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If you ask Chiefs coach Andy Reid for his favorite play from Sunday’s 44–23 romp over the 49ers, his answer might surprise you. I don’t know that Joshua Williams’s pick at the end of the first half—the 6'3" fourth-round corner out of Fayetteville State skied over San Francisco’s Ray-Ray McCloud to pick off Jimmy Garoppolo at the goal line—would be the one. But after talking to him as the Chiefs made their way to the San Francisco airport early Sunday night, I get the feeling it was up there for the 64-year-old.
And it wasn’t just the play, or how consequential a play it was, though it just so happened to be spectacular consequential. It’s what it signified for the 23-year-old as a player.
“I thought, Albert, if you just took [Williams] and saw him last week versus this week,” Reid said. “I said after the game, some of our young guys would learn. And it’s a phenomenal experience for them, that Buffalo game. And then you saw what 23 did today, his confidence level. He had the interception. A week ago, that didn’t happen. Today, he learned from it, and I thought it really helped him last week.”
Ditto, said Reid, for seventh-round rookie corner Jaylen Watson, and handfuls of other Chiefs who’d gotten their big-game sea legs against Josh Allen and the Bills.
And as Reid’s going through this, you realize the Chiefs are really young in spots with a lot of ascending players who should help Mahomes keep competing for rings.Seven of 11 starters on defense are Kansas City draft picks still on rookie contracts. On offense, younger pieces such as Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith, Noah Gray and Isiah Pacheco have carved out roles.
Along those lines, Mahomes is now the third-longest-tenured Chief, behind only Travis Kelce and Chris Jones, and the newest guys, to be sure, have a lot of catching up to do in the department of big games. Which is why getting to play the Bills and 49ers back to back, Reid thinks, is going to accelerate the growth of those guys.
“It’s the stage and then that competition,” Reid said. “And the Niners have a lot of talent, so now you can trust what you see and then go get it.”
The Chiefs did just that at Levi’s Stadium. Or, more specifically, they did in the game’s second half after taking a one-point lead, and they did it with droves of contributors.
One piece was absolutely a growing young defense continuing to ascend with young talent in the back seven (Williams, Watson, L’Jarius Sneed, Juan Thornhill, Willie Gay Jr., Nick Bolton) augmenting a front still driven by Jones and Frank Clark.
The other, on offense, also has more fresh faces than you might realize. JuJu Smith-Schuster was targeted as much as Travis Kelce was Sunday. Packers cast-off Marquez Valdes-Scantling’s three-catch, 111-yard effort was punctuated by a huge 57-yard gain in the fourth quarter on the drive that gave the Chiefs a two-possession lead. Pacheco, a rookie, led the team on the ground with 43 yards. And a lot of bringing all that together does, indeed, fall on Mahomes.
“I think we’re all seeing that,” Reid continued. “He’s got complete control of the offense, knowing when and then how to utilize guys against the different coverages. It probably shows itself more now that Ty [Tyreek Hill is] not with us, but it’s really been the last couple years that he’s just had everything right there. But everybody else gets to see it now with them spreading it around.”
And Mahomes is doing it not by design, but through the natural course of the offense. The game-sealing 45-yard touchdown to Smith-Schuster—the former Steeler came open over a dead spot in a 49ers zone, collected the ball and sprinted through the defense to the pylon—was with Mahomes, per Reid, deep into the second part of his progression. The four-yard touchdown throw to Justin Watson in the third quarter, Reid added, was in the part of Mahomes’s progression.
Mahomes’s growing command has, in turn, benefited the Chiefs in a number of ways.
One comes with Mahomes’s ability to manage even the most unmanageable down-and-distance situations. He set up a 34-yard screen to Jerick McKinnon to convert a third-and-20 in the third quarter. On second-and-20 in the fourth quarter, Mahomes found Smith-Schuster to his right for a 14-yard catch-and-run, then Smith-Schuster again for a 45-yard touchdown. And the 57-yarder to Valdes-Scantling was on a fourth-quarter third-and-11.
“Our coaches do a great job with all that, first of all,” Reid said. “And then having Pat back there, dealing with the best third-down quarterback in the game, pulling the trigger, is special. I give credit to Matt Nagy for the job that he does with EB [Eric Bieniemy]. They just hit all of those situations and they put together that third down, and you never feel like you’re really out of it, although you don’t like being in those situations.”
Because of Mahomes’s growth as a distributor, defenses have to contend with more. And they’re coming out of some of the two-high looks the Chiefs got all last year, which allows Reid and Mahomes to go back to what they did best earlier in the 2018 MVP’s career.
“[The 49ers] played a little bit of man, and we haven’t seen a lot of man the last couple years,” Reid said. “So we’re getting a little bit more of that and then Quez [Valdes-Scantling], I mean, did a great job of winning the one-on-one battles. And where maybe we get an opportunity over the top, they’re also driving to Kels [Kelce] now. So Tyreek would be on that side. So all of those, between the man and the corners with the active safety, gives you opportunities over the top.”
Mahomes took advantage of those in a way that maybe he wouldn’t have two or three years ago. And the scary thing is, again, if you take a closer look at the roster and the guys who came up big against a very good 49ers team, he’s hardly the only one growing up fast.
