Super Bowl Preview: The Chiefs’ Path to Putting Up Points

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Super Bowl LVIII is nine days away, featuring the defending champion Kansas City Chiefs and the NFC number one seed San Francisco 49ers. The Chiefs enter the game coming off a dominant Wild Card Round win over Miami, a close call in the Divisional Round against Buffalo, and a convincing performance in the AFC Championship Game against top seeded Baltimore. The 49ers roll into the big game after narrowly escaping the Packers in the Divisional Round and then just edging out the Lions in the NFC Championship Game.

In this analysis I’ll take a closer look at the recent performances of the Chiefs and 49ers to see which combinations of play type and location should be preferred and targeted by Patrick Mahomes and company.

I’ll focus the analysis on the last five meaningful games for each team (this excludes the week 18 matchups in which both teams rested many of their starters). For each of the 49ers on defense and the Chiefs on offense, I’ll group plays by run or pass; left, middle, or right; and short or deep for passes. I’ll look at the average expected points added (epa) in each zone of the field to identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of both squads.

Breakdown of the 49ers Defense

As seen in Table 1 below, the 49ers do a great job defending three of the nine zones, but struggle to defend three of the nine zones. Deep passes down the middle have been largely unsuccessful against them, resulting in a sizeable loss of more than two expected points per play on average. Short passes to the right and runs up the middle have also been negative plays against the 49ers. On the other hand, opposing offenses have had success against the 49ers when passing deep to the right and when running to the outside.

Table 1: Opponents’ epa against the 49ers defense over the past five meaningful games.

Evaluating the Chiefs Offense

Table 2 below depicts the Chiefs’ epa against opposing defenses over the past five meaningful games. The Chiefs have excelled in both deep passing to all areas of the field and short passing over the middle of the field. However, they have struggled running the ball up the middle and have had little success in short passes to the sides of the field.

Table 2: Chiefs’ epa against opposing defenses over the past five meaningful games.

Chiefs Offense VS. 49ers Defense

Taking the average of the Chiefs’ offensive epas and the 49ers’ defensive epas, we end up with Table 3—the matchup. Here, the Chiefs have two zones that they should be targeting frequently: deep passes to the right and short passes down the middle. They are also projected to succeed when passing deep to the left and running to the outside. Deep passes down the middle are a risky proposition against the 49ers’ secondary and runs up the middle will be difficult to rely on.

Table 3: Chiefs’ projected epa against the 49ers defense