Three years ago, I rode to work one morning with Andy Reid before the Kansas City-San Francisco Super Bowl. We ended up in his office suite, and I got a look at a huge white board that took up most of one wall. On the board were maybe 30 diagrammed plays, in different handwriting and different colors—from he and his offensive assistants.
“We’re a democracy here,” Reid said that day. “Every coach’s ideas count.”
Last week, I asked one of the coaches, senior offensive assistant/QB coach Matt Nagy, about the process. “He has about 27 different markers on his board that you can pick from and he wants you to space out the colors so you don’t have two black diagrams next to each other,” Nagy said. “By the end of the week, you get to Thursday or Friday and it looks like probably what you saw. It can look very confusing. That’s why we call it the ‘Beautiful Mind Board.’”
Corn Dog, the play I wrote about last week, the play that turned the Super Bowl to Kansas City’s favor, was born there. But here’s the other part of why it worked: By the time KC lined up at the Philadelphia five-yard line and called Duo Left 35Y Corn Dog (thanks to NFL Films for the Patrick Mahomes wiring that filled out the call) three minutes into the fourth quarter, it had been 1,242 plays since Reid called for this particular motion—the odd Jet Motion reverse, from wide right to the right tackle, then reversed back to the original position wide right.
I can’t fault Eagles players and coaches for Corn Dog. How could Philadelphia have seen this coming? Kansas City had called it one time all season—in the second quarter of the season-opener, coincidentally in this same stadium against the Cardinals, on the 23rd offensive snap of the season. Reid called 77 quarters worth of plays, exactly 1,242 snaps over 19 games, without opting for the Jet Motion reverse again.
Then, on the biggest snap of the season, Reid called for it. That is brilliant coaching. Afterwards, he told me he credited his coaches for figuring out why it would work—and Jesse Newell of The Kansas City Star fleshed that out well, reporting that offensive assistants Greg Lewis and David Girardi studied the Eagles’ D enough to know their man scheme in the Red Zone should leave the receiver, Kadarius Toney, open once he reversed his course. And Toney was open. Wide open. Three minutes later, Reid called another play (a busted play, as it turned out, made right by Mahomes) with the Jet Motion reverse a second time. Skyy Moore was even more wide open. Mahomes, wired by NFL Films, said he saw the Eagles’ zero blitz “as clear as day” on the play, and none of the four Philadelphia cover players, inexplicably, got near Moore.
Incredible. How does something like that happen on the two most important plays of a defense’s season?
The defensive coordinator in the game, Jonathan Gannon, fell on the sword Sunday when I spoke to him about the plays. Gannon, who got the Cardinals’ head-coaching job Tuesday, told me: “Our players were prepped. I did not do a good enough job myself to put them in a position to make the play. I didn’t do a good enough job to get out of the call what I wanted out of the call. I didn’t give them the tools that they needed to win the down.
“On the second one, I thought [Mahomes] was gonna play that as a drop back and that [coverage] was a zero [blitz]. Jesus Christ wouldn’t have covered that in a zero.”
On the Toney TD, the Eagles actually had three cover players on the two receivers to the right, Travis Kelce inside and Toney outside. Once Toney reversed his Jet Motion, Darius Slay or Avonte Maddox had to cut outside to cover him, and they were both way late. Slay, on replay, appeared lackadaisical getting back, as though he expected help that never came. Clearly, Gannon thought putting three defenders on Kelce and Toney should have worked. It didn’t. I say it’s because of the element of surprise.
On the Moore TD, Gannon clearly thought he made the wrong call in zero-blitzing Mahomes. The Eagles very rarely rush seven and leave four back in coverage. This is how rare the call to rush seven was: this was Philadelphia’s 1,211th defensive snap of the year, and it was only the eighth time Gannon called for seven men to rush, per Next Gen Stats. Gannon was rueful about it a week later. Covering a wide field with four defenders against the great Mahomes is a tough chore, particularly on a slippery field when the speed and quickness of ace rusher Haason Reddick is neutralized.
But in the end, something Nagy said via NFL Films when Mahomes came to the sidelines rings most true to me: “That Jet Motion is killing ‘em!”
Three other things about the crucial plays:
- Did you notice what Kelce, wired by NFL Films, said to Toney just before he went in motion on his TD? “Control! Under control!” Kelce said. I was told after the game that KC’s players and coaches were concerned the motion wouldn’t work because of how slick the field was. Per Newell, Toney slipped and fell on the practice field in Tempe on Thursday. Thus, Kelce’s warning.
- Did you also notice Reid trying to call timeout before the Moore TD? That’s because Kelce was lined up wrong. He was snug outside the right tackle instead of the left side. “The play was in the wrong formation!” Mahomes exclaimed when he got to the sideline, via NFL Films. “I called it right, they lined up wrong.” This is why Mahomes is so great. It’s the fourth quarter of the Super Bowl, third-and-goal from the four-yard line, 28-27, he’s supposed to have Kelce as a rub-receiver in case Moore needs it, play-clock near five seconds, no time to get Kelce over to the left, Mahomes knows seven rushers might be coming, and he figures, I better make something happen. “Right there,” Nagy told me, “You could see the calm Pat had. In these moments, one of the biggest moments of the entire season, Andy trusted Pat in that moment to make the right decision. Sometimes throughout the year, your quarterback is gonna make the wrong decision on a play like that. I’m telling you, Pat just doesn’t make wrong decisions there. It would have been easy with the play clock running down and the formation messed up for Pat to turn around, start walking to the sidelines and signal for time. When he didn’t, I just figured, ‘He’s got something.’”
- Think of those six coaches this year. They know each other, and Mahomes, so well that they finish each other’s sentences. David Girardi, a friend of former QB coach Mike Kafka, came on the staff after Nagy left and became a valued worker over the next four seasons. That continuity is why the offense, even in a year when five new wide receivers are folded into the scheme, works symphonically at the biggest moments of the season.
Gannon paid homage to Reid when we spoke Sunday, and said one of the truisms Reid would endorse. “I’ll never be as smart as Andy Reid,” Gannon said. “But where I do align with him philosophically is seven or eight brains are better than one.”
That’s a pretty big reason why Kansas City won the Super Bowl. Smart people, working in a democracy, with a brilliant playmaker at quarterback. Hard to beat.
Read more in Peter King’s full Football Morning in America column
