2024 NFL Offensive Player of the Year Odds and Best Bets
Sam Choudhury
The New England Patriots won 11 consecutive division titles from 2009 to 2019, which remains the all-time NFL record. The Kansas City Chiefs can’t quite catch them yet, but they will become the second team to have a decade-long division title streak if they beat the Los Angeles Chargers on Sunday night.
We’re going to see both the Chiefs and the Chargers in the playoffs pretty much no matter what, but given that fact, the stakes for this game are still very high. Kansas City needs to win to keep their distance from the Bills for the bye week – despite being a game ahead of them in the standings at the moment, they’ve lost the head-to-head tiebreaker and DVOA thinks Buffalo is a significantly better team. The Chiefs win the bye week in our simulations 48% of the time with a win, and only 19% of the time with a loss – they do not have any slack to play with. A loss also keeps the Chargers alive with a realistic chance to claim the division. Getting revenge for their Week 4 loss would give Los Angeles a 25% chance to take the AFC West from Kansas City – an uphill battle, for sure, but one they could still manage.
There’s a lot to play for, in other words, but we still don’t know exactly who is playing! The biggest storyline entering this game may be the Chiefs’ left tackle position, which has been a disaster for much of the year. Rookie Kingsley Suamataia started the season at left tackle, but struggled enough to be benched for Wayna Morris after just two games. Morris hasn’t exactly been the answer either, however, and the pressure keeps coming off the edge.
The answer, theoretically, is D.J. Humphries, who the Chiefs signed on November 26th. At press time, it has not been confirmed that the former Pro Bowler will be starting this week, but things do seem to be trending that way. Now medically cleared from the torn ACL he suffered at the end of 2023 and with a full week of practice, Humphries will start sooner rather than later.
Just how much have the Chiefs’ issues at left tackle hurt them, how much can Humphries help, and can the Chargers possibly take advantage of the swap to pull off an AFC-reshaping upset? Let’s use FTN’s StatsHub and our other advanced charting stats to dive in and see just what’s been going on.
Basics first. Kansas City ranks 21st in pressure rate allowed at 30.9% — below average, and certainly not where you want to be as a playoff team, but not actively terrible. The Chiefs give Patrick Mahomes more protection than the Vikings, Steelers or Texans, all of whom are in playoff position at the moment. They’re also 18th in adjusted sack percentage and 19th in quarterback hit rate. That seems to pass the sniff test more than ESPN ranking them fourth in pass block win rate!
The main difference between our middling numbers and ESPN’s high numbers is a definitional one. ESPN counts a block as being successful if it lasts at least 2.5 seconds. Well, Patrick Mahomes doesn’t release the ball after 2.5 seconds. The Chiefs are second behind only Philadelphia with an average time to pressure of 2.7 seconds. Almost more than any other team in the league, pressures in the Kansas City offense are on the shoulders of the quarterback because Mahomes will hold on to the ball for ages. Mahomes makes life tougher for his offensive linemen.
Of course, Mahomes makes life easier for his offensive linemen, skill position players, and team as a whole in every other aspect of the game. Even in a down year with a questionable receiving corps, Mahomes is still 11th in passing DVOA when forced to go beyond his first read and 13th in DVOA under pressure, and that doesn’t even add in his success as a scrambler. The Chiefs offense is designed to let Mahomes hold on to the ball for a long time because there’s few quarterbacks in the league you’d trust to find a way to make something happen when a play doesn’t work immediately.
But that same latitude given to Mahomes means that a Chiefs offensive lineman needs to maintain his block for longer than his counterparts, and it’s a test that both Suamaitaia and Morris have failed this season. That middling pressure rate allowed is for the line as a whole, but just under 40% of the Chiefs’ pressures allowed have come from one of the two left tackles; the left side of the line repeatedly collapsing. That’s why looking at overall pressure numbers can be misleading here. Joe Thuney and Creed Humphrey are two of the most consistent pass protectors in the league, while Jawaan Taylor and Trey Smith have been about average this season. No team has allowed more pressures or a higher percentage of pressure from their left tackle spot than the Chiefs.
Enter Humphries. In Arizona last season, Humphries allowed 23 pressures by our charting for a 4.1% pressure rate – ninth among left tackles. Compare that to Donovan Smith, who allowed 36 pressures and a 7.1% pressure rate, 34th among tackles, and you can see both why the Chiefs decided to roll the dice bringing in the injured Humphries rather than bringing in Smith, who already knows the system and would presumably have a less steep learning curve when stepping in. Humphries was also asked to hold his blocks for quite a while in Arizona, with both Kyler Murray and Josh Dobbs with times to throw over 2.6 seconds last year, so he won’t be too thrown off by Mahomes sitting forever in the pocket.
The Chargers are not exactly crying over the Chiefs’ issues with protection. Remember, in Week 4, Los Angeles was out both Rashawn Slater and Joe Alt, while Justin Herbert was fighting through injuries himself. They were pressured 13 times and had only 14 unpressured pass attempts as they couldn’t get the passing game going. They’d love to return the favor on Sunday night.
The Chargers’ defense has not been a pressure-generating machine thus far this season. Their 27.4% pressure rate ranks 21st and they have the sixth-longest time to pressure at 2.6 seconds. In the Week 4 matchup, Mahomes averaged 3.0 seconds to throw and 3.8 seconds until pressure, more than willing to stand in for ages against a Chargers defense that simply could not break through. They did eventually get up to nine pressures on the night, but Mahomes had all day to work for most of the game, only ever really getting pressured because the Los Angeles secondary did a good job taking away his options downfield.
Of course, the Chargers were also missing Joey Bosa that week; that was the first game he missed with his hip injury. Bosa’s been hampered by that hip all year long and has not been the Joey Bosa we’re used to seeing, but he has been ramping back into action as the year has gone along. Last week against Atlanta, he played a season-high 59 snaps as he’s working back into form. A healthy Bosa would be a major boost for the defense, but they’re more likely to be able to count on Khalil Mack and Tuli Tuipulotu The Chargers don’t really play their edge rushers by side, but there’s been a slight trend for Mack to be lined up on the right more often than not in recent weeks, so he should, in theory, be Humphries’ biggest challenge in his Kansas City debut.
It’s really unfortunate timing for Los Angeles. Even a still-ramping-up Humphries is likely to provide a more stable foundation for the Chiefs’ offense to work from. A healthier Chargers defense against Morris would be a significant issue for Kansas City to puzzle through, as they have the horses to overload the left side of the line and ask serious questions of Mahomes. Mahomes would likely still answer most of them successfully, as he has for most of the season, but it was an area of weakness to potentially attack.
It’s possible Humphries waits one more week before getting his first start, or that he’ll be rusty in his first game back – Los Angeles should send some twists and blitzes his way early and really test the health of that knee. The Chargers really don’t blitz all that much, though. Their 24.4% blitz rate ranks 21st in the league, so it’s not really something in Jesse Minter’s wheelhouse. That will be something to watch early on Sunday night; just how do you attack a good tackle coming back from so being out of football for nine months? Normally, you don’t want to blitz Mahomes, but he only has a 9.7% DVOA against the blitz this season. That might be the recipe – send extra rushers at the new guy, see if he holds up, and hope to get some big plays early. Considering the skill, experience and plain good luck the Chiefs have had this year, that might be the way for the Chargers to generate a high-variance game-changing play or two and help them steal the game.
