1. The Chiefs-Cowboys game is going to be very good and I think you should watch it. We know how good the Cowboys have been this year and the unnecessary hand-wringing in regards to the Chiefs offense has thankfully subsided.
But, in light of the conversations regarding that Chiefs offense this year, I did want to take a quick moment to look at two throws that came in primetime games last week.
The first is from Sunday night, Patrick Mahomes extending the play and underthrowing a 50/50 ball to a running back matched up against a defensive back. This is the result.
The second is a Matthew Stafford quick-screen on third-and-long, put in the right spot on what was a playcall meant to set up a punt, that resulted in a pick-six, quite literally the biggest swing you can have in an NFL game:
Turnover avoidance has become an obsession for many. You could argue that the evidence put forth in the two plays above—one a high-risk throw that resulted in an offensive touchdown, the other a low-risk throw that resulted in a pick-six—is merely anecdotal. But through Week 10 of the NFL season, games have featured just 2.6 turnovers per game (as in 1.3 per team), tying 2020 for the lowest mark in NFL history. Basically, every turnover is a piece of anecdotal evidence. No one wants their quarterback to make (or, have to make) risky throws, but there’s really not that much risk in risky throws; due to the fact that the receivers are so much better than the back-seven defenders across the league, the vast majority of the time those passes usually end up falling incomplete at worse, with a chance for a catch or a pass interference flag.
So, on Sunday afternoon, the Chiefs will likely take the same tack they did in Vegas. If the Cowboys start with a bunch of split-safety looks, they’ll chip away underneath. If the K.C. defense holds up its end of the bargain and the Chiefs take a lead, at some point Dallas will have to move out of those two-deep looks and then the Chiefs have the option of attacking downfield. It was never a matter of anyone finding Mahomes’s kryptonite, it’s just a matter of managing things within the flow of the game, and the fluky turnovers drying up.
