The Kansas City Chiefs are an unfamiliar foe to the New York Giants, other than getting to watch them on TV in almost every Super Bowl. Chiefs’ quarterback Patrick Mahomes has in fact only played the Giants once in his NFL career, and never at MetLife. (Mahomes was on the sidelines as a rookie the last time the Chiefs met the Giants at MetLife in 2017, a thrilling Giants overtime victory highlighted by Roger Lewis’ spectacular catch to set up the winning field goal.)
The good news: Unlike most Giants players, Russell Wilson is pretty familiar with the Chiefs, having played them as recently as Christmas Day last year.
The bad news: Wilson and the Pittsburgh Steelers lost to them, 29-10, in a game that was never really in doubt and that was probably his worst performance of 2024 (a Pro Football Focus passing grade of 51.8).
The Chiefs have some individual great players on defense, most notably defensive tackle Chris Jones, edge defender George Karlaftis, and cornerback Trent McDuffie. Still, they have been weak against the run this season (cold comfort to a Giants team that can’t run block), and their defensive front surprisingly hasn’t generated much pass rush.
We know what they can do on defense, however, since their defensive coordinator is Steve Spagnuolo:
The Chiefs have played man defense 35% of the time the first two weeks of the season, and 57% of those man snaps (20% of all snaps) have been zero blitzes – more than twice as much as any other NFL team. Overall, the Chiefs’ 43.9% rate on blitzes of all kinds leads the NFL:
Courtesy of Pro Football Reference
You can see from the chart above that their blitzes haven’t been all that effective: They’ve gotten pressure on only 10 of 29 blitzes, compared to second-place Denver’s 26 pressures on 30 blitzes. That may be one of the reasons the Chiefs are 0-2. Speaking of 0-2 teams, the Giants have also blitzed 29 times (30,5% blitz rate, 10th highest) and only gotten 13 pressures.
Russell Wilson fared well against the Kansas City blitzes, as he did in general last season:
Courtesy of Pro Football Focus
Wilson did fine when blitzed by the Chiefs, going 6 of 9 for 99 yards on that 25% of dropbacks. It was the 41.7% of dropbacks on which he was pressured, blitz or no blitz, that was the problem: 4 of 11 for only 35 yards and a measly 2.3 yard ADOT. The Steelers in general had trouble in the red zone, with a TD being called back by a penalty and then Wilson throwing an end zone interception.
Like most quarterbacks, Wilson doesn’t like being pressured. Like the good ones, he doesn’t mind being blitzed because he knows how to find the receiver who’s open because of the space vacated by the blitzer. Here are his PFF passing grades for the past decade sorted by no pressure/pressure and no blitz/blitz:
Thus, Sunday night, the issue may not so much be whether Spagnuolo sends Nick Bolton or Trent McDuffie after Wilson. It will more likely be whether the Giants’ offensive line can hold off Jones and Karlaftis.
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