Super Bowl Preview: Buccaneers Offense vs. Chiefs Defense
With an additional week to shake off a turnover-filled second half of the NFC Championship, can Tom Brady lead the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to the promised land and outpace the threatening Kansas City Chiefs offense?
It's a tall task, one that the Buccaneers couldn't pull off in Week 12 against the Chiefs - at home, much like this Sunday's Super Bowl. However, and stop me if you've heard this before: This is a different Buccaneers team than the one that faced Kansas City in the regular season.
In order to best preview Super Bowl LV, we're joined by Joshua Brisco of Arrowhead Report this week to analyze the matchups between the Buccaneers and Chiefs, beginning with Tampa Bay's offense and Kansas City's defense.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers offense
There aren't many offenses in the NFL that can keep up with the Kansas City Chiefs, that much is known. But if there's one team that's shown over the last two months that it has a chance, it's the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
The Bucs, in the seven games since these two teams last faced off, have found their groove offensively en route to an average of 30.3 points per matchup, scoring 30+ in each postseason game. Far different than the Tampa Bay offense that compiled 39 yards on an average of 2.8 yards per play in the first quarter against Kansas City in Week 12, a slow start the Buccaneers could not recover from.
Brady, aside from three uncharacteristic second-half interceptions in the NFC Championship, has been on a roll following the Bucs' return to action in Week 14. Getting in-sync with the weapons around him, Brady has averaged over 300 yards, 2.7 touchdowns, and 9.95 adjusted yards per attempt per game during that stretch.
As Ronald Jones II battled injuries at the end of the season, Leonard Fournette emerged as the Buccaneers bell-cow running back, scoring six total touchdowns since the bye week. Jones has returned to the lineup and the two split carries nearly evenly against Green Bay two weeks ago.
The Buccaneers offensive line has also stepped up and provided solid pass protection. Particularly, left tackle Donovan Smith has played some of the best ball of his career over the past six games, allowing just one sack and six quarterback pressures according to Pro Football Focus.
However, the matchup to watch on Sunday night will be along the interior. Although Ali Marpet and Ryan Jensen have played at an extremely high level at left guard and center respectively, right guard Aaron Stinnie has been solid but not great filling in for the injured Alex Cappa, giving up five QB pressures in two games. Playing three-technique on the left side of the defensive line, Chris Jones could create some significant issues for the Buccaneers as a dominant member of KC's pass rush.
Tampa Bay has been able to handle three top-seven regular-season pass defenses throughout the postseason thus far, finding ways to score points. Kansas City's pass defense is solid, perhaps underrated standing at No. 14 in the league, but the Bucs should make this contest a bit more exciting offensively than last time.
Kansas City Chiefs defense
The Kansas City Chiefs' offense earns the vast majority of the team's headlines — for good reason — but Kansas City's defensive renaissance can largely be thanked for the team's back-to-back trips to the Super Bowl.
Defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo came to Kansas City after the team's 2018-19 AFC Championship Game loss to Tom Brady's New England Patriots. That offseason also brought the hard-to-overstate addition of safety Tyrann Mathieu and a handful of other major personnel changes. Since then, the Chiefs' defense has been on a steady rise to where they find themselves now: a legitimately solid defensive unit that has consistently played its best in the playoffs.
The Chiefs' defensive line has two of the highest-paid defensive linemen in the league with defensive tackle Chris Jones and defensive end Frank Clark. Jones has been the more consistent and more disruptive pass-rusher, and his impact on Brady in Super Bowl LV will be a canary in the coal mine for both Brady and Spagnuolo early in the game. The pass rush has been successful with and without big plays from Clark, but if Brady holds the ball too long in the pocket, Clark should be able to clean up the mess from the edge.
The real story of the Chiefs' 2020-21 defense has been in the secondary. Without a household name outside of Mathieu, Spagnuolo has put considerable amounts of faith in his corners, particularly former undrafted free agent Charvarius Ward, veteran journeyman Bashaud Breeland, fourth-round rookie L'Jarius Sneed and second-year sixth-round pick Rashad Fenton. Breeland figures to match up well with Mike Evans, allowing the two physical players to have some excellent battles on the outside.
Ward should continue to strictly play on the outside, which could allow Tampa to create some advantage-Tampa matchups between Ward and Chris Godwin. Sneed has met virtually every match thrown at him this season and now primarily plays in the slot (and has also become an excellent blitzer, something he hadn't even done in college), so potential matchups with Antonio Brown should be closely contested and Sneed's top-end speed and athleticism should allow him to hang with Godwin as well. Even if Fenton, their fourth corner, ends up opposite Brown in the slot, Spagnuolo won't panic.
Expect Mathieu and fellow safeties Juan Thornhill and Daniel Sorensen to all be on the field together frequently on Sunday. Sorensen's best spot is in a pseudo-safety/linebacker hybrid role closer to the line of scrimmage, while Thornhill's centerfield play balances the defense nicely. When these two teams met in the regular season, Thornhill didn't seem close to 100% as he continued to play his way back from an ACL tear suffered in Week 17 of last season. In his two playoff games this year, he's looked like his pre-injury self.
Spagnuolo frequently goes with nickel and dime packages, which means the Chiefs' linebackers have been taken a bit out of the spotlight, especially against the Buffalo Bills in the AFC Championship Game, which certainly isn't a bad thing. Anthony Hitchens wears the green dot and sets the defense, but the linebacker group is thin, especially without second-round rookie Willie Gay Jr.
The Chiefs' defense deserves all of the slowly-but-steadily earned praise they've received in recent weeks, and they end up matching up well with a super-talented Buccaneers offense on paper. Expect Brady and his weapons to win a few matchups, but don't be surprised when the defense holds its own.
