given what we've seen from Brady during the postseason, I'm not sure that should change in the rematch.
A tale of two Brady seasons
The goal in dealing with Brady now is the same as it was 13 years ago: get home. He was 14-2 in the postseason before that loss to the Giants, which brought home a formula teams have gone back to with some success against the future Hall of Famer in the postseason. Brady hasn't been beat up in each of his five subsequent playoff losses, but the opposing pass rush has often played a defining role.
After Brady lost his perfect season to the Giants, the Ravens hit him early and often in their upset victory two years later. The Jets sacked him five times to help get Mark Sanchez a playoff win over the Patriots the next year. The Giants knocked him down eight times in their Super Bowl rematch in the 2011 season. The Seahawks (2014) and Falcons (2016) hit Brady early in their Super Bowls, only for him to spur comebacks in the fourth quarter after the Seahawks lost Cliff Avril and the Falcons gassed out against a record snap count. The Broncos (2015) knocked him down an unfathomable 17 times and made it to the Super Bowl with a compromised Peyton Manning averaging 5.5 yards per attempt.
This season has been no exception. During the regular season, when Brady wasn't pressured, he posted the league's fifth-best QBR (84.3). When he was pressured, though, his QBR fell all the way to 6.4, which ranked 30th among 33 qualifying passers. He was tied with San Francisco's Nick Mullens, and with no disrespect to the Mullens family, those two should not be tied at anything related to quarterback play. No quarterback had a larger drop-off by QBR when he was pressured than Brady.
Look game by game through Brady's season and the effect is even clearer. The Bucs finished 11-5, and pass pressure was a strong indicator of what was going to happen. Five of his six most-pressured games -- including the top four -- were losses. Naturally, the game against the Chiefs was in that group; while Brady was pressured most frequently during his pair of regular-season losses to the Saints, Spagnuolo's defense was able to get to Brady 23.8% of the time, the highest rate for any non-Saints matchup during the regular season.
The good news for the Buccaneers, though, is that Brady has been improving against pressure as the season has gone along. During the first half of the season, he posted a 4.7 QBR when he was bothered by opposing pass-rushers. Across the second half, the 43-year-old nearly doubled that mark and got all the way to 9.3; that's not good, but it's still an improvement.
During the postseason, though, he has posted a 41.8 QBR under pressure, which ranks ninth among the 14 quarterbacks who have started this January. It's a small sample, and his numbers aren't going to blow anyone away -- Brady is 8-of-22 for 178 yards with an interception and five sacks -- but he hasn't been a total liability when teams are able to get home with their pass rush, and that's a big difference-maker.
The problem for opposing defenses is that it's often difficult to actually pressure Brady, who reads coverages and figures out where he wants to go with the football faster than anybody else in the league. Despite moving to a new offense and throwing downfield more frequently than he has in a decade, he was pressured only 17.1% of the time, the second-lowest rate in the league. That number has risen to 23.7% during the postseason, but he's not making many mental mistakes or running himself into sacks.
Getting pressure on Brady is key. When Spagnuolo pulled off the upset in the 2007 season, he was able to run out three pretty impressive pass-rushers in Michael Strahan, Osi Umenyiora and Justin Tuck, which left the Giants able to rush four and leave seven defenders behind in coverage. If Spagnuolo can do the same thing on Sunday, that might be enough to wrap up Tampa's chances of winning. The Chiefs might not have a Hall of Famer like Strahan, but they have two mismatches they can try to exploit.
Where the Chiefs have mismatches
The Bucs have three dominant offensive linemen in left guard Ali Marpet, center Ryan Jensen and rookie right tackle Tristan Wirfs, the last of whom was my first-team All-Pro pick this season. The remaining two linemen are set to match up with Kansas City's two highly paid pass-rushers, and the Chiefs have to feel as if those are opportunities to exploit:
Chiefs defensive end Frank Clark vs. Bucs left tackle Donovan Smith
Clark will typically play right defensive end on run downs and rotate between the left and right side in passing situations. My suspicion is that the Chiefs will lean more toward lining him up on the right side when they plan to rush four, giving him the opportunity to go up against Smith.
While the Penn State product is in the middle of a three-year, $41.3 million deal, Smith is clearly the tackle pass rushes want to attack. He posted an 83.5% pass block win rate (PBWR) during the regular season, which ranked 51st out of 62 qualifying tackles. ESPN's automated analysis attributed nine sacks and two interceptions to Smith, who also committed 11 penalties, tying him for the second most in the league. The penalties won't matter as much if the refs swallow their whistles, but Smith's 80.6% PBWR in the postseason ranks 26th out of the 28 tackles.
Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones vs. Bucs right guard Aaron Stinnie
The Bucs must have the smallest-school guard pairing in recent memory. On the left side, they have Marpet, who is the first player since 1937 to make the NFL out of Hobart. On the other side of Jensen, they'll line up a Stinnie, a product of James Madison. An undrafted free agent who joined the Bucs in 2019, Stinnie had played just 46 offensive snaps as a pro before starter Alex Cappa broke his ankle against Washington. The 6-foot-5 lineman was summoned and took over as the starter at right guard in Tampa's wins over the Saints and Packers.
Stinnie has performed admirably for a player with his level of experience, especially given that he was going up against star Packers tackle Kenny Clark at times in the NFC title game. It's also fair to say the Chiefs will try to target him. Stinnie ranks last among 24 guards this postseason with an 80.0% PBWR. He's also 21st out of those 24 guards in run block win rate (RBWR).
He'll see plenty of Jones, who moves around the formation but typically lines up on the interior on passing downs. I thought Jones would have been a viable MVP pick in the Super Bowl a year ago, given that he helped create an interception with a first-half pressure of Jimmy Garoppolo and knocked down a pair of passes in the fourth quarter. Jones is unblockable at times, and getting a matchup like Stinnie will give him even more opportunities to make a difference as an interior disrupter.
The Bucs will need to help Smith and Stinnie. They might use their tight ends to chip Clark when he's one-on-one against Smith. Jensen will need to help Stinnie. The Chiefs will challenge them by using twists and TE games (stunts) to challenge Stinnie's ability to communicate and work alongside his teammates. Tampa has the better offensive line of these two teams, but if Smith or Stinnie struggles, Brady is going to be more susceptible to the effects. Mahomes, unsurprisingly, has the league's best QBR when pressured.
The Kansas City blitzes
If the first game is proof of anything, Spagnuolo won't hesitate to blitz. The Chiefs blitzed on 47.6% of their dropbacks in the regular-season matchup between these two teams. That was the second-highest rate the Bucs saw in a game this season and the fourth-highest blitz rate employed by the Chiefs in any of their regular-season contests. Kansas City sacked Brady only once, but it was able to influence incompletions with pressure. It also forced a Brady interception with a seven-man blitz:
Chiefs send a seven-man blitz against the Bucs. Mathieu gets around Jones's block attempt and forces a rushed throw from Brady, who throws a 50/50 ball up that Bashaud Breeland picks off. pic.twitter.com/9DE8ILustw
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) February 3, 2021
I think Spagnuolo's defense is going to ask Brady to make these throws -- long, deep, and down the sideline -- against pressure. In the NFC title game, we saw the difference pressure makes when Brady attempts these passes. At the end of the second quarter, without any pressure, he fired a perfect pass more than 54 yards in the air down the left sideline to Miller for a critical touchdown. Then, in the fourth quarter, instant pressure after a blown blocking assignment from Leonard Fournette led Brady to toss up a prayer to Evans, who never turned around for the ball. Packers corner Jaire Alexander came away with an easy interception.
Spagnuolo will use all kinds of blitzes to create pressure from unexpected places, and as the game wears on and the Chiefs get a lead, he'll get more aggressive. The Chiefs most frequently used overloaded zone blitzes to try to overwhelm one side of the line while dropping someone from the opposite side into coverage. They also tried to just overwhelm Tampa's protections with sheer volume, sending six- and seven-man pressures while playing Cover 1 and even occasionally Cover Zero. Playing without any deep safeties against the Chiefs would be extremely dangerous. It's risky against the Buccaneers too, but Spagnuolo trusts his cornerbacks to hold up in coverage against Tampa's receivers.
Of course, Brady has seen a few blitzes in his day, and he knows where to go with the football when the opportunity arises. Here, the Chiefs send a five-man pressure to try to overload the weak side of the protection. They play Cover 2 behind and drop defensive end Alex Okafor (57) off of the line of scrimmage to serve as the hook defender. Rob Gronkowski (87) runs a classic Cover 2 beater with a seam route, and there's no way Okafor is going to be able to run with the legendary tight end. Brady is under pressure quickly, but he has an easy target available and hits Gronk for a 29-yard completion.
Chiefs show a single-high look before the snap and then rotate to Cover-2. They blitz five and try to overload the right side but Tom Brady knows what's up. Alex Okafor drops into coverage against Gronk and Brady goes right there on the go route for 29 yards. pic.twitter.com/JixmNL8BmD
— Bill Barnwell (@billbarnwell) January 30, 2021
How Brady will fight back
Brady, Arians and offensive coordinator Byron Leftwich will have more than one solution for the Chiefs' defense. One thing we've seen the Bucs do as this season has progressed, per ESPN's Seth Walder, is run more crossing routes. The Patriots ran plenty of crossers in years past, and while Arians prefers vertical routes, the crossers help make life easier for Brady and create opportunities for yards after the catch.
If the Chiefs want to play man or Cover 1 behind those blitzes, crossers will help create picks and get Antonio Brown and others to the sideline with an opportunity to break a tackle for big gains. While it wasn't on a crossing route, Ronald Jones scored a 37-yard touchdown on a checkdown against the Chiefs in Week 12 after making Damien Wilson miss and jumping over a tackle attempt from Daniel Sorensen. Brady will take easy completions to his backs and tight ends and challenge those guys to tackle in the open field.
Speaking of his tight ends, I wonder whether Arians will try to use more two-tight-end groups to try to get the Chiefs into their base defense while masking his intentions. The Bucs were generally an 11 personnel team, using one running back, one tight end and three wideouts 56.2% of the time. They used 12 personnel (one back, two tight ends) 20.4% of the time, but by NFL Next Gen Stats' definition of success, they were more effective on offense working out of 12 personnel (54% success rate) than they were in their base 11 personnel (49%). They've repeated both those general usage rates and success rates in the postseason.
The Chiefs went back and forth in dealing with 12 personnel, playing their base defense just under 42%, their nickel package just over 47% of the time and their dime package for the remaining 16 snaps. They were much better defending 12 personnel out of nickel than they were out of base, allowing a 36% success rate with five defensive backs on the field to a 48% success rate with four defensive backs.
They've faced only six snaps of 12 personnel in the postseason and matched up with their base defense all six times. My first guess is that they would keep that up in the Super Bowl, in part because Gronkowski is such a devastating blocker. Arians is relatively inflexible when it comes to week-to-week game plans, so the Bucs might just do whatever they typically do and dare the Chiefs to stop them.
One other thing the Bucs might do is something I haven't discussed much in this piece: run the football. The Chiefs rank 31st in rush defense DVOA and have been the worst team in the league at stopping opposing rushing attacks in power situations, like third- or fourth-and-short.
It might seem as if the Bucs have been better running the football this postseason, but you likely are mostly remembering the impressive 20-yard touchdown run from Fournette against the Packers. Tampa averaged minus-0.02 EPA per run during the regular season and is at minus-0.08 EPA per run during the postseason so far. The Fournette run was valuable, but Ke'Shawn Vaughn's fumble against Washington was similarly damaging. It has become clear that Tampa is better off using Fournette as its primary back; in addition to having better hands than Jones, Fournette has averaged right around 0 EPA to Jones's minus-0.21 EPA per rush. Then again, when your optimal choice isn't adding any expected points, maybe you're better off just throwing the football anyway.
No risk it, no biscuit?
The decision-making of the two coaches made a huge difference in Super Bowl LIV. 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan dialed things down before halftime and kicked a field goal on fourth-and-short, while Reid initially sent out his punt team before a fourth-and-short in the first quarter before changing his mind. He sent out his offense instead, with the Chiefs converting on fourth down and scoring a touchdown two plays later.
By all accounts, we can expect Reid to stay aggressive with his dominant offense. The Chiefs famously went for it on fourth-and-1 in the divisional round, with Chad Henne hitting Hill for a short completion to end the win over the Browns. Reid's Chiefs also picked up a fourth-and-1 against the Bills in the first half last week, extending a drive that eventually produced a touchdown. The future Hall of Famer was a liability on fourth downs and late in games for a long time, but Reid appears to have turned a corner after getting Mahomes.
Bucs coach Bruce Arians, on the other hand, might have had his own moment last week. Facing a fourth-and-4 from the Green Bay 45-yard line with 13 seconds left to go in the first half, it seemed likely that he would punt and push the game to halftime. Instead, just like Reid the prior year, he sent out his punting unit and then changed his mind. Arians called timeout, with Brady converting to Fournette to move the chains. On the next play, Brady threw deep and hit Scotty Miller for a 39-yard touchdown. Those seven points came in handy in a game the Bucs won by five.
Overall, though, Arians has a mixed record. He's known for famously espousing a "No risk it, no biscuit" philosophy, but that was hardly borne out by his decision-making. He will certainly get aggressive in situations where teams are expecting him to run, to the extent that you can call out his decisions to throw the football in advance.
In terms of his fourth-down decision-making, though, he is wildly inconsistent. Against the Saints, for example, he went for it on fourth-and-1 from his own 34-yard line with a Brady sneak. Great. Later on that drive, with Tampa facing a fourth-and-1 from the New Orleans 8-yard line, Arians ... called for his team to kick a field goal. In December, with an untimed down before halftime and the ball on the 1-yard line, Arians chose to kick a 19-yard field goal instead of attempting to score. You could argue that Arians might have been trying to keep Brady fresh for the postseason, but the legendary QB sneaker plunged six times during the regular season and twice more during the playoffs.
In a single game, this might not matter. Heading into last year's Super Bowl, though, Shanahan had made some curious fourth-down calls, only for those decisions to fly under the radar because his team was winning. Against the Chiefs, they mattered more. Neither of these coaches is Bill Belichick or John Harbaugh when it comes to fourth-down decisions, but I have more faith in Reid to make the right call.
Which team has the special-teams advantage?
In just about every season before 2020, comparing the Chiefs and Buccaneers would have revealed a huge mismatch with special teams. Under Dave Toub's stewardship, the Chiefs have consistently enjoyed some of the best special-teams work in football. The Bucs ... not so much. Licht has wandered through the kicking wilderness for the entirety of his run in Tampa, cycling through everybody from Kyle Brindza to Matt Gay to second-round pick Roberto Aguayo.
This season, though, the gap isn't quite as significant. Tampa's special teams are still bad, finishing 26th in the league, but the Chiefs fell all the way from second in Football Outsiders' special-teams statistics a year ago to 17th. They were great on kickoff returns, but they were well below average on kickoffs and one of the league's worst teams at returning punts.
Kansas City kicker Harrison Butker was solid for most of the regular season, but he missed an extra point and a 33-yard field goal attempt in the win over the Browns in the divisional round. There were anxious Chiefs fans when Butker lined up in the AFC Championship Game, but he went 6-for-6 on his kicks there. The two failures against the Browns are the only kicks he has missed during the second half of the season. I'm not overly concerned about him heading into the Super Bowl.
Bucs kicker Ryan Succop missed an extra point on a sloppy field in Washington but has otherwise been perfect this postseason, going 8-for-9 on extra points and 8-for-8 on field goals. He was just below league average during the regular season. The Bucs were below average or worse across the board, including subpar marks on punts (25th in the league) and kickoffs (26th). Hardman is a threat to break a big kick return in this game.
The pick
It wouldn't shock me if the Bucs won Sunday. They're stronger on both sides of the line of scrimmage than the Chiefs, whose tackles are the most obvious weak point for either team at any position. Brady and one of the best offenses in league history famously lost against the Giants in Super Bowl XLII because they weren't able to block four-man rushes all night. There's a chance that the Chiefs won't be able to hold off the Buccaneers' rush, and if Tampa can get pressure without needing to blitz, it can play safe coverage and take away most of the big plays that destroyed the Bucs during the regular season.
Last year, though, the Chiefs were facing a team with an even better front four and a dominant running game. I picked the 49ers because they could control the line of scrimmage, and for three quarters, I felt very smart. In the fourth quarter ... I did not. The pass rush tired, Mahomes took over and Jimmy Garoppolo wasn't able to keep up. Andy Reid outcoached the guy on the other sideline, and the Chiefs won.
The prediction is the least interesting and meaningful part of these sorts of previews, but like everybody else, I'd like to be right. To be right, I had to spend the entire Super Bowl LIV watching every single Chiefs snap counting on Mahomes to not do something magical. That was torturous. There's no fun in that, and I swore to myself that I wouldn't do it again if (or when) the Chiefs made it back to the Super Bowl.
Well, here we are. Before the season began, I went on SportsCenter with Scott Van Pelt and predicted that the Chiefs would beat the Buccaneers in the Super Bowl, 31-17. I think things will be a little closer than my preseason projection, but I'm not sitting through another Super Bowl expecting Mahomes to struggle. Brady getting back to a 10th Super Bowl is incredible, but this is Mahomes' era. Chiefs 31, Buccaneers 24.