2020 Super Bowl Recap

The 100^th season of the NFL wrapped up last night with a Super Bowl game that, while I wouldn’t necessarily call it “good” was certainly interesting. What had the potential to be either a clash of a top notch offense against a top notch defense or possibly a shootout between two very different flavors of high powered offense turned instead into a slow grind of a game where both teams seemed frightened to make any sort of mistake. Right up until the fourth quarter, where the spark finally caught for Kansas City’s offense and they turned a double digit deficit into a double digit lead in less than ten minutes, as they are known to do.

For most of the game, however, it looked like San Francisco was the better team. They moved the ball well on offense, effective both on the ground and through the air. And, more impressive, they held the best offense in the league to 10 points through three quarters. It was the story of a dominant defense standing up on the biggest stage until, suddenly, it wasn’t.

How the 49ers (Almost) Shut Down the Chiefs

I underestimated San Francisco from the start of the season, and I almost did so again in the Super Bowl. I predicted them to finish 5-11, and even in the best case scenario I laid out for them, they were merely fringe contenders for a wild card spot. Their offense was better than I expected, but my biggest mistake was in not factoring in the impact of the additions they made to their defensive line, additions that nearly won them the Super Bowl.

San Francisco went in all-in on building their defense from the front back, and it paid off with the best defensive line in the NFL. Arik Armstead had a breakout season, and both Nick Bosa and Dee Ford were huge additions as pass rush threats in the offseason. Toss in DeForest Buckner, already a proven star, and veteran Sheldon Day on the inside, and there is no weak point on this unit.

Before the game I highlighted the interior of San Francisco’s defensive line versus the interior of Kansas City’s offensive line as the key matchup advantage for the 49ers, and this game backed that up big time. Pretty much from start to finish Patrick Mahomes was harassed with pressure in his face, as Buckner and Earl Mitchell split a sack early and Buckner added another by himself later in the game. The 49ers won nearly every time they got a one-on-one matchup on the inside, forcing Mahomes constantly off his platform and taking away easy throws across the middle.

I expected the Chiefs to lose this particular matchup. I did not expect them to get as thoroughly thrashed on the edge as they did, particularly on the left side. Eric Fisher has been a solid presence on the left end of their offensive line for years now, not the star that they expected when they drafted him first overall but an above average player. Against Bosa however, Fisher was toast. Bosa finished with only one sack on the night, a strip of the ball out of the quarterback’s hands as he was pushed by, but he was in the backfield on pretty much every opportunity, regularly wrecking Kansas City’s passing game. He generated pressure to get Mahomes off his spot, kept contain to prevent him from breaking from the pocket to the left, and made chase when he scrambled to the right.

Kansas City’s offense is predicated on their receivers challenging the defense down the field. With their speed and Mahomes’s arm strength defenses have no choice but to play soft coverage underneath, which naturally opens throwing lanes in these spaces. The relentless pressure San Francisco was getting from all directions just completely ruined that. Without the time for the receivers to get downfield, the secondary didn’t have to worry about being beaten over the top. And with the athletic linebacker duo of Fred Warner and Kwon Alexander, the 49ers were also able to erase most of the easy throws that Mahomes naturally went to as the pressure closed in. They tracked running backs going to the flat, blew up screen plays before they could develop, and on one notable occasion dropped right into the passing lane, forcing an uncharacteristic interception by Mahomes.

What makes Mahomes so incredible as a quarterback is that there are genuinely no weak points to his game. Typically a quarterback has to make some tradeoffs between the three main aspects of quarterback play, a “three-legged stool” as I’ve heard it described. Typically if a quarterback produces high yards per attempt and few interceptions, he makes up for it by taking a lot of sacks, like Deshaun Watson. Or if he avoids both sacks and interceptions he does so by throwing very short, very low risk passes, like Derek Carr. Or if he plays aggressive down the field and also avoids sacks he turns the ball over at a high rate, like Ben Roethlisberger.

Through his first two years Mahomes has been the exception to this rule. He makes aggressive plays down the field, but he rarely turns the ball over. He doesn’t throw interceptions, but he is also never sacked. In his last twenty games coming into the Super Bowl he was under six yards per attempt only once, sacked more than twice only once, and never threw multiple interceptions.

The good news is, we finally found a formula to throw Mahomes off his game. You just need to get pressure in his face, and pressure off his edge. You need to get it constantly, and hope that he makes more off target throws than he has at any other point in his career. Oh, and you also need to maintain this constantly from start to finish, because as we saw last night, even a single breath of life left in him is still too much.

What Changed?

I wish there was one easy answer to this. I wish I could point to something the Chiefs did different, some schematic brilliance cooked up by Andy Reid to kick his offense to life and finally win him the long elusive Super Bowl championship. But the truth is, Kansas City really didn’t do that much different in the fourth quarter from the first three, or at least not that much different from what they’ve been doing all season.

That’s something I feel like I need to address, because as much credit as you have to give San Francisco for their devastating pass rush, I also feel like the Kansas City offense we saw for most of this game was a strange shadow of the unit we’ve been used to seeing all year. After eighteen games of an aggressive, pass-heavy approach, the Chiefs went strangely conservative in this game, and it nearly cost them a championship.

During the regular season Kansas City faced 2^nd down and 8 or more yards 127 times in the first three quarters (so excluding late game situations where the score dictates the play calling). On those plays they passed the ball 73% of the time, the third highest rate in the league. Most teams are so afraid of third and long situations that they try to pick up a small chunk when facing second and long, even though pretty much every analytic study has shown that this is a mistake. Kansas City is one of the few teams truly willing to risk a third and long situation, because they are confident that with two pass attempts to get there they will pick it up.

Until the Super Bowl, that is. Because in the first three quarters Kansas City faced this situation six times, and they only threw it twice. They were content to either hand it off to Damien Williams or, on one occasion, call for an end around that lost six yards. For whatever reason—perhaps because of the pressure on Mahomes, or perhaps because they saw something they liked in these matchups—they chose to keep the ball on the ground and out of their best player’s hands.

Until they had no choice, of course. The game swung on the 44 yard bomb to Tyreek Hill on third and 15 with just over seven minutes left in the fourth quarter. This was Kansas City’s first real deep pass of the game, and it came on a situation that is an exercise in futility for most teams. And, most interestingly, it came after they threw an incomplete pass on second and 15, a situation where many teams would have handed the ball off to try to make life easier on third down.

I’ve defended Reid a lot over the years, but if this game had gone San Francisco’s way, there would have been a lot of reasonable questions about him. But it didn’t, because of this deep pass, and one other later that set up the touchdown that gave them the lead. That was the biggest difference in the fourth quarter of this game. After failing to get the ball down the field to that point, the Chiefs hit two big shots that got them into the red zone where their clever play designs earned them touchdowns.

Of course, this is the constant problem with facing the Chiefs. Even when you play them perfectly, even when you think you have them contained, they are just one or two plays away from breaking it open. San Francisco played an excellent defensive game, and they still gave up 31 points. They had to understand coming in that this was the best case scenario for them. Which makes Kyle Shanahan’s conservative play calling earlier in the game so puzzling.

I do have to empathize with Shanahan’s situation. Three years ago he endured criticism for the Falcons blowing a 28-3 Super Bowl lead against the Patriots, with people complaining that he passed too much late in the game rather than running the clock out. And now he is bearing the brunt of the blame for losing another Super Bowl lead, this time for the opposite reason. Of course, the simple answer is that he did nothing wrong in 2017, and he completely screwed up this year. But I understand why it would feel to him like he's in a no-win situation.

The decision that is getting most of the attention is when he chose to run the clock at the end of the second quarter, to settle for going into halftime with the score tied rather than trying to grab points with their last possession. And while that was certainly a poor decision, I also want to call attention to what happened on the drive that followed. To open the second half San Francisco received the ball, and they drove down into field goal range, only to wind up facing a fourth down with two yards to go on the Kansas City 24. They settled for a field goal, a decision almost any NFL coach would make.

That doesn’t make it the right decision, of course. Contrast this with Kansas City’s first two scoring drives, both of which saw them convert a fourth down and one. The criticism of Reid over the years has always been about his game management, rather than the less immediately noticeable aspects of coaching. So it seems fitting that, even though he was far from perfect in that area during this game, ultimately one of the biggest differences between these two teams was that Kansas City’s coach was willing to make the bold calls, while San Francisco’s shied away from trying to build a lead they could actually hold onto.

The MVP Puzzle

Some years the MVP award is easy. This year was not one of them. It ended up going to Mahomes, despite what was undoubtedly one of the worst performances of his career. He threw two ugly interceptions and fumbled the ball twice—they recovered both, but one of these fumbles cost them a fourth down and the other was a major sack that killed a drive. This was the sort of game where it would have been easy to justify not giving it to the quarterback, if there was anyone better to give it to.

I’m not a believer that the MVP has to go to a player from the winning team. On one occasion in the early years of the NFL it was actually won by a member of the losing team, but I don’t think we’ll ever see that again. Still, if we’re discussion who should have won it, I’m not going to eliminate half of the players. But I think it should take an extra level of dominance for someone on the losing side to claim it.

The best player on the field last night was probably Bosa. He was all over the place from start to finish, and his dominance over Fisher was, as I discussed above, the biggest reason for their effectiveness stifling the Chiefs for the first three quarters. At the same time though, he ultimately recorded only a single sack, the forced fumble that Mahomes immediately fell on. On more than a few occasions he was just a step away, several of which resulted in an incompletion. But one of these plays was also the big pass to Hill that swung the game, where if he had been just a step quicker he could have ended the play in the backfield.

The only player on San Francisco’s offense who really had a case was Deebo Samuel, but he fell silent in the second half and finished just short of 100 yards from scrimmage. On the defensive side you could make a case for either Buckner or Warner, but ultimately I don’t think any player for San Francisco separated themselves enough to claim the prize in a losing effort.

So if it has to go to a Chief, who else are we going to give it to but Mahomes? Damien Williams had a good game with over 100 yards on the ground and a touchdown both receiving and rushing. But one of those touchdowns and a big chunk of those yards came after the game was more or less decided, when actually crossing the goalline did more harm than good for Kansas City’s chances of winning the game.

Watkins and Hill both provided big chunk plays, but neither reached the endzone. And while Kelce caught a touchdown, that was about all he managed most of the night. Defensively their best player was Chris Jones, who was disruptive in the backfield and swatted three balls out of the air. But he didn’t register a sack, and actually had only a single tackle. A good performance, but and I wouldn't have argued if it had gone to him. But no one for Kansas City really did anything memorable.

One other name I want to bring up is Kendall Fuller. In my preview of the game I picked a lesser known player from each of these units that would have a major impact on these games. The two for San Francisco were key contributors, with a touchdown by Kyle Juszczyk and the interception by Warner. For Kansas City Mecole Hardman did absolutely nothing, but it was their defensive player, Daniel Sorensen, who had the biggest impact on the game, and not in a positive way.

Sorensen is a special teams player forced into a starting role by the injury to promising rookie Juan Thornhill. And through the first two playoff games he performed admirably, a trend that unfortunately did not continue. He was brutal in the first half of this game, giving up the touchdown to Juszczyk in coverage and nearly giving up more points at the end of the first half with the long completion to George Kittle that was erased only due to a debatably borderline and unquestionably unnecessary offensive pass interference foul. Much of San Francisco’s offensive success came over the middle of the field, exploiting Kansas City’s unathletic linebackers and safeties to hit the gaps opened up by their play action game.

With Thornhill out and Sorensen struggling, the Chiefs had very few options at safety. But they did have Fuller, a nickel cornerback whose role was minimized by San Francisco’s tendency to load up with tight ends and fullbacks. So they threw him out there into the deep middle of the field, and he made a couple crucial plays late in the game.

In a four point game with just under two minutes left, he made a sharp break downhill to knock down a slant route on second and ten, targeting the same area they had been so effective in earlier in the game. Two plays later they turned the ball over on downs, effectively ending the game. And then, for good measure, he ended San Francisco’s last desperate gasp by intercepting a deep pass over the middle of the field.

Fuller wasn’t the best player on the field. But if you want to talk about value, it’s hard to beat a player shifting to an unfamiliar position in a crucial moment to shore up a weakness.

Ultimately though, I think they chose the right MVP, even if it wasn’t a clear cut case.

Patrick Mahomes

What is there to say about his performance that I haven’t already said? He was bad for a big chunk of this game. Both interceptions were awful throws by him, one of which cost the Chiefs points in the red zone. He nearly cost them points on another occasion by being reckless with the football, fumbling out of bounds and turning a first and goal into a fourth and one. Even right before the monumental third and fifteen deep ball, he missed an easy throw to a wide open Hill that would have made the ensuing conversion unnecessary.

But in the end, he did what his team needed him to do to win. I usually hate when people say that, since it’s usually an excuse for poor play. And while that’s probably true in this case as well, it’s also the best way to describe Mahomes’s performance. It wasn’t pretty, but it was enough.

The deep completion to Hill is a perfect encapsulation of his entire performance. Hill was wide open by twenty yards, but he had to stop and wait for a ball that was underthrown. Had Mahomes led him up the field, he had the chance to break away from the defense and turn it into a touchdown. But that may have been too much a task for even Mahomes’s impossible arm, as he was backpedaling in the face of pressure. He held the ball until the last second to trap the safety into turning the wrong way, and then he delivered a wobbly ball that was still enough to convert the third down and bring them into scoring range.

Even when he was struggling to move the ball through the air, Mahomes was effective as a runner. By the stat sheet he finished with only 29 yards rushing, but before taking several deep knees to run out the clock he was sitting at six carries for 44 yards (and yes, this lost a lot of people some money). Not Lamar Jackson numbers by any means, but effective. He picked up a few key first downs, and he scored a touchdown on their opening drive.

The first three quarters of the game were ugly. And the comeback wasn’t some sequence of brilliant passes. This game was a struggle for Mahomes, with more pressure than he had ever seen and higher stakes than he had ever faced. And on a few occasions, he wilted in the face of this. But on a few others he did not, and the Chiefs won the Super Bowl because of this.