The Kansas City Chiefs do love their acronyms. A couple of weeks ago it was “EGE,” which stood for the receivers’ new mantra, “Everybody’s Gotta Eat,” when receiver Rashee Rice returned to the lineup.
Now the Chiefs have a new one, and it’s directed toward keeping quarterback Patrick Mahomes focused on taking downfield shots—not that Mahomes really needs acronyms all that much to encourage his ongoing adjustments. This one is “AAF,” and if you’re up at all on your casual Internet slang, you already know why we can’t print the real-life version of this acronym.
The PG version of it is watered down a little, as Chiefs offensive coordinator Matt Nagy explained to Jesse Newell of The Athletic.
“You could say it’s ‘Aggressive as fire,'” Nagy said with a laugh.
That nails the first two words, so you can fill in the third. There are T-shirts spreading in the Chiefs locker room with the real NSFW version printed up, and Nagy added that it’s not just about Mahomes abandoning his dink-and-dunk ways from last year.
“Now it’s just taken off,” Nagy told said. “And what I love about it is it’s not just the offense. It’s the entire building.”
Receiver Tyquan Thornton is blaming Nagy for the non-PG aspects of AAF, however. According to Thornton, Nagy had a cell phone conversation with quarterbacks coach David Girardi and pass game coordinator Joe Bleymaier in which the emphasis was on making the offense more aggressive and keeping it that way.
According to Newell, AAF took root at team OTA’s back in May, and Mahomes and Nagy have since used to it keep the focus on those deep shots.
“It started with just the mentality, ‘You know what? This is where we’re at. We have to speak it into existence,'” Nagy said of changing the offensive mindset. “We can’t just talk about it once a week. It needs to be every day, all the time: the word ‘aggressive.'”
Nagy also like to use the word “mindtap” for this sort of thing, which isn’t as ominous as it initially sounds.
“I think big picture, the last couple years is not what we wanted it to be. And I think that’s everybody. It’s us as coaches. It’s not just the players. It’s all of us together,” Nagy said of the offensive attitude. “And the only way to be better at that is — and it’s in anything you do — if you just do it more and more and more and you talk about it, you think positive, it happens.”
The next test for AAF will happen on the road this week against the Buffalo Bills. If it works it will be a significant milestone, given that the Chiefs have mostly scored at will during their showdowns with the Bills.