How Chiefs, Patrick Mahomes have evolved in 2022: Tyreek Hill’s gone, but K.C.’s new-look offense is thriving

The 2022 offseason was one of tremendous change. There are certainly teams that made more (in terms of volume) moves than did the Kansas City Chiefs, but perhaps no team had to undergo as dramatic a change on the field as a result of the moves made. Kansas City traded away Tyreek Hill, who had been one of the foundational pieces of its offense — an offense that had been the best in the league during the time Hill shared the field with Patrick Mahomes. 

Fast forward eight weeks into the 2022 season, and Hill is playing at an even higher level in Miami than he did in Kansas City. He’s on pace to smash career highs in catches and yardage, and set the all-time single-season record for receiving yards along the way. And the Chiefs, well, they really have not missed a beat. 

Kansas City enters its Week 9 home game against the Tennessee Titans — 8:20 p.m. ET Sunday on NBC (stream it on FuboTV) — ranked second in the NFL in yards per game, and first in points per game, yards per play and points per drive, as well as both Football Outsiders’ DVOA and TruMedia’s version of EPA per play. While scoring and efficiency are down league-wide this season, that’s not been the case for the Chiefs. Kansas City is averaging more yards per game (403.3 vs. 396.8) and per play (6.3 vs. 5.9), more points per game (31.9 vs. 28.2) and per drive (3.00 vs. 2.71), scoring more often (50% of drives have ended with a touchdown or field goal vs 48.3%), and punting less often (37.5% of drives vs. 38.7%) than a year ago.

They have somehow been even more efficient on a per-play basis than they were in Mahomes’ 2018 MVP season, when they set fire to the league by averaging 35.3 points per game: In that season, the Chiefs averaged 0.21 EPA per play; this season, they’re at 0.22 per play. 

What’s most incredible about this is that the Chiefs have accomplished it by hitting singles and doubles instead of homers. Without their most explosive weapon, the Chiefs have leaned into doing exactly what defenses dared them to do throughout last season. They replaced Hill with JuJu Smith-Schuster and Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and the way their offense works this season reflects that change. 

Mahomes is getting the ball out faster, throwing it to targets closer to the line of scrimmage, and not utilizing play-action as often. None of those things are necessarily supposed to lead to more efficient quarterback play (especially when opposing defenses are daring your receivers to beat them by playing more man coverage, whereas last year they were determined not to let any receiver beat them and played a metric ton of zone), but that’s exactly what’s happened with Mahomes. 

This can be most obviously seen in Mahomes’ numbers on intermediate throws. On passes that traveled between 5 and 15 yards in the air last season, Mahomes ranked 25th out of 31 qualifiers in EPA per dropback, according to Tru Media. He completed them at a 61.9% clip and averaged 7.2 yards per attempt on those throws. This season, he is completing the same throws 67% of the time, averaging 9.6 yards per attempt, and leads the NFL in EPA per dropback on those plays. 

Part of it is that he’s taking those throws a bit more aggressively, rather than being forced to check down to them late in the down. His average time to throw on these plays is down a tenth of a second, and the share of throws released more than 3 seconds after the snap is down from 38.3% to just 33%, while the share released in under 2.5 seconds is up from 41% to 45%. Aggressively taking an 8-yard gain when it’s there for you doesn’t look as cool as unleashing a 50-yard laser over the top of the defense; but if you do it every single time it’s available, it becomes incredibly difficult to stop. 

Nothing about any of this is the least bit sexy. But damn if it isn’t efficient.

Of course, it’s not just the stuff in the intermediate range that makes the Chiefs special. They remain the most creative team in the league when they get into the low red zone, as the combination of Mahomes and Andy Reid allows them to do things that other teams simply can’t. 

They’ll break out formations and plays and routes that make damn near no sense, and they’ll execute at a high level and get themselves a score. They’ll use misdirection to get their best player (Travis Kelce) wide the heck open even when the defense is keyed on him. And when things break down, they can count on Mahomes to make some magic in a way that nobody else really can.

By dominating on the types of throws that defenses are daring him to make, and remaining practically unstoppable when the Chiefs get into scoring range, Mahomes has taken his game to new heights. He might not throw for 5,000-plus yards and 50 touchdowns this season, but he is executing at a higher degree of difficulty, in a league where defenses have been able to hold other quarterbacks more in check than they have over the last few years. For a player of his talent, who has already produced at a historic level in his career, that’s pretty wild.