These analysts said the 3-4 KC Chiefs would be fine. Here’s what the rest of us missed
Mina Kimes dropped her eyes, holding a hand up playfully to shield her gaze from colleague Marcus Spears.
Kimes — an ESPN writer and analyst speaking on the television show “NFL Live” on Oct. 26 — knew what she was about to say wasn’t going to go over well.
“I think the Chiefs offense ... is fine?” Kimes said, shrugging her shoulders while giving a smile.
Former NFL quarterback Dan Orlovsky stood up from his chair on set in response. Spears — a former nine-year defensive lineman in the pros — also rose, looking at the camera in disbelief.
Kimes laughs about the video clip now. Part of the show’s charm is playing up emotions for entertainment value, and Orlovsky and Spears both certainly did that in the moment.
It doesn’t change this reality, though: Kimes knew she was saying something unpopular about the 3-4 Kansas City Chiefs after a Week 7, 27-3 road loss to the Tennessee Titans.
“I had a sense that my feelings,” Kimes told The Star, “might not be shared by everyone.”
Yet, looking back, she was the one who was correct.
The Chiefs offense was just fine, finishing the regular season third in Football Outsiders’ DVOA offensive measure, with the team going 9-1 over the next 10 games.
And Kimes wasn’t the only national analyst trying to preach level-headedness during the Chiefs’ lowest moments of 2021.
Ben Baldwin received online pushback after Week 6 when he said it would be “incredibly silly” to think the Chiefs offense was broken. Mike Beuoy, meanwhile, followed along as people trashed his post-Week 7 power ratings, and specifically where he had the Chiefs.
To be fair, people in Kansas City were panicking about the team at that time too. What was going on? Could the issues be fixed?
Kimes, Baldwin and Beuoy were able to see through the noise, publicly declaring they saw something different in the Chiefs.
So here’s what they got right.
And also what the rest of us missed.
‘The thing that is most stable and predictable over time’
Baldwin, a contributor for The Athletic and a research economist for his full-time job, has grown a Twitter following by giving measured opinions backed by loads of data.
His declaration after Week 6 that “the Chiefs will be just fine,” then, wasn’t some hot take; it was a statement made based on what previous studies have shown most reliably wins NFL football games.
“Sports fans, in general, have a hard time thinking of how much of the outcome of certain plays or even certain games,” Baldwin said, “come down to just being lucky or unlucky.”
Baldwin stops here because he knows the emotions that the words “unlucky” and “lucky” can bring.
At the time, the Chiefs were extremely turnover-prone, resulting from bad plays by its players. In that sense, Baldwin says, those sequences are not “luck”; a fumble or a throw right to the other team is often a preventable mistake that a team should take responsibility for having happened.
Yet ... just because those were things that did take place doesn’t mean we should anticipate they continue.
“It’s really hard to wrap your head around the idea that there’s a lot of randomness that, at the time, had harmed the Chiefs in the past, but we shouldn’t necessarily expect going forward,” Baldwin said. “And that was a lot of the pushback that I think that I got.”
Though the Chiefs might’ve seemed turnover doomed then ... they weren’t. After giving it away 17 times in the first seven weeks, KC had just eight turnovers in their next 11 games combined — including none in their last three contests.
Meanwhile, after popping the hood on the Chiefs’ underlying numbers after Week 7, Baldwin found himself staring at a Ferrari V8.
Baldwin tracks a statistic called “Series Conversion Rate,” an offensive consistency measure that looks at the result every time a team gets a new first down.
Even after scoring only three points against the Titans, the Chiefs remained in their own stratosphere. No team had created more combined first downs and touchdowns with their offensive opportunities, while on the other end, no squad had punted less.
“Even in the quote-unquote ‘lowest part’ of the season for the Chiefs, they looked very good on that,” Baldwin said. “Like, one of the best offenses we’ve ever seen.”
That sort of measure was more likely to be sustainable than the turnovers.
And Baldwin had another reason to feel good overall about the Chiefs too.
There’s a reason that most projection systems use data from previous years as inputs. In general, analysts have learned over time that one of the best ways to predict future success is to look at what a team has been in its most recent seasons.
Baldwin kept going back to this. KC still had Patrick Mahomes, considered by some as the best quarterback in the NFL and even by his harshest critics as perhaps third-best. The QB had led the Chiefs to some of the best offenses in NFL history the last three years.
“From a statistical standpoint, we know that the thing that is most stable and predictable over time is how good the team’s offense has been,” Baldwin said. “So if a team has a multi-year stretch of having a really good offense and no major personnel or coaching changes, then there’s no reason to think that they’re not going to return to that at some point unless there’s a major injury.”
The Chiefs didn’t have that either. Receiver Tyreek Hill was playing, as was tight end Travis Kelce. And even after the Titans’ loss, people like Football Outsiders’ Ben Muth concluded that the Chiefs offense was “still as good as any in the league” because of the development he’d seen with the Chiefs’ offensive line early.
Baldwin admits he was concerned about the Chiefs defense at the time, even if history had shown going from “bad” to “average” there was a manageable jump teams could make.
He also cited someone else’s work, though, who was even higher on KC than he was.
And a man who claimed the 3-4 Chiefs still should be considered the third-best team in the NFL.
The Piggybacker
Beuoy, the creator of Inpredictable.com, says he doesn’t broadcast many of his own opinions about NFL teams.
But he does try to figure out what intelligent people think.
Each week, Beuoy uses computer coding to create a power rating for NFL teams. Or, more specifically, a power ranking of how good Las Vegas sportsbooks think each team is.
The method is simple on its face. For example, if the Chiefs are favored by 2 1/2 points at home over the Buffalo Bills one week — and home field is worth about two — then we can glean that oddsmakers and sharp bettors think the Chiefs are roughly a 1/2-point better than the Bills.
Do that for each team and compare all the results, and Beuoy says he’s able to reverse-engineer a de facto 1-32 ranking for each team in the NFL.
Beuoy has done this the last 10 seasons, and after doing some accuracy tests, he learned his setup is “pretty consistently the most predictive when it comes to figuring out who’s gonna win for the rest of the season.”
It was hard to convince anyone of that after Week 7, though.
At that moment, when Baldwin broadcast Beuoy’s NFL rankings in a tweet, the Chiefs were still third despite a 3-4 record.
And Beuoy followed along while his work created quite the online commotion.
“I’m assuming this is a joke?” one person wrote.
“Chiefs > Cards? Are you high?” said another.
“If you have watched all Ravens and Chiefs games this year and still rank the Chiefs higher maybe you should get a checkup at Lens Crafters bc your vision is failing,” added a third.
Hindsight, though, favors Beuoy’s numbers over public perception from the time.
The Arizona Cardinals started 7-0 but finished 11-6, dropping to the NFC’s 5 seed. Baltimore, meanwhile, began 5-2 before ending up 8-9 — and out of the playoffs altogether.
Beuoy says, for the most part, he enjoys seeing people’s reactions to his rankings and the public discourse they create. Inevitably, though, he says most disagree with his power rankings for a primary reason: Those people overvalue win-loss records when evaluating which teams are best.
That, though, is not the most thoughtful approach to take.
“In general, there’s a lot of randomness in NFL games, and you’re not gonna be too accurate if you’re basing all your forecasts on just a handful of games,” Beuoy said. “The fact that the Chiefs did rebound, reflective of where they were in the power rankings, is kind of a vindication of that approach.
“If you’re really trying to figure out what’s gonna happen in the future, looking at Vegas — looking at where people have to put actual money on the line — is a good way to get an accurate forecast.”
Something to note moving ahead: Vegas has remained skeptical of Tennessee, which earned the AFC’s 1 seed. The Titans, then, might be more vulnerable to a Divisional Round upset than other top seeds of the past.
In the end, though, Beuoy isn’t taking much credit for seeing the future. In fact, he embraces the fact that his numbers really aren’t “his” at all.
“I saw it because Vegas saw it,” Beuoy said of the Chiefs being better than early perception. “My ratings are piggybacking on the combined wisdom of people with a lot more football knowledge than I have.”
What should Chiefs teach us?
With two former NFL players staring at her in disagreement, Kimes cited many reasons for believing KC’s offense would be OK after a 3-4 start.
She talked about how the team’s offense rolled before the Titans game. How Mahomes was playing fine. How the Chiefs not only were committing turnovers but exceptionally costly ones at inopportune times.
It’s interesting, she says, to view that conversation now — and also see the online response it stirred from fans.
“The funny thing is, I don’t think, say, betting on Patrick Mahomes should be a controversial proposition,” Kimes said, “but apparently it is — or it was certainly, during a long stretch of the season.”
This brings Kimes to an overarching point she believes about humans: We all tend to get caught up in the moment.
Sports fans and analysts, meanwhile, are certainly not immune to that.
“I just think if you have a team with an elite quarterback and one of the best head coaches in the NFL, chances are good they’ll get through any short-term struggles,” Kimes said. “So I’d say that would be my takeaway, although it’s a little premature. We’ll see how things go in the postseason.”
Kimes has an interest in seeing how this turns out. Kansas City-Tampa Bay has been her Super Bowl pick since the preseason (with the Chiefs winning), and she didn’t waver with her confidence even when some others might’ve done so.
Then again, she had valid reasons to stand firm. Just like Baldwin and Beuoy, Kimes educated herself on the NFL stats and trends that matter most, then spoke openly about those favoring the Chiefs even when they were a sub-.500 team.
So what can we all learn from this Chiefs case study? Baldwin and Beuoy are in near agreement.
Don’t overreact to small-sample results. Know that turnovers are erratic and odd.
And also, never underestimate Patrick Mahomes.
“The way the current NFL environment is, the rule environment is slanted towards offenses. If you have a great offense, then it’s going to be really hard to beat you,” Baldwin said. “And I think the Chiefs offense is elite.
“As long as that’s in place, then I think we should continue to believe in them.”
This story was originally published January 14, 2022 at 5:00 AM with the headline "These analysts said the 3-4 KC Chiefs would be fine. Here’s what the rest of us missed."
