Film School: Patriots at Chiefs


Do NOT overreact. We are only at a 66% for the year. That's still an F, which means we will have to repeat the 6th grade again. If we don't ace the third and final exam then you lose. You get nothing. Good day. However, that doesn't mean we can't celebrate the shit out of crushing test two. Cause that sucker was bruuuuutal. Everything on the first page was right off the study guide. We were cruising. But that second page was back of the text book mustard gas shit. Pulling answers out of our ass. Credit to our brains for finding the answers we didn't know we had. Class is officially in session.

We put on a defensive clinic in the first half. In case you've been trapped in a tree well for the last four days and haven't checked the news since, the Chiefs didn't score in the first half. I repeat. They didn't score. The most prolific offense in the league with the MVP at quarterback who we didn't sack once in our week 6 match up went down three times in the first half while scoring zero points. We ran a lot of stunts, and we sent extra pressure, showing Homie some cover 1 and cover 0 looks that I BEGGED us not to do. But Brian Flores, you beautiful bastard, it worked. Please don't pull a Fat Matt on me in the bowl and I will only slightly root for your death by hurricane in Miami.

We did such a great job on Hill, showing him bracket coverage all night. I read Bill went with Crossen and Jon Jones because they are the fastest dudes in our secondary. Enough has been said about that so I didn't feel the need to cover it here. What I wanted to show is a clip that will never be talked about, but it was a massive play in the game. Hopefully all of you have seen Baldys breakdowns already, but this one play in particular fired me up so much. Chiefs are facing 3rd and 1 in the first half. I will let Baldy's narration take it away.
Now I slightly disagree with Baldy. Crazy, I know, but I'm like Liam Nessons improv. Crazy Characters. Irving is confused a bit after the double team block, but he technically IS supposed to slip off that double team after the initial push and then block someone in the next level. HIGH should fill that hole once he decides which way Williams is going, and Irving should block him. He eventually gets to HIGH, but he is standing there with his dick in his hand for a full 1 Mississippi. To Badly's point, he could stay on that double team a smidge longer, which would take Malcom out of the play, and since it's 3rd and 1 Williams probably picks up the first before HIGH can meet him unblocked in the hole. But that's neither here nor there. The facts of the matter are Irving slips off the double team. That leaves Malcom in a one on one situation. It's not like he's unblocked now, with a free shot at the RB. No, no, no. He's still in a one on one with Morris who he will battle all night. It would be very easy for Malcom to play two gap here, wait for Williams to pick a hole, then get an arm on him to slow him down with the hopes that HIGH is coming up behind him on clean up duty. But instead he wins a battle. Its man vs man for one yard and this was a MAN's play. He fights his way through the center and makes a massive tackle that HIGH was never going to make in time.

A lot of my friends argue if Malcom is a bust. I always accuse them of expecting Malcom to be Vince, something he is clearly not. Even seeing Vince at the Lamar Hunt Trophy presentation, I thought he could strap em up for us in the bowl. But Malcom Brown, a late first round pick, has done a respectable job anchoring the middle of our line for years now. He may not collapse the pocket up the middle enough for my liking, but that play made it all worth it.

This next play isn't on our defense at all but I just had to do it. We just took the lead back with 3 minutes to go. It's 2nd and 10. Patty in shotgun with three wide to his left. Conley at the bottom of your screen covered by J-Mac. Watkins just inside him covered by JC.


Watkins runs a quick little out and up, more of a wheel route really since it's less sharp. And Conley? Well he runs a route called, Slam Straight Into the Other DB Setting A Pick. Since you're reading this post, I'm guessing you aren't blind. I haven't been able to figure out how to post in braille yet. But I'm thinking you can see the blue line of scrimmage. and you can see where Conley is picking JC, which is EASILY four yards beyond the LOS. I know I bitched about this is in Ramblings but give me a this a federal offense.


Through no fault of JC's, that led to this easy pitch and catch that Watkins took down to our 2 yard line.


I suppose I should be happy. If the Chiefs had taken their sweet time in scoring maybe there wouldn't have been enough left for Tommy to do his thing. But after watching the highlights today and seeing the DPI that JC got flagged for against Watkins (same play as the roughing the passer on Van Noy but still) this kid got HOSED in the second half. The last time I saw a screen that illegal not get called was when KG was putting his shoulder through the nose of Lakers players in the finals.

On offense I want to showcase something I never expected we would do in a million years. How many of you were having heart attacks when Wiggle was getting hand offs on 3rd downs in that opening drive. The first one was 3rd and 4! When Tommy killed the play at the line and decided to hand it off I wanted to murder someone. Every time we did it I knew it wasn't going to work...until it did. I guess that's having the stones to stick with your plan.

Here's something we consistently did on most of those calls out of shotgun. Check out that first one. Gronk outside to the right. Shaq Daddy at Right Guard. Trips left. 3rd and 4 with Wiggle in the backfield.


On the snap Gronk barrels back towards the line with a wham block, taking out the Chiefs edge player. Then Shaq Daddy pulls around the tackle, filling the space Gronk just vacated. Any LBs or DBs tracking the ball coming around the edge will have big ole #69 to deal with. That's a one on one we win every time, and Wiggle picks up the first.


This one is on the drive right before the Flip Dorsett tuddy. Its 1st and 10, but look at the similarities. You've got Gronk outside to the left. Thuney at Left Guard and Andrews at Center. The trips to the right. Again it's going to be handboff out of shotgun away from the stacked WRs.


Once again, Gronk wham blocks the edge player, sealing him off. In this case driving him basically all the way to the other sideline. And on this play Thuney and Andrews both pull around the corner to fill that space.

Thuney is leading the way obviously, since he came from the guard spot, so he takes the first rusher. He seals him off as well because he knows Andrew's is coming around the outside. The seal off should always work here, because if the Chiefs are in 2 Man coverage (man with two safeties) which they were for a lot of the game, they aren't going to have any DBs on that side of the field since we lined up trips right. IF they were in zone and had a man out there, Tom would have either checked the play at the line or trusted Thuney to give the DB a kick out block.


With Gronk and Thuney doing their job, Andrews now does what Shaq Daddy did. He locates the one LB or DB (in this case LB) and win an easy one on one matchvup allowing Wiggle to run free. He picked up a big gainer here set up the Flip tuddy on the next play.


The KC run D was atrocious. We knew that coming in so we were more than happy to control the clock, handing it off early and often with great success. I haven't seen us run out of shotgun like that in a long time. The team with the worst yards per carry against in the entire NFL this year was the Rams. That being said, their run D in their two playoff games has been tremendous. They didn't like Zeke get going, and he led the league in rushing. And they bottled up the two headed monster of Ingram and Kamara. I'm very curious to see what the Pats try. We know how much we like to be balanced, but if the Rams D stays in playoff form, will we have to go away from it? And if we do, we will try anything like this out of a clear passing formation? Hopefully we get the Rams regular season D and none of this will matter.

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