Inside the secret plays Andy Reid and the Chiefs offense hold for the postseason

Andy Reid, have you been holding out on us?

Every year, we expect the NFL’s longstanding offensive genius to dazzle us with the Kansas City Chiefs’ playbook. Reid, 66, has been the Chiefs’ head coach since 2012 and was the Philadelphia Eagles’ head coach before that, from 1999 to 2012. There’s no shortage of film on his different ideations and their different iterations.

And if Reid is the architect, Patrick Mahomes is the carpenter, the one who turns the concepts into reality.

But this year, Kansas City’s offense hasn’t been as elegant as we’ve come to expect.

As the Chiefs’ dynasty grows more powerful, there has been a prevailing thought that Reid and Mahomes are sitting in such a strong position that they don’t need to break into the depths of their playbook until the postseason. When the tough gets going, Reid picks the toughest calls in his playbook. Until then? It’s not vanilla, but it’s not exotic either.

“There are definitely special plays that we practice throughout the season that we kind of hold onto. They are practiced during the year, and he’ll just bring it out at the right time, at the right moment,” former Chiefs quarterback Chad Henne told FOX Sports. 

Take the Rose Bowl spin that the Chiefs used in Super Bowl LIV. Reid saw that play by watching the 1948 Rose Bowl tape. (Yes, Reid famously watches old game film, high school film, college film and NFL film looking for ideas.) The Chiefs introduced that trick play in minicamp in 2019, but they saved it for 1,093 minutes of game play — until they faced a fourth-and-1 against the San Francisco 49ers in the Super Bowl.

“We practiced it every week, making sure we had it,” Henne said. “And then at the right moment, he brings it out, just to give something a little nuance and something different that the defense hasn’t seen.”

This year’s AFC Championship Game proved there’s some truth to idea that Reid saves concepts. One example was Kansas City’s fourth-and-1 call against the Bills. 

The Chiefs rushed to the line and ran play-action with Isiah Pacheco before Mahomes scrambled for a first down. It seemed like nothing out of the ordinary. But K.C. had been holding onto that play since a win over the 49ers. Which win, exactly?

Well … the Super Bowl win in 2020.

“I don’t know if you remember the play that we ran for a touchdown to Travis [Kelce] in the first Super Bowl,” Mahomes said Sunday. “Just getting me on the edge, having a couple options for guys to throw it to and then if [the Bills] take that away in man coverage, just use your feet and get the first down.”

It says something about this play’s importance that the last time the Chiefs called it was in the AFC Championship Game and in the Super Bowl. 

[Prepare for the epic Eagles-Chiefs matchup on FOX Sports’ Super Bowl LIX hub]

The thing that makes it work is the play-action. When the Chiefs line up on this play in this formation, they run the ball. They don’t fake the handoff, they make the handoff. Most teams can’t afford to break that tendency once every five years. Most teams will break the tendency once every few weeks. But the Chiefs seem to treat this play with the same care as one might treat the fire axe behind the glass: Break in case of emergency. Kansas City runs with the fullback or the running back. And when — once every half-decade — the Chiefs need a crucial conversion, the play-action is there waiting.

“You always add a little wrinkle here and there as you go,” Reid said. “We’ve experimented with those all the way back to the offseason and the camp.”

Ironically, that wasn’t even the concept that drew the most attention.

The Chiefs threw something more obviously novel at the Bills: an inverted wishbone with a read-option. Folks in the media and — more importantly — on Buffalo’s defense said they had never seen anything like it.

“I didn’t see that in any of the breakdowns I watched,” Bills defensive end Gregory Rousseau told Ty Dunne on “Go Long.”

That’s because the Chiefs didn’t run the play this season.

But, um… well, Gregory, you actually have seen it.

The Ravens ran it against the Bills this season.

Yup, this formation came out of Baltimore’s playbook. Reid and his staff must have watched Lamar Jackson rush for a touchdown from that formation on that exact play against the Bills in Week 4, as “A to Z’s” Charles Goldman identified. Kansas City must have watched the Ravens beatdown of Buffalo and thought: Let’s try that.

The result was a pair of touchdowns in the AFC Championship. (And the touchdown in Week 4.) 

My question is: When did Reid decide he wanted to use that formation? Because the Chiefs played the Bills in Week 11. It’s entirely possible Reid saw the Ravens’ formation and put it into the playbook — only to save it for the postseason.

There was another play the Chiefs sat on. Reid said he’d been saving it all game, and it’s unclear how long he’d been holding onto it before that. But Henne said the play was in the playbook when he got there in 2018.

On third-and-9 with 1:30 left, Kansas City needed a first down to effectively end the game. And the Chiefs got it by checking down in the flat to Samaje Perine, who caught the ball behind the line of scrimmage, but because of expert play design and timing, managed to get the necessary yards after the catch to clinch the win.

How did that play come together so perfectly?

Well, it was the play the Chiefs had been saving for that exact moment. And not just that, Reid introduced a few wrinkles — a double motion from two receivers — that clearly prevented the defense from knowing what was coming. 

“We look at — before the game — if it comes down to a third down or a fourth down and the game’s on the line. The coaches talk about it. The quarterbacks talk about it. That was kind of our No. 1 option there as a go-to play for this game,” Reid said. “It was just a matter of hoping that they’d be in the right coverage for the play. … Matt [OC Matt Nagy] spends endless time on that.”

It’s fascinating to consider that — in a game that tight — Reid still had his best play waiting for him at the end of the game. Not every playcaller would have that discipline. Former Lions OC and current Bears head coach Ben Johnson, for example, seemed to have a new trick play every week. But at a certain point, it was fair to wonder whether the Lions would have any left for the playoffs when they needed them most. 

Reid might just have a different philosophy.

“He’ll dig into his pocket,” Henne said. “At the right moment, that’s when he really dives down and pulls it out.”

The common wisdom that the Chiefs hold out on us during the regular season is sort of true and sort of not. They run what they need to get the wins they need. It’s just that — with their performance and consistency hitting new heights — they might not have as many moments of desperation as other teams. In turn, they might not have to use that “No. 1 option” on Reid’s play sheet. They don’t simply spend them because they’ve got them.

“He does hold on to some stuff, but at the same time — Coach Reid, Patrick — all those guys are competitors,” Henne said. “So they’re gonna do anything they can do to win a game, whether it’s regular season or playoffs. But at the same time, he always has something in his back pocket.”

There’s still plenty of material in Reid’s pocket for the Super Bowl. Even with Kansas City on a streak of 17 straight wins in one-possession games, Reid will have a concept that he’s been saving for Nick Sirianni and Vic Fangio and Philly. It might come from the 1965 Sugar Bowl. It might come from the 2000 5A Division I High School Championship. It might come from the Johnson Lions.

Be warned, Eagles.

Prior to joining FOX Sports as an NFL reporter and columnist, Henry McKenna spent seven years covering the Patriots for USA TODAY Sports Media Group and Boston Globe Media. Follow him on Twitter at @henrycmckenna.

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