NFL coaches are protective of their brand of football. Listen to them tell it, and the college game might as well be a different sport. That’s why the NFL is supposedly in the midst of a quarterback crisis. That spread crap doesn’t work against NFL athletes.

Tell that to Bill Belichick, the greatest defensive mind in the sport’s history. He spent Thursday night trying to figure out the Chiefs offense, which is built around zone reads, jet sweeps, run-pass options and other spread offense staples.

Belichick, who adjusts to opponents better than any other coach, couldn’t figure out the Chiefs offense, and Kansas City left New England with a shocking 42-27 win.

If you squinted your eyes enough while the Chiefs had the ball, you would have thought you were watching an SEC game.

Good observation. @Chiefs run a spread offense w/all of the stuff that traditionalists hate. Read-option, RPOs, etc.No one says a word, tho. https://t.co/CWqd8e04HX — Bucky Brooks (@BuckyBrooks) September 8, 2017

Hunt scores on the "toss read" https://t.co/eccD4laNgw Andy Reid's gameplan has been fantastic. A ton (ton!) of spread offense concepts https://t.co/7RpN1Veeey — Chris B. Brown (@smartfootball) September 8, 2017

Here’s an example of the Chiefs’ college-inspired attack. This looks like a typical toss sweep, but Smith has an option to shovel the pass to Travis Kelce:

Belichick had no answers for the varied formations and exotic play-calls. Kansas City ran up 42 points on a Patriots defense. It turns out this college crap works at any level, provided you have the right players to execute them.

Chiefs basically took Reid's West Coast Offense and updated it with spread option concepts…and put up 500+ yards — Matt Miller (@nfldraftscout) September 8, 2017

andy reid has totally built one of those offenses they say you can't run in the nfl. — El Flaco (@bomani_jones) September 8, 2017

The Chiefs will even bust out an old school speed option on occasion. This is straight out of Tom Osborne’s Nebraska playbook:

Reverse pivot option with Alex Smith, from the GL, on the 1st drive, for the TD (2014 wk11) #AndyReid pic.twitter.com/bu9eu04lRh — Josh Cohen (@jco3215) July 26, 2017

The timing of the game was perfect. On Wednesday, Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer penned a story chronicling the fall of the read option, which took the league by storm in 2012. Breer than used the story to continue to push his “Colin Kaepernick is unemployed because he’s bad a football” narrative.

One problem: The read option is as popular as ever. NFL teams ran it 2,022 times during the 2016 season, a stat that was actually included in Breer’s story. Those plays out-gained traditional run plays by about 0.25 yards per play. It turns out they’re still pretty effective, even after these genius NFL coaches had time to study the tape.

This stat seems to contradict the whole notion that the read option is falling out of favor. And these #s are skewed by Russ/Cam injuries. pic.twitter.com/lILNkrJ98H — Steven Ruiz (@theStevenRuiz) September 6, 2017

Critics of the option love to bring up the Robert Griffins and Colin Kaepernicks while ignoring success stories like Cam Newton, Russell Wilson and even Alex Smith. Like any other offense, systems that embrace these college concepts work better with better personnel. What a novel concept!

The same goes for any other scheme, but you won’t hear anyone call the West Coast offense a gimmick system because Chris Simms was terrible under Jon Gruden in Tampa Bay.

The read option is still going strong in the NFL. The Chiefs used it and other concepts that aren’t supposed to work in the NFL to hang 537 yards on the Patriots defense.

This isn’t proof that a college-style offense is any better than a more traditional approach, but it does prove that this style of play can work in the NFL. I’m sure Bill Belichick would agree after Thursday night.