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Perhaps the biggest NFL story in the past few weeks is the downward spiral of the Kansas City Chiefs offense. 

The two-time AFC Champions-who have been in the league for most of more than three seasons-have only scored 36 points in the last three games. According to data from Pro-Football-Reference, their offense has a negative expected score in three of the past five games. From a perspective, consider that the offense played a total of three such games in 2018, 2019, and 2020. 

Most of the discussion about what happened here focused on what happened to Patrick Mahoms. His regression in the past few games has put his statistics at the lowest level of his career: percentage completed, yards per attempt, passer rating, QBR, sack rate, air yards per attempt, The number of yards received after each completion, the EPA of each fall, and more. He seems to have lost his rhythm, lost his balance, and just got out of his game as a whole. It looked disturbing. 

The general consensus seems to have fallen on "the defender is playing more two-high safety coverage to take away the deep pass, which disappoints him." There is some truth. For Kansas City, the defensive team will definitely use Cover-2, 2-Man, Cover-4, and even Cover-6 more than Cover-1 and Cover-3. According to TruMedia, in the Mahomes era, the opponent's defense used the following coverage ratios:

The shift in coverage usage is of course very interesting. The Chiefs’ performance in these coverage areas is indeed not as good as in the past (0.18 EPA each time, compared to 0.28 in the previous three seasons); what I find most fascinating here is that this At the same time, the team significantly reduced their coverage against the Chiefs, and one of their best players seems to have lost the ability to thrive under the cover of opponents. 

That's why I want to focus on this question: What happened to Travis Kelce? 

As the best tight end in the league in the past few years, Kelce has not looked like the same person for most of this year. Like Mahomes, he is striving to create the lowest average of his career in many ways, most notably the number of yards per catch (11.6 yards, down from 13.5 yards a year ago) and every goal Code number (code 7.9, less than code 9.8). Kelce's 6.0 catches and 69.8 yards per game and 68% catch rate are the lowest since 2017. 

From the video and figures, the problem boils down to his current inability to win coverage of people. This seems to be traced back to the sting he suffered during the team's loss to the Buffalo Bills in Week 5 and the elbow injury he suffered the following week.

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In other words: According to TruMedia, Kelce ran 50 routes against defensive players from week 1 to week 5. On these 50 routes. He drew 14 goals-a 28% goal rate. He turned these 14 goals into 8 catches and a touchdown for 96 yards, and 3 explosive offenses. This is good for an average of 1.92 yards per route, which is in line with his five-week average throughout the season (192 routes, 42 goals, 30 catches, 369 yards, four points, six explosives , 1.92 yards per route) run). 

Since week 6, Kelce has ran 35 routes against humans and has been targeted 9 times-with a rate of 25.7%. Incredibly, he has only two catches for 14 yards on these nine goals. This is 0.40 yards per route run. During this period, his average total yardage per route dropped to only 1.50 yards.

If you look at some of his lines against humans, it is not difficult to see the difference. See how easily he separated and created an explosive performance in the game against the Chargers earlier this season.

Then look at how he struggled against weak defenses in the past few weeks. Whether it's space separation behind the three-legged formation, aligning in the open space, lining up in a row on the outside, or being tight on the inside, he can't create enough space between himself and the defender as usual. 

This is the blow to the 32-year-old close end. If you don’t have the same type of athletic skills that easily distinguished from top cornerbacks throughout your career, and you still see top reported players because you are still TRAVIS KELCE, then you will try to do what you have done in the past . 

Kelce couldn't make the opponent's defense pay the price in the air defense, which allowed them to screen Tyreek Hill more actively when they were men, which had a knock-on effect and reduced Kansas City's overall screen efficiency. Since the defense also used two-high shells and deep pass routes to capture the deep ball by hitting more quarter shots, the Chiefs could only choose to slowly send the ball into the low court and in the melee line. The pass is straight ahead. However, neither Kelsey nor Hill added as many yards as they did in the past after receiving the ball, largely because of the lack of separation. 

Everything is connected, and now, none of them is the way of Kansas City. Maybe the Chiefs will become healthier when they say goodbye in a few weeks, but beyond that, they may need to make some structural and/or formation changes in order to put one of their most important weapons in a better position. To create this type of separation he needs to make himself the primary goal again.

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