One thing I loved about adding Kent Swanson to our staff here at Arrowhead Pride this year is he quickly identified some of the run-pass options (RPOs) the Chiefs were doing in their offense.
When the Chiefs switched from Andy Reid to Matt Nagy calling plays, Kent wrote this piece saying Nagy’s arrival meant there was a big increase in RPOs called.
Kent was right. RPOs were one of the main stories of the Chiefs offense last season.
RPO leaders by percentage of total offensive plays in 2017
— Jeff Ratcliffe (@JeffRatcliffe) February 9, 2018
Chiefs: 18.1%
Eagles: 18.0%
Packers: 15.1%
Bengals: 11.6%
Jets: 11.0%
Panthers: 10.8%
For an amateur like me it’s hard to tell what’s an RPO and what’s just playaction so I’ll take their word for it here.
It seems obvious that you would take what your quarterback does best -- go back to when Alex Smith excelled at Utah with these concepts -- and adapt your offense to him but that doesn’t always happen.
I read something last week with Eagles offensive coordinator Frank Reich saying he sat down with Nick Foles after Carson Wentz was hurt and figured out what Foles did best and what he liked doing in an offense and designed things off of that. That was treated like a revolutionary way to teach and I’m just like ... it seems obvious you would adapt your offense to what the quarterback does best. It doesn’t always happen though. This is cool to see this change with the Chiefs offense.