Analytics Recap: Kansas City Chiefs vs. Las Vegas Raiders

The Kansas City Chiefs fell to 4-1 after a stunning loss to the Las Vegas Raiders by a score of 40-32 on Sunday. The Chiefs had some pretty major issues defending deep passes, as they allowed Raiders quarterback Derek Carr to nearly double his 20+ air yard completions on the season with four coming against Kansas City.

Here are the advanced numbers for the game and the season on Ben Baldwin's stats website, rbsdm.com, and Football Outsiders.

The Raiders passing offense was remarkably effective in this game, having a 0.56 EPA per play and 41% first down rate. The Chiefs, on the other hand, had a rough go of it in their passing attack with 0.13 EPA per play and -0.09 EPA per play on early downs.

Henry Ruggs played incredible football in this one, adding 9.9 expected points on just three targets! That was more EPA than the Chiefs' entire passing attack over 55 plays.

Derek Carr blew Patrick Mahomes away in the EPA, CPOE, and QBR numbers, along with several more basic numbers (such as yards per attempt and passer rating), but there is a different opinion from the film-reviewers. Pro Football Focus (PFF) gave Mahomes an 81.0 grade for this game and Carr a 75.6 grade. Some things to explain this include the fact that Mahomes was robbed of big numbers on a couple of fantastic throws, like this absolute dime and this dropped pass by Nick Keizer. He also made this incredible play on a two-point conversion that made it 40-32 late. These don't help any of his results-based numbers, but they do help his PFF grading.

Mahomes had his fair share of big plays, but unfortunately, the most impactful play of the game for him was the interception he threw on 4th and 7 in the late 4th quarter. On top of that, two of the three most impactful plays for the Raiders were deep touchdown passes.

In terms of league-wide metrics, the Chiefs dropped from a clear top-four team last week to the seventh-best team for team offensive and defensive EPA. They dropped from fourth (-0.045) to 15th (0.052) in defensive EPA per play and, though they remained in fourth in offensive EPA per play, it dropped from 0.259 to 0.229.

For early-down passing rate, the Chiefs increased their percentage from 60.6% to 61.8%, but the Seahawks increased their lead for the league-high, going from 60.7% to 63.4%.

Lastly, we have the Football Outsiders numbers, notably Defense-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA). DVOA currently has a strength of opponent adjustment at 50% and rising until it hits 100% in Week 10. The Chiefs dropped from second to fifth in Overall DVOA, rose from fourth to second in Offensive DVOA, and fell from fifth to ninth in Defensive DVOA.

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