Dissecting the Chiefs' Second-Half Collapse

NFL Conference Championship - The Kansas City Chiefs lost to the Cincinnati Bengals in overtime of last Sunday's AFC Championship Game. Kansas City came out of the gate hot, but then watched the Bengals erase an 18-point deficit. During Cincy's comeback, the Chiefs were unable to score a point in the second half until they had fallen behind by three and had to kick a game-tying field goal to send it to overtime.

The second-half collapse from the home Chiefs was shocking. At least I was surprised watching it. The Chiefs just couldn't get anything going on offense. So today I wanted to focus on how each of Kansas City's six second-half drives ended to see what we can learn. Again, the plays in this column were the final plays on each of the Chiefs second half drives.

Center Creed Humphrey (52) rolls the snap back there, which is always terrible, but other than that, the Chiefs protect this well. The Bengals are rushing three with a fourth guy spying Patrick Mahomes that you have to account for with a blocker. Mahomes has time here and makes a nice (if strange-looking) pass to a well-covered Travis Kelce, who can't come up with it. Need a better snap and a catch, but most of the guys for Kansas City are doing their jobs.

This time the Bengals are rushing four and once again Kansas City is blocking them. Left tackle Orlando Brown (57) runs his man far past the quarterback. On the opposite side, Andrew Wylie (77) has a tricky block because he has to deal with so much space after his man collides with Travis Kelce (87) off the snap, but Wylie does a nice job of staying in front. Humphrey (52) has to block a nose tackle running very wide to try to pick the left guard, but stays with him the whole play. This is very good pass protection.

This was a weird play and I'm still not entirely sure what the Chiefs were doing. It looks almost like they're faking a screen and trying to throw a slot hitch, but I don't know. What I do know is that Joe Thuney (62) at left guard has to do a better job of engaging this defensive tackle and keeping his hands down. Mahomes is drifting to his left here, which screws Thuney because that draws his defender out, but you have to engage the defender enough that he can't get both hands on the ball like this. Against a wide 3-technique like this, you almost have to turn it into a wide zone block rather than a straight drive block. It's a tough alignment for this play, but again, you have to do something to get that guy's hands down.

The Bengals are once again rushing three and the Chiefs are once again doing a very good job of blocking them. Brown knocks his guy (Trey Hendrickson, 91) down and stops playing after that, which isn't ideal, but man does Mahomes hold onto this for a long time. I can't see a reasonable person blaming the offensive line for this. This was the first of a few costly second-half sacks.

This was the one play where I thought the offensive line really dropped the ball in the second half. Both tackles get beat around the edge and the rushers meet at Mahomes. Let's look at Brown first. His initial set is fine, but he just never brings any violence to his play here. This is not how Brown usually gets beat. Typically when Brown gets beat it's because he puts himself in a bad place with his feet. Here his feet are fine, but he never changes the rusher's (Hendrickson, 91) course. Not when he lands his hands on his punch, not when he turns to try to run the defender by. That defensive end never moves an inch from his path to the quarterback the entire play. You have to have more physicality at the top of your pass set to knock the defender off the loop.

For Wylie, it's all hands. He gets his hands knocked away by the defender (Sam Hubbard, 94) at the top of his rush and never recovers. He looks a little passive here and I'm not sure if he was expecting a chip from his back, but he never really throws his hands to punch. He's waiting for the defender to make a move, and when the defender doesn't move first Wylie just kind of places his hands out—I wouldn't call this a punch—and the defensive end knocks them right down and continues to the quarterback.

I mean, it is what it is at this point. Another three-man rush and another coverage sack. The same thing happened the play before as well. The Bengals continually rushed three on these third downs and the Chiefs just couldn't make them pay. There isn't much more the offensive line can do in these situations.

The frustrating part for me watching the game was that the Chiefs came into the second half with a good lead. They actually had some success running the football in the second half too. Kansas City ran it 10 times for 59 yards on non-quarterack runs in the third and fourth quarters. I get always riding Mahomes, but at some point it would have been nice to have a drive where you saw if you could pick up a couple first downs on the ground.

I was surprised how little the Chiefs offensive line played into the collapse. Yeah, Thuney could have been better on the interception, but it was a really tough look and probably a play that should have been killed at the line. The one sack ended a drive, of course, too. But other than that, the rebuilt Kansas City offensive line were basically bystanders, doing a good job on three-man rushes but jogging off the field after failed third-down conversions. It had to be a disappointing way for a season to end as an offensive lineman.