Chiefs Defense Ultimately Won Cat-and-Mouse Game with Bengals Offense

The Chiefs’ defensive gameplan against the Bengals centered around taking Ja’Marr Chase out of the game. And for the most part, it worked. Chase was held to just 4 catches on 5 targets for 35 yards, and Kansas City ultimately won the game.

The way Chiefs Defensive Coordinator Steve Spagnuolo went about handling Chase seemed to be the game within the game. Spags was able to remove him from Cincinnati’s offense early with several true double-teams. He even mixed in various disguises to hide where the second defender would come from.

The Bengals countered either by putting Chase in positions where it was harder to double him or with motion that forced the defense to show its hand. They were also able to have some success with 1-on-1’s elsewhere. But with Tee Higgins still out of the lineup, Spagnuolo was more than willing to allow the Bengals to try and win with Mike Gesicki and Trenton Irwin getting the bulk of the targets.

It all culminated with a blitz on Cincinnati’s final offensive play, where Spagnuolo used Kansas City’s tendencies doubling Chase all game to fool Joe Burrow and the protection.

We’ll get to that at the end of this breakdown. First, let’s take a look at some of the different ways the Chiefs doubled Chase. On this first play, watch the deep safety move over top of him immediately after the snap:

On this next play, there wasn’t any post-snap movement. The Chiefs just simply declared before Burrow even had the ball that Chase was not going to be an option on this play:

The Bengals saw what Kansas City was doing and tried to find ways to get Chase away from the doubles. They used motion, but the Chiefs followed: