Yahoo Sports’ Jason Fitz, senior NFL writer Jori Epstein, and NFL writer Frank Schwab dive into why the Chiefs have had so much recent success and why no other NFL teams will be able to replicate their formula. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on , , or
Video Transcript
Two things can be true is that if you are another team in the NFL, you want to study the Chiefs, you want to understand their winning formula and also you have no chance of replicating it.
I did a lot of research on this talk to 14 different people from eight different teams throughout my training camp tours.
Now, we’re talking G MS coaches players.
And what I came to is that when you try and ask yourself questions about how the Chiefs operate, it’s not really one way and these questions ended up leading to paradox.
So it’s like, are the Chiefs consistent or are they constantly changing?
Yes.
Are the Chiefs trying to go with safe ideas or are they trying to take risks?
Yes.
Basically what the Chiefs have done is taken this structure of Andy Reid running the offense bags, running the defense, Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelsey on the offense, Chris Jones on the defense and said, hey, we have these guys now we’re going to keep reinventing ourselves.
And I think that what was fascinating is when I talked to Cleveland Browns, general manager, Andrew Barry about this is he said, what a lot of teams run into when they win a Super Bowl is we won a Super bowl.
This works, let’s keep doing it.
And then the NFL changes, schemes change, coaches change and you’re not keeping up with your, with what’s going on around you versus what the new England Patriots did with Belichick and Brady is, they would constantly re invent their identity.
So you still have the benefit of consistency with whether it was a Brady to Gronk.
The same way, it’s a Mahomes to Kelsey type thing.
You still have these guys who understand each other so deeply play, color, understanding quarterback, quarterback, understanding target and yet the way that you are operating within that really continues to change.
And so I think that it’s hard because if you were to say like, how do the Chiefs play schematically?
Well, they won their first Super Bowl with Patrick Mahomes with this like high octane offense that was just gonna score a bunch of points and it’s ok if their defense might have been bend, but don’t break in some ways because their offense would compensate.
Well, last year, they often spent most of the year figuring things out.
Mahomes and Kelsey really started to go off in the playoffs, but their defense was so good and smothering that it didn’t matter.
And so I think that it’s just so fascinating when you look at what makes them all great together that it’s not just find the Patrick Mahomes.
It’s not just find the Andy Reid, it’s not just have this certain type of blitz from fags.
It really is this kind of changing but also consistent model that you cannot replicate.