Steven Ruiz

For The Win

During his time on the Chiefs staff, Brad Childress may have had the most unique job of any NFL coach. His official title: Spread game analyst. His task: Track offensive trends showing up around all levels of the sport and helping to integrate them into the Chiefs offense.

"It's hard not to look at what those college offenses are doing and say, 'That's a hell of a good thing these guys are doing," Childress told the Ringer's Kevin Clark in 2016. "And that is when you steal those things."

And steal them the Chiefs have.

Childress left his post as spread game analyst at the end of the 2017 season (and most recently helped Matt Nagy install a similar offense in Chicago), but the influence of his work was never more apparent than during the Chiefs' 38-28 win over the Chargers in Week 1. Andy Reid's offense racked up 362 yards and four touchdowns, with most of that production coming on play designs straight from Saturdays. While the Chiefs weren't running a pure spread offense, it was the closest thing we've seen to one in the NFL.

Kansas City ran 55 plays on Sunday. I charted 19 of them as "college-inspired" plays, which included RPOs, read options and jet sweeps. Those nineteen plays produced 197 yards, 13 first downs and three touchdowns. Some of the more stubborn pro coaches might refer to the Chiefs offense as gimmicky, but that breed of coaching is dying out. The gap between college and pro offenses is slowly closing, and, soon, what we saw out of Reid's team in Los Angeles will be the new normal. If you want to know what football will look like five years from now, the Chiefs gave you a taste this weekend.

The RPO was Reid's favorite concept to dial up against the Chargers. By my count, the Chiefs ran 11 RPOs, with seven ending up in the running back's hands and the other four resulting in passes. The runs produced 66 yards. That's good for 9.4 yards per carry. On the passes, Mahomes completed 3-of-4 attempts for 82 yards and a touchdown. The one incompletion was a drop by Sammy Watkins.

</div> <p>The RPO has replaced the read option as the league's trendiest "innovation" but the latter is still being run to great effect by a lot of NFL teams. The Chiefs used option designs five times on Sunday. One play was negated by a facemask call on the Chargers, which gave Kansas City a first down. The other four produced 20 yards and two first downs, including one Wildcat-type run with some backfield shenanigans from Mahomes to set it up.</p> <div style="width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.338%;" class="streamable-embed-container"> <iframe mozallowfullscreen="" webkitallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="https://streamable.com/e/pghxi?id=pghxi&width&height&autoplay&muted" class="streamable-embed"/> </div> <p>The Chiefs' jet sweep series gave the Chargers' defense the most trouble. It looked legitimately lost when Kansas City ran the concept down near the goal line, <a rel="noopener" target="_blank" href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/09/the-chiefs-completely-fooled-the-chargers-with-an-elaborate-play-design-twice">which resulted in two walk-in touchdowns</a>. What made it so hard to defend? Several things: <strong>1)</strong> The Chiefs set it up brilliantly with a fake in the first half, <strong>2)</strong> They then waited until the second half to start making the touch pass to the motioning player so the Chargers couldn't adjust at halftime <strong>(3)</strong> The Chiefs ran it out of two different formations and for two different players (Tyreek Hill and De'Anthony Thomas), so there weren't any pre-snap tells for the defense to pick up on.</p> <div style="width: 100%; height: 0px; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.338%;" class="streamable-embed-container"> <iframe mozallowfullscreen="" webkitallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" style="width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" scrolling="no" frameborder="0" src="https://streamable.com/e/6t2he?id=6t2he&width&height&autoplay&muted" class="streamable-embed"/> </div> <p>In all, about a third of the Chiefs' play-calls could be considered college-inspired. And those plays accounted for 54.4% of the offense's production and 75% of its scoring plays on the day. Kansas City averaged 10.4 yards per play on them against what is expected to be a top-five defense.</p> <p>These aren't just gimmicks meant to keep a defense honest. That's certainly not how they're viewed in Kansas City, where Reid has made the Saturday staples the <em>foundation</em> of what used to be a traditional West Coast offense. It's only a matter of time before the rest of the NFL follows his lead.</p> <p><strong>MORE:</strong></p> <p><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/09/carrie-underwood-sunday-night-football-snf-theme-song-new-2018-reaction-packers-bears-nfl/?utm_source=USATAPP&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=inline-related">NFL fans hated Carrie Underwood's new 'Sunday Night Football' theme song</a></p> <p><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/09/nfl-chiefs-offense-rpo-andy-reid-chargers-tyreek-hill/?utm_source=USATAPP&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=inline-related">The Chiefs gave us a peek at the future of NFL offenses</a></p> <p><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/09/serena-williams-sore-loser-grand-slam-us-open-roberta-vinci/?utm_source=USATAPP&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=inline-related">Serena Williams is the sorest loser</a></p> <p><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/09/serena-williams-has-another-u-s-open-meltdown-clashes-with-chair-umpire/?utm_source=USATAPP&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=inline-related">Serena Williams has another U.S. Open meltdown, clashing with umpire in shock loss</a></p> <p><a href="https://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/09/dolphins-fan-field-video-running-kid-security-stadium-nfl-titans-miami/?utm_source=USATAPP&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=inline-related">Young Dolphins fan gives stadium security trouble while running on the field</a></p></body></html>