The narrative after the Super Bowl is one that comes around about once a decade – winning with pressure from the defensive line
The Philadelphia Eagles sacked Patrick Mahomes six times in the Super Bowl with very little blitzing (rushing five or more defenders); They blitzed twice. The also had 11 QBhits and pressured Mahomes on 40% of his dropbacks, or almost as much as Kermit the quarterback got pressured the last time the Chiefs got blown out in the Super Bowl. (Dang! It felt good to type that sentence!)
According to PFF, Mahomes was pressured on 55.4% of his dropbacks when the Bucs blew out the Chiefs in the Super Bowl. Mahomes was pressured on 40% of his dropbacks last Sunday.
The 40% pressure rate is a little skewed because the Eagles called off the dogs at the end and played their backups, so it’s not one of the highest pressure rates on a QB in the Super Bowl. The best is still the rate the Bucs pressured Kermit in 2020. The pressure rate the Broncos got on Cam Newton in Super Bowl 50 is still the third highest in Super Bowl history. Only the Bucs on Mahomes and the Patriots on Matt Ryan were higher.
PFF’s pressure numbers don’t make sense though (30 pressures on 36 dropbacks?!?). PFR shows he was pressured 16 times on his 42 dropbacks (38.1%). Kermit had 32 passing attempts, six sacks and four scrambles.
Interestingly enough the Eagles blitzed a fair amount during the regular season (see below) and were not all that great at generating pressure without blitzing. The KC OL was garbage in the Super Bowl.
The league blitzed on 26% of dropbacks in 2024. The Jaguars blitzed the least frequently and the Vikings blitzed the most frequently. The Broncos blitzed 31.1% of the time. If you take the pressure rate and subtract the blitz rate you can find how often a team was able to get pressure WITHOUT blitzing (far right column). Ten teams were able to do that on a regular basis with the Packers and the Bills being the best at it.
On the other end of the spectrum the Panthers and the Vikings failed to get pressure fairly often, despite blitzing frequently. The average team blitzed 2.6% more than the pressure they were able to generate. The Broncos were about average in this respect.
The Eagles pressure rate during the regular season was below average, while the Broncos 29.2% was second only to the Cowboys 31.9%. The Broncos were average or above average in terms of hurry rate and QB knockdown rate. Not surprisingly, Denver led the league in sack rate at 9.42%. The Patriots were the worst in the league at sack rate, but there were three teams that were worse at getting pressure.
The correlation between pressure rate and passer rating allowed in 2024 was -0.27. Which is decently strong in the world of sports. This means that in general if you were good at pressuring the opposing QB, you were also good at stopping the pass.
One thing you should notice in the table above is that almost every team that allowed a passer rating of below 88 made the playoffs (the exception was the Saints). I also find it interesting that even though the Cowboys had the highest pressure rate in the league, they had one of the worst pass defenses allowing a passer rating of 99.5. Only the Falcons, Giants, Jaguars and Panthers were worse. Similarly the Browns were also good at pressuring the opposing QB, but poor at stopping the pass.
On the flipside, the Super Bowl Champion Eagles were good at stopping the pass without being great at generating pressure. In fact they were the only team in the top half of the league in passer rating allowed with a pressure rate below 20%. That shouldn’t surprise any Bronco fans who know how Vic Fangio’s defenses operate. They are based on coverage and tackling – sound fundamentals – which wait for opposing offenses to make mistakes rather than trying to force them. The Eagle pass defense was third league in passes defended with 90. The Vikings had 95 and the Saints had 93. The Titans only had 53.
The Eagles led the league in ANYA. So while the world saw them obliterate the terrible KC OL, their defense was built more on coverage than on pressure. The Chiefs were sixth worst in the NFL at keeping pressure off of Kermit the QB – allowing pressure 24.0% of the time during the regular season.
The Broncos split the series with the Chiefs this year. In the game where both team’s played their starters, the Bronco defenders got 14 pressures and 4 sacks on Mahomes on 49 dropbacks (3 scrambles). So the Bronco front seven had the ability to get to Mahomes in 2024. With almost all of our frontline defensive guys back next season, we should be able to get to Mahomes in 2025 as well. Although I do expect KC to invest in their OTs during the off-season. They are somewhat limited in cap space with 186 million in cap space tied up in six player in 2025:
- Patrick Mahomes $66,258,269
- Chris Jones $34,850,000
- Jawaan Taylor $27,391,666
- Joe Thuney $26,971,713
- Travis Kelce $19,801,946
- Creed Humphrey $10,790,000
That leaves them with roughly 100 million in cap space for the other 45 players in their top 51. Kelce could retire and they could save some cap space by letting Thuney walk, but the only one that they really want to jettison is Taylor and that would incur 34 million in dead cap space.
The Kansas City Chiefs could trade up to draft an OT, or they could go the free agent route again, but their cap limits their flexibility. They are also no sure things in the free agent OT market. All of the free agent OTs who played significantly last season are over the age of 30 with the exception of Patrick Mekari. Ronnie Stanley and Cam Robinson are probably the two safest free agent options, but both will be expensive and the Chiefs don’t have the cap space for either unless things change dramatically. I expect Mahomes will restructure to protect his health so that the Cheifs can bring in Stanley or Robinson. I doubt they bring back DJ Humphries, who they signed to a one-year deal for 2024. He played less than 100 snaps before getting injured in 2024 and he will be 33 next season.