The Kansas City Chiefs had a “get out of jail free card” at the trade deadline this season and didn’t take it.
New York Jets dual-threat star running back Breece Hall was on the trading block for the price of a third-round pick, and the Chiefs were the heavy favorite to trade for him, yet general manager Brett Veach was too stubborn to offer more than a fourth-round pick for Hall’s services.
At a time when the Chiefs were hovering around .500 and looking for a boost to improve their weak running game, there was no running back available that would have done as much as Hall would have for this struggling offense.
Hall stayed a Jet and the Chiefs have continued to struggle running the ball efficiently. At 6-7, the Chiefs’ playoff hopes are in serious jeopardy even if they win out the remainder of the schedule. It would take a miracle for Kansas City to sneak into the postseason for the 11th straight season.
ESPN’s Ben Solak believes the Chiefs must improve their running game down the stretch and beyond to get back to dominance.
“No team embraced the pass-first offensive philosophy more warmly than Andy Reid's Chiefs. This is not surprising,” Solak wrote Tuesday. “Reid regularly came under fire for a pass-happy approach when he coached the Eagles from 1999 to 2011. Reid has been the coach of the Chiefs for the entirety of the NFL Next Gen Stats era (since 2016), and Kansas City is regularly among the league leaders in pass rate over expectation. Four of the six pass-heaviest seasons in the NGS database are the Chiefs' ... and five of the top eight ... and six of the top 11.”
Kansas City loves to pass the ball under head coach Andy Reid, and when you have one of the best quarterbacks the National Football League has ever seen, it makes sense why. However, when teams know you’re more likely to pass the ball, it’s easier to stop the run.
“By consistently tagging running plays with pass routes, the Chiefs take advantage of Mahomes' lightning-quick release and high football IQ,” wrote Solak. “But such an approach comes with costs. To run RPOs at this rate, the Chiefs have to spend most of their time in shotgun, with 62.4% of the Chiefs' running back carries this season coming from that formation. That limits the menu of concepts Kansas City can run. With the running back to one side of the quarterback, opposing defenses can more readily predict which direction the run is hitting.”
Teams have caught on and running backs Kareem Hunt and Isiah Pacheco haven’t been able to create explosive plays with this type of attack. One may wonder how Hall would have fared in this offense.
The Chiefs must defeat the Los Angeles Chargers in Week 15 to have just a chance to stay alive in the playoff picture.