How the Chiefs Defense Out-Schemed the Ravens

It was an uncharacteristic day for the Ravens offense. From the lack of discipline and the penalties, to Zay Flowers’ fumble on the goalline, to Lamar Jackson’s performance, to the decision to abandon the run - the things that got the Ravens to the AFC Championship Game were not present on Sunday.

This game wasn’t just about Jackson’s bad day at the office (although we’ll get to that in a bit). Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo also had a good plan for handling Baltimore’s offense.

The first part of that plan was to get speed on the field to match up to the Ravens. They did this with the frequent use of nickel (5 DBs) and dime (6 DBs) personnel.

The use of these subpackages generally allows the defense to utilize more disguise and intricate pressure schemes than they can in base personnel.

And boy did the Chiefs use pressure and disguise.

Spags blitzed Lamar on almost 45% of his dropbacks, which was an increase over K.C.’s season average of 32.9% (Pro-Football-Reference).

The disguise and post-snap movement they deployed regularly played an especially big role on 3rd down. The Ravens finished just 3-for-11 on the money down, and that was a major contributor to them possessing the ball for just 22 1/2 minutes.

More eye-opening was that the Ravens were 1-for-8 on 3rd down when throwing the ball, including no conversions on their first 6 opportunities. Their only conversion throwing came on their final drive while down by 10 with less than 5 minutes remaining.

That’s your ballgame right there.

This 3rd-and-4 gives you a great idea about how Spagnuolo kept Jackson from trusting what he was seeing.

The Ravens came out in a 2x2 formation and then motioned Zay Flowers to the other side of the field. But no one on the Chiefs followed:

This was an indicator that the Chiefs weren’t playing true man coverage. However, they weren’t really tipping what they would actually be playing. I mean seriously, what exactly does this coverage look like to you:

All defenders were within 9 yards of the line of scrimmage, but they weren’t playing true man since no one followed the motion.

This could be anything, and you just can’t trust Spagnuolo, who loves to bring pressure on 3rd down and isn’t afraid to bring cover-0 blitzes in the middle of the field (he’s done so plenty in the past against Lamar). So it was still a distinct possibility that this was some sort of blitz with defenders matching up in man coverage to the receivers’ alignments or releases instead of matching up to the personnel.

Either way, Lamar seemed to think that Odell Beckham Jr.’s route from the backside would take cornerback L’Jarius Sneed with him. And that would leave Justice Hill with room out of the backfield to pick up 4 yards for the first down: