Recency bias is one hell of a drug. And conference title games and the Super Bowl still shape the narratives of how to build a team, what style of offense and defense to incorporate, what the rest of the league should prioritize during the team building process. team, etc This happens every year. After the Eagles’ first Super Bowl victory, their use of the “Run-Pass option” made the RPO vernacular overnight. Mahomes’ Super Bowl victory the following year pushed the new mold for the franchise’s prototypical quarterback.
Last year, I pointed to the league’s growing propensity to go on fourth down, pass first down, and prioritize YAC. These trends are going nowhere. To touch on them briefly here – teams are still significantly more aggressive on the fourth down than they were even five to ten years ago. Its good.
The Bengals and Chiefs finished third and fourth, respectively, in first-down success rates during the regular season. Eight of the 14 playoff teams were in the top 10 for first-down success rate and first-down success rate in one-score play scenarios. If the NFL is a copycat league, other teams need to copy what the best teams do, and one of those things is to pass it more frequently than they run it on the first down, even if the game is close .
And YAC is here to stay for a while. The Chiefs finished with the most total YAC during the regular season. The 49ers had the best YAC average per reception. The Chiefs finished second in that category, while the Eagles were fifth and the Bengals 11th despite Ja’Marr Chase missing four games.
Sometimes these trends are taken directly from the regular season. But they are mostly drawn from the playoffs.
Let’s identify these trends ahead of Super Bowl LVII.
Invest heavily in the offensive line
The 49ers made the Super Bowl after the 2019 season, ultimately losing to Mahomes and the Chiefs. Less than two months later, they traded a fifth and future third for future Hall of Fame first-round left tackle Trent Williams. Large swing.
Although they allowed rising guard Laken Tomlinson to move into free agency after the 2021 season, they drafted Aaron Banks in the second round in 2021 and passed a fourth-round pick on guard Spencer Burford in April. last, two players who were the primary goalie starters of the 2022 season.
After Burrow led the NFL in sacks taken (51) in 20221, the Bengals spent a total of $22 million in collective average annual salary on three tackles during the 2022 offseason – La’el Collins, Ted Karras and Alex Cappa. They did so despite drafting four offensive linemen since Burrow became No. 1 overall in 2020, and they drafted another tackle in fourth-round pick Cordell Volson last April.
Unsurprisingly, Burrow’s sacks (51 to 41) and sack rate (8.9% to 6.3%) have declined from 2021 to 2022. His interception rate has also dropped from 2.7% to 2 .0%.
After a cataclysmic development in the Super Bowl loss to the Buccaneers — in a game without multiple starting offensive linemen — Cincinnati now knows the pitfalls of that development: The Chiefs didn’t sit on their hands. General manager Brett Veach signed top free agent guard Joe Thuney to a five-year, $80 million deal with nearly $32 million in full guarantees, and traded multiple picks to land left tackle Orlando Brown from the Ravens. , AFC rivals, but the blocking reconstruction was ‘it’s over.
In the draft, Veach picked longtime Oklahoma center Creed Humphrey in the second round and took a flyer on guard Trey Smith in the sixth round, a big and talented SEC blocker who dealt with blood clots at the university.
Now Kansas City has probably the best blocking unit in the AFC.
The Eagles and general manager Howie Roseman have long prioritized the trenches and have for some time boasted one of the most devastating offensive lines in the league. It’s mostly a veteran group led by center Jason Kelce and right tackle Lane Johnson. But Roseman’s persistence in building the blocking unit once again paid off.
After Jordan Mailata was a seventh-rounder in the 2018 draft, Roseman picked Andre Dillard in the first round in 2019. Dillard didn’t become the stud many thought he would be in the NFL. Mailata has become a gargantuan grader. The upswing up front didn’t stop Roseman from selecting all-purpose tackle Landon Dickerson in the second round of the 2021 draft – who is now the starting left guard – and even grabbing ultra-talented center Cam Jurgens in the second round of the 2022 draft will be Kelce’s eventual replacement.
The Eagles have the best offensive line in football and mostly roughed up the top-ranked 49ers defense in the NFC title game.
During the regular season, only 12 qualified quarterbacks managed a passer rating above 75 under pressure. When kept clean, 39 passers had a quarterback rating above 75.
When in doubt, grab some quarterback flyers
In the 2020 draft, the No. 53 pick, after five quarterbacks were selected, the Eagles selected Jalen Hurts after a highly productive season at Oklahoma that followed a unique career at Alabama. The pick came less than four months after the Eagles won a division title and star quarterback Carson Wentz was knocked out of a playoff loss with a concussion. It was before this season that Wentz secured a major four-year, $128 million extension with the Eagles, with $100 million guaranteed.
Wentz threw for over 4,000 yards that season with 27 touchdowns and just seven interceptions.
The Eagles could have gone in many other directions with this pick. But they understood the potential added value of selecting a quarterback and did it. Wentz collapsed in 2020 and was later traded. Hurts was then quarterback for a seven-seeded Philadelphia team that lost in the first round of the 2021 playoffs and will now start in the Super Bowl.
The 49ers got into a Super Bowl and NFC title game with Jimmy Garoppolo, then decided to trade a litany of first picks to move up the draft board to select Trey Lance. Of course, last April they used the final draft pick on none other than Brock Purdy.
Be aggressive… be, be aggressive
From the most ubiquitous acclaim on the fringes of high school games in America to app in the NFL. It’s a bit of a combination of the above two points, but…be aggressive. And I’m not suggesting more blitz. I’m talking about aggression with list building. It really could be an extension of what the Rams did before their Super Bowl-winning season a year ago.
Think of the example of this idea that Roseman demonstrated last offseason. He traded a first-round pick for AJ Brown on day one of the draft. If that wasn’t enough – and would normally be considered enough – he picked up James Bradberry nine days after he was released by the Giants in May. Then, to really hammer home his aggressive style – Roseman traded a fifth-and-six in the 2024 draft for pesky corner safety/lunge Chauncey Gardner-Johnson and a seventh in 2025 in August.
Let’s not forget — and you’ll hear many reminders over the next two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl — Chiefs GM Brett Veach traded TYREEK HILL in the offseason, an idea that previously seemed implausible, a non-runner complete.
This reported to the Chiefs:
- Part of the compensation package to redeem for select CB Trent McDuffie
- WR Skyy Moore
- Contract avoidance for Hill with $30M on average per year and $52.5M in full guarantees
- 2024 fourth-round pick
- 2024 sixth-round pick
Kansas City then had the money to sign Justin Reid, JuJu Smith-Schuster, Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Carlos Dunlap in July. It will also give the Chiefs the chance to sign their own this offseason.