“I thought we did a great job. That’s an explosive offense,” Reid said. “You’ve got to make sure where you come in with (pressure), that you keep that quarterback somewhat in the pocket the best you can, and he’s an unbelievable competitor. I thought our guys were able to do that up front.
“I thought our linebackers did a good job. We asked them to not only cover a great tight end, but also these receivers at times. Spags had a variety of things he was throwing at the offense, and I thought our guys did a nice job with that.”
Spagnuolo called plenty of zone coverage, making sure to have eyes on Jackson quite a bit. Interestingly, most of Jackson’s scrambles were against zone coverage, limiting the impact a bit, and three of his four sacks came versus zone, per Next Gen Stats.
But Spagnuolo also foiled Jackson with selective man looks, against which the Ravens QB went 6 of 15 for 81 yards. For the game, the Chiefs blitzed on 43.5% of Jackson’s dropbacks. The Chiefs even brought four all-out blitzes against the Ravens, perhaps inspired by the Texans’ blitz-heavy approach that had some early success last week.
Jackson said he wasn’t surprised by the Chiefs’ pressure but was caught off guard at how often they sent extra rushers.
“No, not really, because we’ve seen the film, blitz here and there, but 50 percent? That’s different,” Jackson said. “We wasn’t expecting that. But sometimes, you know, we have intermediate routes, and (the Chiefs were) jumping (them), you can’t just throw the ball and make them try to tip the passes, I’m trying to make something happen, but they did a great job.”
And they’ve done a great job most of this season, which has felt like no other prior Chiefs Super Bowl run. When the NFL announced its award finalists for the 2023 NFL Honors — get this — not a single Chiefs player or coach was among them. Don’t think Jones didn’t notice.
“I still think Spags should be up for Assistant Coach of the Year,” he said. “What he’s been able to do with this defense from last year to this year and how we were able to force a lot of guys to grow. You look at last year, we gave up a lot of big plays.
“Come back this year, I’ll say it right now, L’Jarius Sneed had an All-Pro year. Should’ve been an All-Pro. 22 (Trent McDuffie) had an All-Pro year. We can go on down the list, and those guys set the standard on the back end.”
The Chiefs will forgo the awards for a third Super Bowl title in a five-year span. The reason they’re even on the big stage again? It might be the phrase that best sums up the journey to this point: In Spags they trust.