Do NFL Teams Have a Great Blueprint to Beat Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs in 2025?

The 2024 NFL season has been over for almost two weeks after a lopsided Super Bowl won by the Philadelphia Eagles over the Kansas City Chiefs, who came up a game short of the three-peat. But that demolition on the big stage on top of Travis Kelce retirement rumors has NFL fans wondering if the Eagles showed the blueprint to beating Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs.

The idea of a blueprint to beat someone has always been flimsy, because how would any player ever get better or reach the Hall of Fame if there was something on tape that a defensive coordinator could exploit to consistently beat them?

Good players adapt, and we know the Chiefs have already done so after their last playoff losses to the 2020 Buccaneers and 2021 Bengals, who used relatively simple concepts like Cover 2 and a 3-man rush to belittle the Chiefs’ offense.

It’s not like Vic Fangio’s defense reinvented the wheel in Super Bowl LIX. The Eagles never blitzed Mahomes once, and they stayed committed to playing zone coverage (almost 60% of snaps were Cover 4). The results included six sacks (a career-high for Mahomes) and three takeaways in a game where Kansas City trailed 34-0, by far the biggest deficit of Mahomes’ career.

But there is a common link between those three playoff losses for the Chiefs: You have to get effective pressure on Mahomes without blitzing.

We said it in our Super Bowl preview that if the Eagles can make Mahomes hold the ball for over 3.0 seconds on average, they’ll have a much better shot to win the game. When he’s getting it out in rhythm, you have almost no hope of beating the Chiefs. The Eagles delivered on that front in the Super Bowl, and it would be hard for any random defense to replicate what they did with the talent in their 4-man rush.

But when you start to dig into the numbers for other top quarterbacks (Mahomes’ peers), you start believing that maybe there is something wrong with the Chiefs that needs a serious fix this offseason if they want to avoid getting blown out in another championship game.

A Good Blueprint for Any Quarterback

One does not have to watch much NFL tape to see today’s top quarterbacks are built differently from the golden era of pocket passers from the 2000s and early 2010s.

Patrick Mahomes, Josh Allen, and Lamar Jackson play the game with a lot more mobility and ability to extend the play than Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, and Drew Brees ever had. Those older quarterbacks would beat you with their minds before the snap, knowing where the ball was going and getting it out fast.

With Brady, the plan was to get pressure directly in his face so he couldn’t step up into a clean pocket. Same thing for Brees, who was at a heigh disadvantage and sometimes threw bad interceptions over the middle because he couldn’t see the linebacker.

Some would say the same for Manning, but that really wasn’t true. If you go back and look at almost every big loss of his career, it was usually a quick edge pressure that ruined his offense’s day. Emphasis on quick because he was not going to hold the ball longer than he needed to.

Today’s quarterbacks can get away with holding the ball longer because they can get out of the pocket and keep the play alive, and they can also scramble for a first down even if they need a full 10 yards or more. It’s no surprise that the defenses would have to adjust differently to these new quarterbacks.

But whether it’s 1983 or 2007 or 2025, it stands to reason that getting good pressure without blitzing would be a very effective strategy against any quarterback, mobile or not.

If you can’t block four pass rushers like the Chiefs couldn’t in Super Bowl LIX, the offense doesn’t stand much of a chance. When a defense doesn’t have to blitz, it can drop seven (or eight) into coverage, they can double team multiple receivers if they want to, and it makes the quarterback want to hold the ball longer as he has more defenders to read. If he holds it too long, that gives the rush time to get to him. It all works together.

When you blitz, the good quarterbacks can usually pick that up and even throw the hot route to the spot where the blitz vacated if they’re on the same page with their receivers. Blitzing will force the ball out faster, but that can be a deadly thing against certain quarterbacks.

According to NFL Pro, these are the league-wide 2024 passing splits when the defense blitzed or did not blitz:

• No Blitz: -0.02 EPA/Pass, 2.87 seconds time to throw, 2.83 seconds time to pressure, 6.3% sack rate, 29.6% pressure rate.
• Blitz: -0.05 EPA/Pass, 2.67 seconds time to throw, 2.47 seconds time to pressure, 8.1% sack rate, 40.9% pressure rate.

More pressure and sacks sound nice, but it can come at the expense of some big plays. That’s why blitzing is something you must do in moderation. But many defenses are catching on to not even bothering to try to blitz against the Chiefs.

As we detailed in our anatomy of a Super Bowl blowout between the Eagles and Chiefs, the game got away from the Chiefs before halftime thanks to sustained pressures from 4-man rushes:

• The Eagles made Mahomes hold the ball and try to create on the first two third downs, leading to incompletions and quick punts.
• That sped up his process for the next third down, causing an off-target throw to Kelce that was rushed.
• After the fourth drive started with back-to-back sacks with the offensive line getting destroyed, Mahomes tried to move the pocket on 3rd-and-16, forced a high-risk/low-reward pass, and it was his worst play of the night as Cooper DeJean returned it for a touchdown to make it 17-0.
• On the fifth drive, Mahomes took another sack on 3rd-and-9 to end the drive.
• On the sixth drive deep in his own end, Mahomes faced a quick pressure with his left tackle (his guard Joe Thuney) getting thrown into him as he released the ball, leading to an interception.

Just like that, it was 24-0 against an Eagles team that allowed 24 points once since October. Goodnight, Irene.

While most defenses won’t be able to put together the rush and coverage the Eagles had in that game, the Chiefs looked fantastic on offense with the same players against Buffalo just two weeks earlier. It’s a real head-scratcher that Andy Reid wasn’t better prepared with a bye week. Where were the screens and RPOs? How about running the ball or using Xavier Worthy on some kind of gadget play or the way they did in the second half? They were punched in the mouth early and never recovered.

In theory, the Chiefs shouldn’t be any worse off against a defense making them hold the ball longer than any other top offense in the NFL. But the numbers in our next section might make you reconsider that.

Mahomes vs. His Top Peers: Time to Throw Splits (2018-24)

An NFL stat like “average time to throw” isn’t that new of a concept. I was calculating it manually each week when I used to recap Andrew Luck’s rookie season (snap by snap) in 2012. I was using video software with timestamps to do it. Today, we have Next Gen Stats/NFL Pro, which uses GPS player tracking data to probably get the most accurate data out there.

I was using their stats for average time to throw in the build-up to Super Bowl 57 (Chiefs vs. Eagles) two years ago:

In 93 games, Mahomes never got the ball out faster than he did against the 2021 Eagles at 2.32 seconds per throw.

In his career, Mahomes is 46-4 (.920) when his time to throw is < 2.9 seconds and 14-10 (.583) when it is above 3.0 seconds.https://t.co/fs4DO8oLXy

— Scott Kacsmar (@ScottKacsmar) February 2, 2023

But time to throw is a stat that can produce misleading conclusions if you’re not careful with it. If you see that a quarterback held the ball for an average of 3.2 seconds in a game, that’s not necessarily saying he had great protection and had all day to throw. You have to look at other things like the pressure rate and time to pressure. That 3.2 average could be the result of some hero ball plays where he scrambled under pressure and tried to make something happen.

However, it’s one thing to keep comparing Mahomes to himself and say the blueprint is to make him hold the ball over 3.0 seconds since he’s only 19-16 (.543) when he does that. For a quarterback who wins 80% of his starts, you’ll take that record and those chances.

But what if that’s true of every other quarterback? In caveman terms: Holding the ball long is bad, and getting the ball out fast is good. We needed more data.

While we have this average Time to Throw (TTT) data going back to 2018, I didn’t want to use data for veterans who have seen it all defensively like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, Kirk Cousins, etc. I wanted to focus on the younger generation of top quarterbacks who play the game with way more mobility and haven’t been around for a decade yet.

That’s why 2018 is a perfect starting point for Next Gen Stats since that’s the season where Mahomes, Allen, and Jackson all became full-time starters. I also added three standouts from the 2020 draft Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts, and Justin Herbert. Most people would probably rank these players as the top six quarterbacks in the NFL right now given their accolades and success. When we get more data on players like Jayden Daniels, C.J. Stroud, and Jordan Love, we can add them to this down the road.

But we’re going to focus on Mahomes, Allen, Jackson, Hurts, Burrow, and Herbert the rest of the way here.

Time to Throw Splits: Wins vs. Losses

Our first table looks at splits in wins and losses (playoffs included) since 2018 for these six quarterbacks. I also broke down Mahomes between 2018-21 and 2022-24 since there’s been a distinct change in his playing style since the Tyreek Hill trade in 2022. But this table includes the win-loss splits for Time to Throw (TTT) and Expected Points Added (EPA) per drop back (DB) according to NFL Pro.

Note: This data excludes Mahomes’ first start in 2017 as a rookie, and it excludes any non-start appearance with fewer than 15 pass attempts by these quarterbacks. It also excludes two regular-season finales where Josh Allen left very early for playoff rest (vs. 2019 Jets and 2024 Patriots).

The last column (CORR: TTT-PD) is a fascinating one as that’s the correlation between the quarterback’s time to throw and his team’s point differential in each game. Most of the quarterbacks see very little correlation (under 0.1) between those stats as you might expect, but Allen is at -0.30 and Mahomes is even higher with an absurd -0.46 since 2022.

That’s a pretty decent correlation to the scoreboard for the Chiefs despite this stat ignoring so many plays in a game, including every run and every snap on defense and special teams. The reason it’s negative is because that means when Mahomes’ TTT is low, the team’s scoring differential should be up. The same is true for the inverse (higher TTT for Mahomes means a worse scoring differential for the Chiefs). That column shows there’s at least something worth monitoring here with the Chiefs that really isn’t present in the other teams.

But the other columns also show that there’s essentially no difference in TTT in wins and losses for Burrow, Jackson, and Herbert. Hurts and Allen get the ball out about a tenth of a second faster in wins than they do in losses. Not that big of a difference either.

Yet when it comes to Mahomes, his TTT drops 0.27 seconds in wins (2.82 seconds) as it’s up over 3.08 seconds in his average loss. His TTT in wins has been consistent throughout his career (about 2.82 seconds), but it’s only increased in losses since 2022 (up to 3.16 seconds). The split is getting larger over time.

As for EPA/DB (note: passing EPA only), Mahomes has the highest average (0.25) in wins and the best average in losses (only a positive one at 0.01). But the Mahomes of 2018-21 had the smallest difference between his EPA in wins and losses (0.21). He has the largest difference (0.32) since 2022 as the Chiefs don’t lose (or even play) shootouts anymore. When they lose now, it’s usually because they couldn’t score 24 points or better.

Time to Throw Splits: High and Low

Next, we wanted to look at splits based on the time to throw after sharing these incredible stats for the Super Bowl on Mahomes:

• In his career, Mahomes is 45-2 (.957) when his average time to throw is under 2.8 seconds, including his 2017 start in Denver as a rookie (44-2 since 2018).
• Mahomes is 19-16 (.543) when his average time to throw is above 3.0 seconds, including the 3.07 seconds he had in Super Bowl LIX against the Eagles.
• That’s a difference in win percentage of 41.4 points.

Those numbers look absurd, but we didn’t have anything to compare them to. Now we do. Our next table and chart looks at these six quarterbacks with splits for time to throw (TTT) for under 2.8 seconds, over 2.8 seconds, and over 3.0 seconds as well as the passing EPA/dropback.

We said Mahomes’ winning percentage drops 41.4 points when he goes from holding the ball under 2.8 seconds to holding it for over 3.0 seconds. Here’s how that stacks up for the other five quarterbacks: Allen (-22.9), Hurts (-8.6), Jackson (-6.1), Burrow (-5.5), and Herbert is the only one who goes up (+3.3).

Again, these are the best quarterbacks of Mahomes’ era, and he again looks like a real outlier when it comes to this particular split. You almost can’t beat him when the ball is coming out fast.

If you like a chart better, here’s one showing the same data where you can see how dominant Mahomes is when he’s getting the ball out in under 2.8 seconds and how ordinary he looks compared to his peers when he holds it for over 3.0 seconds.

Now it’s not like Mahomes doesn’t still have the best winning percentage (.709) when he holds the ball for over 2.8 seconds, but his EPA/DB more than cuts in half from 0.30 to 0.14 when he gets above 2.8 seconds. Meanwhile, Allen and Herbert see little change, Hurts goes up a tenth of a point, and Burrow and Lamar basically go up two-tenths.

There are some sample size issues with Burrow since he has the lowest standard deviation in TTT among these six quarterbacks, and he rarely has games where he goes above 2.8 seconds. Only doing so 12 times since 2020. He only has four games over 3.0 seconds as he is more of the traditional pocket passer than the other five, and he knows the Cincinnati line isn’t one he can usually trust to hold up for 3.0 seconds.

But again, when Mahomes is forced to hold it for over 3 seconds, he basically has the same success in winning and EPA as Herbert. Jackson may be an outlier in the other regard in that he has the best winning rate and EPA/DB when he holds the ball for over 3.0 seconds.

If you’re wondering if Allen’s early years (2018-19) before he was good are hurting his splits for 3.0+ seconds, the answer is yes and no. Allen’s record then was 4-6 and he’s 23-13 (.639) since, which is better. But he’s also just 5-5 since 2023 and 6-6 going back to the 2022 playoffs.

Here are some other stats about outliers:

• Mahomes is 1-7 when his TTT is at least 3.28 seconds – the only win was the 2019 AFC Championship Game against the Titans (3.39 seconds).
• Mahomes is 41-1 when his TTT is under 2.77 seconds – the only loss was in 2019 against the Titans (2.58), his first game back after dislocating his kneecap.
• Allen is 22-1 when his TTT is no higher than 2.70 seconds – the only loss was in 2021 against Tampa Bay in overtime (2.69 seconds).
• If you remove the first two games of his career in 2018, then Allen is 12-1 when his TTT is at least 3.28 seconds, and the lone loss was in his rookie year (a career-high 3.78 seconds in Miami).
• Jackson is 0-4 when his TTT is under 2.59 seconds with losses stemming from four different seasons.
• Jackson is 6-0 when his TTT is over 3.53 seconds.
• Herbert is 3-0 when his TTT is under 2.5 seconds.
• Herbert is 5-0 in games he doesn’t leave injured when his TTT is 3.13 seconds or longer.
• Burrow is 3-3 when his TTT is no higher than 2.38 seconds.
• Burrow is 3-3 when his TTT is higher than 2.85 seconds, and all six games were on the road.
• Hurts is 7-1 when his TTT is under 2.65 seconds, and his three fastest games are all against the Giants.
• Hurts is 4-1 when his TTT is at least 3.47 seconds – the only loss was a 42-19 rout against the 2023 49ers (3.72 seconds).

Hurts, Allen, and Herbert win either way. Burrow is .500 either way. Lamar can’t win with his lowest TTT and can’t lose with his highest TTT.

Even in this look at games at the end of both extremes, Mahomes is the only quarterback of the six who lost most of his highest TTT games and won most of his lowest TTT games.

This is seemingly his thing, and I feel justified in continuing to bring it up for big-game previews involving the Chiefs. While getting pressure on a quarterback is always paramount to success, Mahomes is the only one where I think you need to stress making him hold the ball longer as the way to beat him.

I wouldn’t say that about these other top quarterbacks. Not based on this data.

How Can the Chiefs Fix This?

If your conclusion here is that Patrick Mahomes is an Andy Reid scheme merchant who can’t extend plays when his first read is covered, then I would suggest watching just about any Kansas City game from the past seven seasons to see how stupid that sounds.

But you might notice a distinct change around 2022 when the offense without question adapted to throwing shorter passes and “taking what the defense gives them” as opposed to the deep shots and hero ball in the days of Tyreek Hill.

It’s not a coincidence that this happened:

• Average Kansas City win in points in 2018-21: 32.0 to 19.2
• Average Kansas City win in points in 2022-24: 27.1 to 18.5
• Average Kansas City loss in points in 2018-21: 26.8 to 34.3
• Average Kansas City loss in points in 2022-24: 18.2 to 24.9

The Chiefs ditched Hill and made it work with an aging Kelce at tight end while bringing along wide receivers like JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Kadarius Toney, Skyy Moore, Justin Watson, Rashee Rice, and Xavier Worthy along for the ride.

They also kept it cheap at running back with Isiah Pacheco, a seventh-round pick in 2022, and they signed Kareem Hunt off his couch this past year. We also covered last week how they’ve started five different left tackles in five Super Bowls, keeping one of the key positions on a football team a revolving door, and it burned them this year.

The results haven’t always been pretty with the receivers leading the NFL in dropped passes in 2023, costing the team several games (Lions, Eagles, and Bills) with their mistakes. Then the Chiefs started four different left tackles in 2024 before settling on Joe Thuney, their best guard, for the Super Bowl run after a year of trying to dominate third downs to stay on the field for long drives.

Maybe a reason it’s gotten easier to defend Mahomes from extending the play is because there just isn’t enough speed to extend the play with anymore. Not enough talent to create fast separation, which is especially noticeable with Kelce at this stage. The Chiefs have been leaning on aging receivers past their prime or trying to work in rookies who haven’t come close to reaching their full potential.

The Chiefs used to be great at producing YAC, but if you look at their numbers for YAC Over Expected (YACOE) from Next Gen Stats, they have fallen to 22nd and 29th in the last two seasons, failing to get the bonus yards that are there. Those screens? Not producing like they used to.

Where every offense ranks in YAC over expected per completion, 2018-24.

49ers dominate this. Bengals very good too.

Chiefs have fallen off a lot since 2023. https://t.co/uymfSR8yTR pic.twitter.com/ssd833YVtG

— Scott Kacsmar (@ScottKacsmar) January 8, 2025

With that said, this “small ball” methodical approach led to three straight Super Bowl appearances, two Super Bowl MVPs for Mahomes, and an MVP in 2022, so you can’t knock what they were trying to do here.

But it’s very reasonable to think Super Bowl LIX will be the death knell for this era in Kansas City and they must evolve again into something new and fresh.

Whether or not Kelce returns for his age-36 season, the Chiefs can no longer rely on him to be their leading receiver. That wasn’t the plan this year either, but Rashee Rice’s torn ACL changed things. If they can get Rice and Worthy playing together at a high level, then that could be the way forward for this passing game to get back to being more explosive.

Fans felt the Chiefs were holding things back all year on offense, and as it turns out, maybe they were coaching scared. An interesting quote in the post-Super Bowl news came from Chiefs passing game coordinator Joe Bleymaier where he talked about the burden of coaching Mahomes and the fear of screwing things up for him.

On Mahomes' awful night, how much the goal of threepeat-ing meant to him, and the daily terror of coaching a QB like him: https://t.co/rOJPmdUCd3 pic.twitter.com/OqptOwzVLz

— Kalyn Kahler (@kalynkahler) February 10, 2025

Maybe the quote is open for interpretation, but it comes off as a shocking admission that they were scared to call certain plays this season, and naturally, fans were calling for Bleymaier to be fired for this.

But maybe a shakeup is needed along that coaching staff. It’s coaching malpractice that the Chiefs waited until the final minutes of their blowout Super Bowl loss to throw a deep pass down the middle to Xavier Worthy, which was caught for a 50-yard touchdown.

Patrick Mahomes connects with Xavier Worthy for a 50-yard TD

: #SBLIX on FOX
: Tubi + NFL app pic.twitter.com/s7g5xqfmVB

— NFL (@NFL) February 10, 2025

Wasn’t that the speed they drafted him for? Yet, we watched for weeks where Mahomes and Worthy kept failing to connect on passes down the sideline because they’d be fighting the boundary line to complete it inbounds. It became such a problem they basically stopped trying it instead of doing something logical like, you know, throw it down the deep middle and challenge the safeties with that speed.

So, they wait until there are two minutes left in a Super Bowl blowout to throw just the fourth pass down the deep middle (20+ yards) of the season to Worthy? That’s insane.

Finding a left tackle to build around for the next decade should still be the top priority. Maybe building up the running back position so they could produce their first 1,000-yard rusher in the Mahomes era might be a good idea too. But there are coaching issues they need to get fixed, and the “burden” and “fear” of coaching Mahomes are thoughts that need to be removed from the building immediately unless they want to see this thing fall apart completely.

Giving a gunslinger a Super Soaker filled with tap water is a terrible waste of one’s abilities.

Conclusion: There Is a Blueprint But…

There is a blueprint to beat the Chiefs, but it’s just not something that most teams in the NFL can feasibly pull off with getting that much pressure from a 4-man rush. We haven’t even mentioned you’re going to have to perform admirably on offense as Jalen Hurts and his unit did.

But according to Stathead, only six defenses since 2018 have pulled off producing 6 sacks without calling more than 2 blitzes in a game, and the 2024 Eagles did it twice. The last defense to do it before them was the 2022 Eagles.

But until the Chiefs show they have the dynamic weapons you need to fear again, this strategy of little-to-no blitzing should be here to stay when defenses face Kansas City, and it’s up to Reid and Mahomes to figure out how to combat it. Maybe it’s more deep shots to Rice and Worthy, and maybe it’s a much better running game.

But one thing NFL fans are right about is that it’s an indictment of AFC teams like the Ravens, Bills, and Bengals that they haven’t done more to produce results like this against the Chiefs in more big games over the years.

If you’re Buffalo, your offseason plan better involve finding a way to acquire Myles Garrett (Browns) or Maxx Crosby (Raiders) as an elite pass-rushing force to deal with the Chiefs.

Find a quarterback worth protecting and hit the hell out of the other team’s quarterback. That should work for any team in any era.

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