The extra few extra days were nice here at Arrowhead Pride. Even coming off a loss, Joel let us have some time off, except for those with injuries (poor Super_G) who had to come in for treatment. Those of us with only a few bruised fingers or strained eyes got a little more time away. We’re ready for Monday Night Football around here. So much that I decided to watch some of the last game the Chiefs played against Denver.

Things are a little different for the Broncos. The coaching staff and scheme has changed some since last year. The personnel, specifically the defense has a lot of the same names you’re familiar with. The likes of Von Miller, Aqib Talib, Chris Harris and Derek Wolfe were all on the field for the Chiefs 33-10 win in Week 16 of last year.

I wanted to find out what the Chiefs were able to do well against the vaunted Denver defense last time around. The generated five explosive plays (20-plus yards). One was a scramble by Alex Smith. The other four have a common theme.

Does this play look familiar? It’s the shovel read out of a tight bunch formation. Smith elected to give here, but that’s the same concept they’ve had success with a lot this season. Tyreek Hill uses his speed to get the edge for a 28 yard gain.

The Chiefs used this exact same formation and motion a couple times last week against Oakland with Travis Kelce motioning across. The safety had to drop down for numbers against the run, and Hill got the edge for a 70 yard TD run.

This time an 80 yards touchdown pass to one of their best players on a well designed screen. The Chiefs used a lot of these screens last year. This one broke for a touchdown. Excellent blocking by Demetrius Harris.

The final explosive play was a pass to Spencer Ware. The horizontal run action sucked Miller in enough to give Spencer Ware the edge and Smith led him such that he could turn and run for a gain of 20 yards.

The Chiefs went horizontal to get vertical. All of their explosive plays that were executed as designed were outside of the numbers. It’s something I’ll be watching for tonight. Especially with a few of those formations, shifts and designs being run recently.

One Ex-Poe-sive Play

Had to. This definitely would have been my play for 45 Seconds if I was writing for Arrowhead Pride last year. I would love to see a Nacho Pass this week. Maybe they do something with that Kelce at QB formation to keep the weirdness vs. Denver going?

Or....maybe they’re up enough that we see Patrick Mahomes? I would take any of those. Specifically the latter.