The 49ers are thinking about how to stop the Chiefs, but they also have to deal with the quarterback who hurt their feelings in Miami four years ago. In Super Bowl LIV, Mahomes was almost perfect in the last three runs. However, he wasn’t perfect in the first four quarters of the game against the 49ers.
San Francisco’s defense had been in charge for most of the game, but the Chiefs scored 21 straight points to win. It was the perfect example of a lesson that far too many teams have had to learn the hard way: never count Mahomes out.
However, it was that one day when he made the biggest difference by throwing two long passes to Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins, who both scored. Both of those wide receivers have been out for a long time, so the Chiefs’ strategy has had to change from what it was in the beginning of Mahomes’s tenure.
During his MVP season in 2018, Mahomes’ passes went an average of 8.8 yards through the air. That was the sixth-highest rate of any quarterback. The Most Valuable Player award went to Mahomes. Since the first season, that amount has gone down every year.
These changes have happened because of new staff and the defenses’ full and utter fear of letting him beat them deep. His passes went an average of 6.2 yards in the air in 2023, which was the shortest average for any full-season starter that year. In 2018, he had 37 deep completions, which was the most in the league. This season, he has only completed 17 deep passes.
In his early years, Mahomes was like Steph Curry. Now, he’s the quarterback the 49ers will have to deal with. When the 49ers start to think about how to beat the Chiefs, they will have to face the quarterback who broke their hearts in Miami four years ago.
In Super Bowl LIV, Mahomes was almost perfect in the last three runs. However, he wasn’t perfect in the first four quarters of the game against the 49ers. San Francisco’s defense had been in charge for most of the game, but the Chiefs scored 21 straight points to win. It was the perfect example of a lesson that far too many teams have had to learn the hard way: never count Mahomes out.
However, it was that one day when he made the biggest difference by throwing two long passes to Tyreek Hill and Sammy Watkins, who both scored. Both of those wide receivers have been out for a long time, so the Chiefs’ strategy has had to change from what it was in the beginning of Mahomes’s tenure.
During his MVP season in 2018, Mahomes’ passes went an average of 8.8 yards through the air. That was the sixth-highest rate of any quarterback. The Most Valuable Player award went to Mahomes. Since the first season, that amount has gone down every year. These changes have happened because of new staff and the defenses’ full and utter fear of letting him beat them deep. His passes went an average of 6.2 yards in the air in 2023, which was the shortest average for any full-season starter that year.
In 2018, he had 37 deep completions, which was the most in the league. This season, he has only completed 17 deep passes. For a long time, Mahomes was known as Steph Curry. These days, he goes by the name Nikola Jokic.
The great ones have grown, and Mahomes has too. He has turned into a person who is ruthlessly effective and can read defenses and quickly take what they have to give. Dak Prescott was the only quarterback this season whose completion rate was higher than his.
It’s amazing that Mahomes can work his way through defense and find open receivers without forcing passes. This is true even though his wide receivers had the worst drop rate in a single season over the last ten years.
One of the few things about Mahomes that doesn’t get a lot of attention is that he has done well even without big plays. Mahomes has also done well in another way. It was one of the most important reasons why the Chiefs beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl once upon a time.
He has had this skill his whole career, but it was his expertise in this area that helped the Chiefs make it to the title game each of the last two years.
Mahomes can avoid sacks, which is one of his secret talents. It’s hard to say enough about Mahomes’s skill at avoiding takedowns, stopping bad plays, and keeping the offense on track when things get tough. The only escape artist who can beat him is Josh Allen, who plays for the Buffalo Bills.
As he has grown up, though, he has learned how to get all the benefits of lengthening plays without getting any of the bad things that come with them. His method gets sacks.
Even though Mahomes has a good pure sack rate, it’s not amazing. He was third in sack rate the last two years, behind Brady and Allen (3.8%). He came in third place last year, 3.6% behind Brady and Jared Goff. This year, he was second, 4% behind Allen.
If you’ve seen Brady or Goff play, you know how completely different their styles are from those of the other two. They are under a lot of heat, but they can get the ball out. These two players, Allen and Mahomes, are very different from one another.
In order to better understand how Mahomes stops pass rushes, let’s break up the time he has with the ball after the snap. For rapid game, the standard number is any time a passer throws the ball within 2.5 seconds of the snap.
It’s almost impossible to sack a quarterback in that little time, but Mahomes somehow gets rid of the pressure in that area. Statistics from the last few years show that his 5% pressure rate on throws within 2.5 seconds during the 2023 regular season was the best in the league for qualified starts. Allen was the only other player who got a top 10% score. There are close to sixteen percent scores, which is more than three times Mahomes’.
“In-rhythm” throws are those that are made between 2.5 and 4 seconds after getting the snap. Once more, Mahomes makes a great impact. At the third-lowest rate in the league in 2023, he was under pressure. However, he was fired on just 1.7% of his dropbacks at this range, which was the best mark in football.
It’s only about a third of the league average of 4.9%. It’s partly because of his offensive line, but he’s only fired 5.1% of the time when he’s under pressure like this. The best score in the league, with a rate less than half of the average, makes this the top spot.
Most likely, Mahomes will keep the ball in his hands to make plays, especially when he is under a lot of pressure. There are many good things about this practice, but one bad thing is that it leads to sacks. Brady and Goff were able to keep their sack rates low by staying out of these traps.
When Mahomes had the ball for more than four seconds, he was under pressure more than 71% of the time. However, only 16.5% of the plays he ran during those times got him sacked. Allen had the best sack rate of all the players who played that game; he was one percentage point ahead of the other players. In this league, the rate of 31.2% is the norm.
More than half of these forces are happening before four seconds, and they are forcing Mahomes to try to escape. If, on the other hand, the defense doesn’t apply pressure within four seconds, they aren’t drawing the other team out. When quarterbacks are under a lot of pressure after four seconds, they are sacked more than twenty-four percent of the time.
Allen himself hasn’t been able to avoid getting into this mess. Twenty-two percent of the time, he is under fire after four seconds. This season, that happened thirty-one times. The firing happened only once. There is a clip of 3.3% here.
One important thing that keeps the Chiefs from getting stuck on third-and-long is avoiding the yardage losses that come with sacks. This is still true even if the plays in question lead to throws that go out of bounds and left-handed tries that fail. During the last three seasons, only Allen has led to more expected points added (EPA) per play on those long plays. Allen is the only player who has ever done this.
So, even though Kansas City doesn’t have a lot of great receivers, they can still do run drills because they have more time. Mahomes can switch to field mode and throw to a pass-catcher who is open in these drills. Aside from the stress they already feel, these plays make things even worse for defenders because they lose their focus and have to cover rival receivers in a way that is very similar to man coverage.
The extra time means that there are more chances for penalties for:
There have been 36 defensive holding calls against the Kansas City Chiefs over the last three seasons. That’s ten more than any other team. If you think this is because of a biased judge, you should know that during that time, they have only given thirteen pass interference penalties to opposing defenders, which is the second-fewest of any team.
I should also say that Mahomes is a great scrambler. His list of game-changing scrambles is quickly becoming famous, even though he is not as physically strong as Allen or as fast as Justin Fields or Lamar Jackson.
They scored a touchdown from 27 yards out at the end of the first half of the 2019 AFC Championship Game to take the lead. After two weeks, the 49ers scored a touchdown after a run on third-and-11. This play and that play both did well.
In the 2022 AFC championship game, Mahomes scrambled on third-and-4, which led to a first down and an unnecessary roughness call. This set up the winning field goal against the Bengals. In Super Bowl LVII, the Chiefs were in a good spot to kick the game-winning field goal against the Eagles after a 26-yard run.
In January alone, Mahomes was able to convert a fourth-and-five against the Dolphins by scrambling for 28 yards. He then set up a score against the Bills with a 24-yard pass. In October, he was part of a third-and-13 rush for a first down that was called back because he was holding. This took place on the last drive of a close win over the Jets. As a quick response, he converted the next third-and-23 by sprinting for 25 yards with the ball in his hands.
If you want to know when to run, Mahomes is a great quarterback. His EPA of 40.7 made him the best scrambler in the league this season. He tied with Jackson for the league lead with 26 first downs on scrambles, but Mahomes was able to get there on 51 scrambles. We had to get 75 for Jackson. Despite scrambling less often than the players who came before him, Mahomes ranked second in scramble EPA in 2021 and fourth in 2022.
His scramble ERA of 21.3 in the last three postseasons is the best in the league. He is 28 years old. He can add a lot of value with his legs, even though he isn’t part of the planned run game and can’t sneak because of a knee injury he got in 2019.
Here’s another one of Mahomes’ scrambles from the October game against the Jets that will help you understand how this works. Some quarterbacks would lose all of their efficiency because of the first overwhelming pass rush on the interior.
Not a single other quarterback would expect the Jets to have another rusher winning to the outside when Mahomes is trying to get out of the pocket. Most of the time, even mobile players would take this to the edge, and the play would end with either a sack or an incomplete pass that went out of bounds.
He, on the other hand, has the mental and physical strength to go against the flow, get away from two players, and gain twelve yards. It could have been a third-and-10 or a third-and-15 situation for Kansas City right now since they are on first-and-10.
Over the course of the playoffs, it has become even clearer that Mahomes can prevent sacks. Not once, even though he had a bad ankle sprain when he played against the Jaguars in the divisional round of the previous season. He brought back 32 passes.
If you look at the Bengals’ 49 tries, they sacked him three times. But the Eagles, who had 78 sacks in their first 19 games, didn’t sack him once on any of their 31 dropbacks. In my summary of the Super Bowl, I said that the Philadelphia team had sacks on one-third of their pressures during the season, but they couldn’t bring him down on any of their other ten pressures.
There are no changes from 2023. With Mahomes fit, there was not a single sack in the 68 dropbacks that happened in the first two rounds of the playoffs. Even though the Dolphins sacked him more than half of the time in the wild-card round, this was still the case.
Based on what Hayden Winks of Underdog Fantasy said on Twitter, Mahomes had gone 16 quarters without being sacked in the playoffs before the Ravens sacked him twice in the AFC Championship Game. They have sacked him twice out of 112 drops since the playoffs started, for a sack rate of 1.8%.
When the Chiefs and the 49ers played in the Super Bowl four years ago, San Francisco’s pass rush had a big impact on the game. Nick Bosa and his teammates sacked Mahomes three times on 35 dropbacks and pressed him 40% of the time in the first 48 minutes of the game.
The Chiefs were able to finish the third-and-15 pass to Hill in the fourth quarter, but the pass rush wasn’t as strong as it had been. For the rest of the game, the 49ers got one sack and two hits on the quarterback. The sack cost one yard and happened while Mahomes was already running.
The 49ers were pretty good against the pass in the first three quarters of the regular season games they played. With the fourth quarter starting, the pass rush got tired, and the Niners fell from third to nineteenth in terms of the quarterback rating they let in.
The 2023 49ers don’t have this kind of split because their coverage is much better and they don’t count on their pass rush as much as the current team does. They will have to put pressure on Mahomes and actually bring him down to do what the Eagles couldn’t do. Besides that, they will have to deal with a bug that we saw in the 2022 Chiefs after Hill, which has been very important in making the offense better this playoffs.
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