The Detroit Lions (4-1) and Kansas City Chiefs (2-3) will square off in a Week 6 “Sunday Night Football” interconference battle between two of the best in the game. If the Lions want to win their fifth game in a row, they’ll need to follow the keys to victory laid out in this week’s Honolulu Blueprint.
Chiefs’ base schemes
For a detailed look at the opposing scheme, make sure you check out our complementary breakdown piece: Lions Week 6 Preview: Breaking down Chiefs’ offensive and defensive schemes.
Key 1: Keep pounding the rock
If you look at the Lions’ traditional stats for rushing, you might think the Lions are having a down year. They average 134.8 yards per game (7th most in the NFL), but are averaging just 4.4 yards per rushing attempt (14th) with a -0.02 EPA per rush (15th).
Some of the obstacles the Lions have faced this season include overcoming a poor statistical start in Week 1, breaking in a pair of young guards, teams stacking the box against them (32.2%, third most), and facing two top 10 run defenses (Browns first, Packers ninth).
But things aren’t as bad as they may appear, especially when you look at their advanced stats and their performances over the past four weeks—all wins. According to DVOA, the Lions check in with the fourth-best rushing attack in the NFL. And over the past four games, their traditional stats look even better: 157 yards rushing per game (second), 4.8 yards per rushing attempt (ninth), and 0.02 EPA per rush (ninth) over that time period.
This week, they’ll face a Chiefs team that sports the 17th-best run defense in DVOA, are giving up 123.4 rushing yards per game (21st), allowing 4.8 yards per rushing attempt (26th), and 0.09 EPA per rush (30th), plus they only stack the box 18.6% of the time (23rd).
“A lot of teams, they see a loaded box like that, they’re just throwing it,” Lions offensive coordinator John Morton said on Thursday. “But not with our guys. It’s pretty impressive what our wideouts do (blocking in the run game). That’s the reason why we’re one of the tops in the run game, because of what they do. And then it just helps out with everything else, the play action, and then the movement game and stuff. But this is who we are, you know that. I mean, we’re going to pound it no matter what. 10-man box, it doesn’t matter. So, we’ll just keep doing it until they stop it.”
Look for the Lions to fully incorporate a rushing attack game plan that focuses on ball control and taking the home crowd out of the game.
Key 2: Give Goff time to Cook
Lions quarterback Jared Goff has been rolling in 2025. Through five weeks, he ranks in the top five in multiple key statistical categories for a quarterback, including completion percentage 75.2% (first), passer rating 120.7 (second), EPA vs. man coverage of 0.72 (second), completion percentage over expectation of 7.9% (third), EPA per dropback of 0.25 (fifth), and 8.2 yards per passing attempt (fifth).
One of the reasons he’s been so successful is that the Lions’ offensive line has kept him completely clean in three of the Lions’ five games. Of the Lions’ eight sacks allowed, four came in Week 1, and another four happened last week when Detroit needed to turn to Giovanni Manu to start at left tackle in place of an injured Taylor Decker.
“I do think it was encouraging, I really do,” Morton said of Manu’s first NFL start. “There were some things, communication-wise or technique-wise, that he could’ve done better. But listen, we won the game. The plan was set up to protect that side; the coaches did a great job with that. But I was encouraged. He’s young. He’ll learn from his mistakes.”
On the season, the Lions’ offensive line has done a good job of keeping pressure away from Goff. They’ve only allowed 50 pressures (ninth best), and on average, don’t allow pressure to arrive until 2.66 seconds after the snap (15th). With Decker possibly missing another game, Morton knows that the Lions will need to slide protections to help out whomever is at left tackle against the Chiefs, and they may need “to get the ball out a little faster.”
But how fast will Goff need to react against the Chiefs? Fortunately, the Chiefs need an average of 2.71 seconds before their pressure arrives (24th), slower than the Bengals, Browns, and Ravens, whom the Lions have faced in the past three weeks.
That being said, while pressure takes time, the Chiefs are still producing at a high rate. Through five games, they have 67 pressures (11th), a 37.2% pressure rate (10th), 10 sacks (10th), and a 7.2% sack rate (11th).
The Lions’ offensive line should have fractions of a second longer to adjust to the Chiefs’ defense, but they’ll still need to make sure they’re taking the proper precautions to keep Goff clean if Decker can’t play.
Key 3: Beat the blitz
One of the ways the Chiefs create pressure is through a blitz package that uses disguise and unpredictability to find success. Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo is one of the smartest schemers in the game and deploys blitzes around 30.6% of the time, ninth most in the NFL.
“He’s got a really good blitz package, so we’ve got our work cut out for us,” Morton said on Thursday.
Fortunately for the Lions, Goff is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL against the blitz. Take a look at his already impressive overall stats versus how they look against the blitz, per PFF:
“His film study, his preparation. He can see things. Like I said, the game is slowed down for him. He’s playing at a high level,” Morton said of Goff’s success against the blitz. “But we’ve got our work cut out for us this week. There’s a lot of tape to watch. So, we have to be on point with everything.”
Key 4: LBs check Chiefs’ disguise
Like the Lions’ offense, the Chiefs use 12 personnel (one RB, 2 TE, 2 WR sets) at a top-10 rate, deploying it 31.8% of the time (eighth most). But while the Lions use 12 personnel to aid in their rushing attack, the Chiefs use it to disguise their offensive intentions. Often, the Chiefs will send out 12 personnel so that the defense counters with their Base formation (four DL and three LBs), only to shift a tight end—typically, Travis Kelce—out like a wide receiver and give an 11 personnel look. This provides the Chiefs a matchup advantage against most teams, which don’t have the linebackers to adapt.
However, the Lions typically live in their Base defense because they trust their linebackers’ abilities to be versatile, quickly diagnose, and adjust accordingly. It all starts in the middle of Detroit’s defense with MIKE linebacker Jack Campbell.
“He’s seeing the game how I see it from a coordinator perspective. […] especially the last two weeks,” Lions defensive coordinator Kelvin Sheppard said on Thursday.
Campbell has indeed been playing as well as any linebacker in the NFL this season. Heading into Week 5, Campbell sports an overall grade of 90.7 from PFF (third highest amongst linebackers), and as Sheppard pointed out, he’s been exceptionally sharp the last two weeks, recording overall grades of 89.3 and 92.8, per PFF.
But Campbell’s value goes beyond just production on the field, as Sheppard noted the young linebacker is hungry to be amongst the best in the NFL.
“When you start to see those elite of the elite, who have the athletic ability and all the skillset, but also they feel like it’s never good enough, it’s never enough,” Sheppard continued his praise of Campbell’s desire to understand more. “‘Yeah, I mastered the scheme, but now I want to know why you’re saying that, coach.’ That’s kind of rare. You’re starting to get into that upper echelon of the green dot linebackers in this league.”
But what separates the Lions’ linebackers from other NFL teams is that they have two linebackers who are experienced with the green dot, and both have the ability to diagnose and adapt on the fly.
“It’s rare, and we have the luxury of having two of them,” Sheppard said. “It’s not just Jack. Alex (Anzalone) actually has been doing this for two, three years now. […] with those two on the field, they’re the calming presence in the storm. When things are hectic, when things are getting a little frustrated out there, they’re the guys that say, ‘Hey, this is what we’re doing. We’re good. This is why he called that, we’re good. Trust me, it was a good call.’ They’re able to echo that message that I’m bringing in the locker room and in the huddle with the players that I know hits a little different.”
And while SAM linebacker Derrick Barnes is the linebacker who makes Sheppard’s scheme adaptability work, he puts his full trust in Campbell and Anzalone to get the defense in the right spots.
Key 5: Inact Lamar rules for Mahomes
Like Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes’ ability to extend plays by escaping the pocket, while also chewing up yards in the run game, makes him an extremely difficult player to defend.
“It’s unorthodox, he’s going to keep you off-kilter on defense, he’s never going to show his hand. […] And then the off-schedule plays that 15’s able to make—Pat Mahomes—it’s why that offense goes because the play is never over with him. Just when you think it’s over, it’s not,” Sheppard said.
According to NextGen Stats, Mahomes attempts 16.8% of his passes after escaping the pocket (eighth-highest rate in the NFL) and has completed a league high 292 yards on these plays. Additionally, Mahomes has scrambled on 10.8% of his dropbacks this season (the most in his career) and currently leads the Chiefs in rushing with 190 rushing yards, as well as explosive plays (nine) on scrambles.
Against the Ravens in Week 3, the Lions’ defensive game plan demanded that the defensive line play a contain-and-squeeze front, where they collapse the pocket while holding their gaps and taking away Jackson’s ability to escape the pocket. Once they limited Jackson on the ground, the Ravens shifted their approach to a passing attack, and the Lions countered by unleashing their defensive ends and holding the escape lanes with a linebacker acting as a “spy.” They executed this game plan to near-perfection, limiting Jackson to just 35 rushing yards on seven carries, while sacking him seven times, accounting for 55 yards lost.
Look for the Lions to deploy a very similar defensive approach against the Chiefs, with Sheppard adding in a few new wrinkles, specifically designed for Mahomes.
Key 6: Man up
At their core, the Chiefs want Mahomes to get the ball out quickly and into the hands of their speedy receivers. So far in 2025, Mahomes is throwing the ball, on average, at 2.45 seconds after the snap, the quickest of his career. Here’s an excerpt from Next Gen Stats on Mahomes’ quick passes:
“Patrick Mahomes has recorded the most attempts (101) and completions (71) on quick passes (under 2.5 seconds) this season, while his 555 yards on such passes ranks 2nd-most in the NFL (Stafford, 601). He has thrown a quick pass on 55.2% of his attempts in 2025, the 2nd-highest rate in the league and the highest in his career by 10.8% (min. 40 attempts).”
The Chiefs feature three wide receivers with sub-4.3-second speed and lean on them to create yards after the catch. Through five weeks, the Chiefs have amassed 665 YAC, fourth most in the NFL.
“It’s a track team over there,” Sheppard said of the Chiefs receivers. “Andy Reid’s always built his teams like that. […] that’s how they bleed you. They cut you, cut you, cut you, and then they knife you, and it’s death by a thousand cuts with them because they can do it in a bunch of different ways.”
While Sheppard is right in that being Kansas City’s offensive design, and they’ve put up numbers in this area, their quick passing efficiency has not been consistently reliable. Most of the production has been a product of creative play design instead of production through effort, something we see in their -8 yards after contact over expectation (YACOE, 30th).
Meanwhile, the Lions are third in defensive efficiency when defending the quick passing attack, per Next Gen Stats. Detroit has accomplished this with their press-man coverage, taking away the early portions of routes. Here’s more from Next Gen (bold emphasis from writer):
“The Lions defense has utilized man coverage on 42.2% of opponents’ dropbacks this season, the 4th-highest rate in the league. The Lions’ man coverage rate has jumped nearly 26 percentage points on third downs (68.1%). They have primarily used a man blitz on third down situations, deploying it on a league-high 44.7% of third down dropbacks. Matchup: Patrick Mahomes has struggled against man coverage this season, completing a career-low 52.1% of his passes while averaging just 5.0 yards per attempt, also the fewest in his career. He has generated -9.2 EPA against man in 2025.”
Mahomes’ EPA vs. man coverage checks in at 37th in the NFL among qualified quarterbacks.
Key 7: Hutchinson cover DBs
When the quick passes aren’t efficient enough, Mahomes will often push the ball down the field, and the Chiefs have found answers with the deep ball. Here’s Next Gen again:
“Mahomes has thrown deep (20+ air yards) on 13.1% of his attempts this season, his highest in any season since his 2019 campaign and the 6th-highest in the NFL. He has completed 7 of 24 deep attempts for 272 yards and touchdown in 2025, already nearly matching his deep completion total across all of 2024 (10). Tyquan Thornton has been on the receiving end of a team-high 5 of those completions, while Marquise Brown and Xavier Worthy each have 1.”
In order to have the time to take these deep shots, Mahomes needs to hold onto the ball via extended dropbacks, typically longer than 4.0 seconds, and he leads the NFL with 15 completions in this scenario. With the Lions’ defensive back injuries and the speed of the Chiefs’ receivers, this should be an area Kansas City tries to exploit.
To prevent these big plays, the Lions will need their replacement players in their secondary to step up, and the defensive line will need to put pressure on Mahomes in the pocket and shorten his time to throw—most notably Aidan Hutchinson.
Entering week 6, Hutchinson has 30 pressures per Next Gen Stats and 31 pressures per PFF, good for second in the NFL on both data websites. His 0.74-second “get off” the snap average is second in the league, but his time to pressure, 2.88 seconds, is average because he is facing double teams and chips at the fourth-highest rate in the NFL. Hutchinson lines up over the left tackle slightly more than the right tackle, but he’ll face off with both Chiefs offensive tackles.
Hutchinson will need to be at his best in this game to help cover the potential deficiencies in the secondary. And while that means getting pressure on Mahomes, it could also mean drawing extra attention and freeing up rushing opportunities for his teammates—like we saw in Baltimore.
One player who could clearly benefit from Hutchinson garnering extra attention is Al-Quadin Muhammad, who has stepped up of late and is beginning to be recognized for his efforts. Per Next Gen Stats, Muhammad has 19 pressures (14th) and a 19.8% pressure rate (1.6% above Hutchinson’s 18.2%). Muhammad has also been drawing his fair share of double teams, but he’s also been very efficient when singled up (see chart below).
With both Hutchinson and Muhammad performing well versus double teams and in one-on-ones, the Chiefs could keep in extra blockers, which also helps the secondary with one less skill player to cover. It’ll come down to efficiency, but the Lions have the personnel to disrupt the Chiefs’ passing game, even with a banged-up secondary.
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