How the Bills’ defense stopped Patrick Mahomes with the perfect game plan

Last season, Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs faced the Buffalo Bills twice — once in Week 6, and again in the AFC Championship Game. In those two games, Mahomes completed 50 of 64 attempts for 550 yards, five touchdowns, and no interceptions. The Chiefs won both games, and the Bills were left to wonder, as good as they were, what they had to do to get past this guy.

Fast-forward to Sunday night in Week 5 of the 2021 season, and it was clear that Bills head coach Sean McDermott and defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier had the answers to the test. The Bills came in as the NFL’s best defense by far in Football Outsiders’ metrics, though FO’s opponent adjustments haven’t fully kicked in yet, and naysayers could say that in facing the Steelers, Dolphins, Washington, and the Texans, that defense hasn’t really been tested.

We can now throw that story away. In a 38-20 thrashing, the Bills limited Mahomes to 272 passing yards on 54 attempts and 34 completions, and while Mahomes threw two touchdown passes, he also threw two interceptions, and his yards per attempt average of 5.04 was the lowest of his career. His 70.9 passer rating was the second-lowest of his career, behind the 62.8 he put up in 2018 against a Jaguars defense worlds better than it is now, and his Adjusted Yards per Pass Attempt of 4.11 was also the lowest he’s ever posted for a single game in his NFL career.

One season after being dominated by Mahomes twice, the Bills came back with a fire and fury their defense had not shown before against this esteemed opponent.

“I think Leslie Frazier and the staff do a really good job,” McDermott said after the game. “The players buy in every week. They come in hungry whatever day they are first in the building. They embrace the game plan and they really play together. It is fun to watch them play because they are a very unselfish group and they work hard during the week. Their successes are by no accident.”

(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)

The Bills were able to present Mahomes with a heavy dose of two-high safety coverage, because when they do so, they can also stop the run, and running against two-high coverage is generally the best way to stop defenses from putting it out there. It’s also something Mahomes would prefer never to see — through the first five weeks of this season against Cover-2, 2-Man, Cover-4, and Cover-6, per Sports Info Solutions, Mahomes had completed 38 of 61 passes for 522 yards, 349 air yards, one touchdown, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 67.8.

Against defined single-high coverage — Cover-1 and Cover-3 — Mahomes had completed 23 of 28 passes for 302 yards, 182 air yards, three touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 147.3. No NFL quarterback had been more efficient than Mahomes against single-high coverage this season, so the Bills were going to ensure that he saw as little of it as possible. And when he did see it, he wasn’t going to like it.

It was a naturally horrid matchup for Mahomes anyway, because through the first five weeks of the season in two-high coverage, the Bills had allowed 17 completions in 36 attempts for 166 yards, no touchdowns, four interceptions, two more dropped interceptions, and an opponent QBR of 21.1. To put that in perspective, the Chargers had allowed the second-lowest opponent QBR through the first five weeks at 56.6. Two weeks before, the Chargers kept Mahomes in check by playing far more man coverage than was usual for them; the Bills’ response was to stick with their script and execute at a high level.

Mahomes made this point after the game, when he was asked about miscommunications with his receivers.

“It’s just we’re seeing different defenses that we’ve seen in the past,” Mahomes said. “We have a lot of stuff, we read coverages and run routes to different spots and we’re just not on that same page. I have to trust in these guys that we’ll figure that out if that’s me knowing what they’re thinking and them knowing what I’m thinking and that’s what makes our offense so good. It’s something I don’t want to lose, it’s just about us practicing and going to work every single day and being on that same page.

“We recognize coverages as we run routes, That’s what has made us so good over the past few years. Teams can have the right coverage called, and we can run a routes a certain way. The guys are seeing coverages differently than I am. They’re different coverages — I don’t think anyone has faced coverages like we’ve faced over these last few games.”

That was Step 1 in stopping Mahomes. Step 2 was refusing to blitz him under any circumstances. On Sunday night, the Bills didn’t call a single blitz on any of Mahomes’ 63 dropbacks, but they still pressured him on 16 of those dropbacks and 12 passing attempts, sacking him twice.

Not that the Bills had been a heavy blitz defense before — they’ve brought extra defenders on just 16% of their defensive snaps this season, seventh-lowest in the league — but their decision to not blitz Mahomes at all was against type in a general sense, though certainly not in a specific sense.

As Next Gen Stats also points out, the Bills have blitzed Mahomes at a third the rate (10%) than they have blitzed all other quarterbacks (30%). There’s a reason for that — through his career, Mahomes has a passing EPA of +151, which leads the league over that period of time.

How did the Bills lock Mahomes up this time when they couldn’t before? From front to back, it was a not only a perfectly aligned performance, but also one the Chiefs did not expect from a schematic perspective.

Pretty fly for a single-high guy...

(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)

When the Bills did play single-high against Mahomes, it was often Cover-1 Rat — single-high man coverage in which the “rat” defender, usually a safety or linebacker, roams over the middle to check any crossing routes. Mahomes’ pick-six, a 26-yard interception return for a touchdown by safety Micah Hyde (No. 23) with 7:12 left in the third quarter, came out of Cover-1 Rat.

Tyreek Hill couldn’t hold onto the ball, which caused the interception, but there was a previous play in which that same type of 1 Rat coverage nearly caused another interception, and this wasn’t a drop — this was the Bills plastering Mahomes’ receivers across the formation, Mahomes seeing nothing open, and Mahomes making a desperation shot to Kelce that was nearly picked off by both safety Jordan Poyer (No. 21) and cornerback Levi Wallace (No. 39). Mahomes probably had a shot to receiver DeMarcus Robinson (No. 11) near the end zone, but the velocity and anticipation required to complete that pass would provide a stern test even for Mahomes.

This was on fourth-and-5 from the Buffalo 32-yard line with the Bills up 17-10, and it was a crucial coverage for the Bills.

“We had a good play called in man coverage and they covered it well,” Mahomes said of this play/ “I was [looking] at the out route to Tyreek [Hill] on the left side. So I reset back and tried to find [Kelce] as my last read in that progression. They covered it well. They had a spy for me, so I was trying to decide if I was going to outrun him. It’s fourth down, so I just tried to put one up and let the big Kelce try to make a play. Dude [Poyer] made a good play and got a hand on it.”

And on the rare occasions where Mahomes had an easy shot against Cover-1, as he did on this deep incompletion to Travis Kelce early in the first quarter, he overshot his target on first-and-10 from the Kansas City 43-yard line.

The Bills knew Mahomes preferred single-high coverage, so when they showed it to him, it was the kind of single-high coverage he couldn’t consistently work. That’s great game design.

Roll another number...

(Denny Medley-USA TODAY Sports)

The Chiefs tried running the ball on their first two offensive plays, ostensibly to test the Bills’ two-high defense and whether it was vulnerable with their safeties out of the picture in run defense. Buffalo’s response was definitive: Clyde Edwards-Helaire gained four yards on first down, Jerick McKinnon gained two yards on second down, and the Chiefs went back to the passing game.

Even if you get past Buffalo’s front four, their linebackers will chase you down and stop you. A.J. Klein and Tremaine Edmunds did a great job with this over the middle in Buffalo’s frequent nickel packages, and while the Chiefs did run the ball 23 times for 120 yards, 61 of those yards came on scrambles from Mahomes. Kansas City’s designed run game picked up 59 yards on 15 carries, even though the Bills ran two-deep most of the time.

As a defense, when you have that, you have everything. On the McKinnon run, it was rookie end Greg Rousseau (No. 50) who prevented McKinnon from getting around the edge, and Klein (No. 54) cleaned it up. That the Bills were able to do this without Matt Milano, their best linebacker, who was out with a hamstring injury, was even more impressive.

Two-high to die...

(Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports)

So, what did that allow the Bills to do? Suffocate and compress Kansas City’s passing game by bracketing, and matching through routes with, Mahomes’ favorite targets. Mahomes faced two-high coverage on 44 of his dropbacks in this game, and he completed 26 of 38 passes for 220 yards, 119 air yards, no touchdowns, and one interception against it.

The interception came with 2:58 left in the third quarter, the Bills up 31-13, and Kansas City’s previous drive ended by Hyde’s pick-six. But it wasn’t coverage that did it — it was Rousseau mush-rushing Mahomes, waiting him out, and using his 6-foot-6, 266-pound frame to bat the pass down and pick it off. Rousseau was the Bills’ first-round pick in 2021, and he’s added elements of pass-rush and versatility the defense didn’t have last season along the front.

“Huge play,” McDermott said of Rousseau’s effort. “We made plays. A year ago we came here and they made a lot of plays – we didn’t make quite as many as we needed to to win the game. Our players made plays tonight and that was great to see. I thought they were in a great space mentally, they put in a lot of work, physically, during the week. When you see a young guy make a play like that, the future is very bright. Again, another unselfish player with the way he approaches every week. He’s had some success and then he’s hit some bumps and that’s to be expected. It’s great to see that guys continue to hit the reset button and play.”

The Bills were able to roll deep with Hyde and Poyer, quite possibly the NFL’s best safety duo, because of the Bills’ aforementioned ability to stop the run out of light boxes. This limited Mahomes’ deep opportunities. Through the first four weeks of the season, per Pro Football Focus, Mahomes had completed seven of 17 passes of 20 or more air yards for 262 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception. Against the Bills? One completion in three attempts for 26 yards.

Buffalo’s deep safeties also prevented easy completions on intermediate throws, even against the Chiefs’ usually lethal ability hit you with levels and crossers out of empty formations. On this play, the idea was for receiver Mecole Hardman (No. 17) to attack the defense with a switch release crosser with receiver Byron Pringle (No. 13) taking the shorter crossing route. But Poyer wasn’t having any of that from his deep position to that side — Poyer perfectly timed his aggressive approach to the ball, and the Chiefs once again had to go back to the drawing board.

Be very afraid of these Bills.

(Jay Biggerstaff-USA TODAY Sports)

The Bills have been to four Super Bowls. They’ve played in three conference championships. They won AFL titles in 1964 and 1965. But they’ve never had a defense like this. Very few teams have.

Football Outsiders’ DVOA metrics go back to 1983 at this time. The 2004 Bills led the NFL in Defensive DVOA, but their metric was -28.2% as opposed to this ridiculousness. After the win over the Chiefs, the Bills ranked first in the league in points scored (34.4 points per game), and first in the NFL in points allowed (12.8 points per game). Throw the strength of opponent out the window — one week after this defense tortured Texans quarterback Davis Mills for a 52.4% completion rate, 87 passing yards, no touchdowns, and four interceptions, Mills came back against the Patriots in Week 5 and completed 72.4% of his passes for 312 yards, three touchdowns, and no picks. And here’s the thing — when this defense has gone up against bad offenses, they haven’t just beaten them; they’ve annihilated them.

The Steelers gave the Bills their only loss this season in Week 1, but Ben Roethlisberger completed 18 of 32 passes for 182 yards and a touchdown. They knocked Tua Tagovailoa out of their 35-0 win over the Dolphins in Week 2, and made backup Jacoby Brissett’s life miserable. In Week 3, Washington quarterback Taylor Heinicke completed 14 of 24 passes for 214 yards, two touchdowns, and two interceptions. Then, the Mills debacle, and then, the Mahomes reckoning.

Is this the year it all finally comes together for this franchise, and they can finally hold the Lombardi Trophy in Orchard Park? It’s still early, but if the Bills can keep this up, how could you bet against them?

Let the defense lead the way.

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