What to Watch for in Super Bowl LV

What can we expect to see from each team on the field Sunday? Here are key players, matchups and trends.

At the end of Super Bowl week last year in Miami, our preview piece began with a not-so-subtle jab at the weekly slog, which, for the cynic, feels like surviving a hundred-hour commercial for not just football but also deodorant, insurance and neon-colored sports drinks.

How we miss all that now! Here in the Northeast, buried under two feet of snow as both teams finish their preparation, also from home, what we wouldn’t give for a circus. The smell of mass Old Spice body spray giveaways. The taste of some kind of miracle protein-laced beef jerky handed out as a promotion for some nebulous snack-subscription-box company looking to attract free publicity as thousands of tourists pass by. Ahh, memories.

As someone who covers football for a living though, what I miss most is the feel. My colleague, Jenny Vrentas, and I spoke about this on a recent Weak-Side podcast episode. Before the Broncos-Panthers Super Bowl, you could feel a palpable tightness with Carolina; a sense that the moment was too big. Jenny noted that, before San Francisco-Kansas City last year, there was a heightened paranoia among the 49ers. And looking at Jared Goff on the field before he faced the Patriots seemed to tell us something fortuitous was in store for New England.

All those opportunities for extra info have gone by the wayside for now as our country continues to grapple with a pandemic. So we’re forced to rely more heavily on what we’ve already seen, even though that can be a fool’s errand for someone like Andy Reid, Tom Brady or even Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, all of whom have revealed creative shapeshifts prior to some of their biggest games. As we settle in for a final preview, keep in mind the sheer level of play-calling talent and genius at work here. Two coaches with more than a century of institutional knowledge. The greatest preparation quarterback in NFL history against the greatest avatar for bending offensive norms in NFL history.

Here’s what we’re looking for in Super Bowl LV …

Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports (Remmers); Jeff Hanisch/USA TODAY Sports (Fournette); Denny Medley/USA TODAY Sports (Mathieu)

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1. If the Chiefs’ pass protection breaks down

Mike Remmers has played starter snaps in 13 games this year, so when Bucs defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul says something like, “I don’t even know who that is,” it’s important to realize that he’s talking about his own mindset and not a lack of respect for his opponent. We know this because Pierre-Paul watches film and Remmers is going to be all over the tape Todd Bowles has been screening this week. He’s actually played quite well this season. Sometimes we get caught up in the difference between the beauty of a premiere left tackle pancaking his opponent against the subtle, but almost equally effective player who survives the play by being an adequate roadblock.

Rewatching Remmers on the right side against Buffalo two weeks ago, he was that roadblock. There was nothing aesthetically pleasing about his snaps but his ability to hang on and Patrick Mahomes’s deft pocket movement created a manageable situation. That said, Tampa Bay will undoubtedly create more pressure than Buffalo did.

So what does that mean?

The Chiefs use a lot of 11-personnel (three receivers, one tight end) and have only attempted 100 passes with a second tight end on the field this season (that was 16th in the league this year, according to Sports Info Solutions). A second tight end would be the most likely scenario for help buttressing Remmers or Andrew Wylie on the right side if one of them exhibits an inability to slow down either Pierre-Paul or Shaq Barrett charging off the edges. When Kansas City does throw out of a two tight-end set, the Chiefs are the fourth-most effective team in the league at doing so. They have a success rate above 60%. So they can still survive even if they have to clunk up the backfield a little bit to keep the pocket clean.

I think it’s important because Kansas City has to throw the ball. Often. According to Sharp Football Statistics, Kansas City threw the ball 80% on early downs through most of the game in its last meeting with the Buccaneers, due to a complete inability to run the ball, which left them in significant holes when they tried to establish the ground game on first down.

As it was, the Chiefs were leaning heavily on Eric Fisher to help them establish that small semblance of a running game. Before Fisher’s season-ending injury, the Chiefs were second among all playoff teams in runs off the left tackle’s hip. Most of the time, they were counting on Fisher to activate that part of their offense.

2. Abandoning precedent for Tom Brady

As we wrote after the AFC championship game, teams facing the Chiefs need to score and score often. While I doubt that the Buccaneers will try something faux-revolutionary, like going for two after every touchdown or trying more manageable fourth-down conversion attempts, they should throw the football more. Way more.

I liked this nugget from Sharp Football Statistics which mentioned that, for most of the season, the Buccaneers ran the ball 6% more on first downs than any team in football, despite the fact that those runs elicited the second-lowest yards per carry average in the league. Despite Tampa’s obvious superiority on the offensive line and a deeper cadre of functional power backs, they have Tom Brady. And for those who suggest he is no longer Tom Brady, what do you make of the fact that he is No. 1 in completions of 20 yards or more, passing yards on throws of 20 yards or more and passing touchdowns on throws of 20 yards or more?

Insanely enough, in their opening playoff win against the New Orleans Saints, they ran the ball on 83% of the time on first downs in the first quarter.

Maybe they are playing the long game. Maybe Brady realistically understands he’s on a pitch count. There has been some good writing this week on his unique ability to gauge his personal limits within the offense. That said, Kansas City’s defense is among the best in football and essentially shuts down drives if they can force an opponent into third and long-type situations. If the Buccaneers continue to waste valuable time establishing a running game, they’re going to find their defense on the field more often defending the most potent quarterback in football.

Tampa Bay is one of a very, very small handful of teams that have adequate skill position talent to stay in a boat race with the Chiefs. Why keep them from touching the football?

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3. Keep your eye in the backfield

This season, the Chiefs put their own quarterback in motion before the snap, a kind of middle finger to defensive coordinators everywhere who thought they may finally be exhausting their supply of creative pre-snap eye candy.

Backfield motion helps everything. It helps quarterbacks identify defenses. It helps align defensive players in more advantageous positions. It forces defensive players to turn their bodies slightly to the left when the play is going to the right, which, at the professional level, is absolutely essential in creating space.

When the Eagles beat the Patriots in Super Bowl LII, part of their success was due to their use of “star” motion, which was a horizontal sprint version of what many arena football teams do before the snap to give their receivers a momentum edge.

With their offensive line woes, their well-established rushing woes and the pseudo one-dimensional nature of their offense (but what a dimension), Kansas City is going to mine the archives for any and every defense-busting pre-snap ballet they can find on film. Last year, some of the theatrics came from old reel-to-reel clips of a bowl game in the 1940s. This year? Who knows.

4. What about the Buccaneers’ pass protection?

One of my favorite pregame notes comes to us from Next Gen Stats, which had the Chiefs blitzing Tom Brady on 45.2% of their snaps in their Week 12 matchup, which Kansas City won 27–24. Brady was uncharacteristically bad on those high-pressure snaps (11-for-19, 1 TD, 2 INTs and a 60.1 passer rating). He was able to keep the Buccaneers’ offense in the game by making the most out of his nonpressure snaps.

It is one thing to say you can only beat Tom Brady when you get after him and another thing entirely to actually get after him. Few teams have a roster like Kansas City that has strategic interior and edge disruptors who can help create chaos in the backfield.

When you have a player like Tyrann Mathieu, who can make it look like he’s playing multiple positions at once and adjust the quarterback’s pre-snap calculus, it makes creating and dialing up pressure easier (especially when you also have sound cover corners to back him up, like Bashaud Breeland and L’Jarius Sneed). This could be the ultimate chess match that we view on Sunday: Tampa Bay’s willingness to pass above its comfort level against the Chiefs’ willingness to consider blitzing above their comfort level (only two teams blitzed the Buccaneers more often this season than the Chiefs).

On one hand, you do not want to remove a player from coverage when Tampa has so many talented pass catchers. On the other, Tampa does not have the kind of uber-playmaking running back out of the backfield that would make teams scared of taking a defender away from them. Leonard Fournette and Ronald Jones combined have about a 70% catch rate this year with 5.5 yards per reception between them. If I’m Steve Spagnuolo, I feel O.K. giving one of those up every now and then for the chance to take meaningful cracks at Brady.