Scout's Take: Chiefs face myriad of questions when it comes to defending Patriots' offense

FOXBOROUGH — Dan Hatman was a scout with the Eagles when Andy Reid was running the show in Philly. In 2011, he was sitting in a meeting room with the Eagles’ braintrust before a game against the Patriots.

“I’ll never forgot this,” said Hatman, who now runs The Scouting Academy. “Louis Riddick was our Director of Pro Personnel. He said 'The best way to prepare for the Patriots isn’t to advance scout them, but scout yourself.'

“They will find where you are weak and they will attack that,” Hatman said of the Patriots. “The goal is to make sure you are as strong as possible across the board, and assume they will go at you there.”

Ask Hatman -- who has watched a ton of film on both teams -- where that might be when it comes to the AFC title game between the New England and Kansas City, and he had a couple of quick answers.


First, the Kansas City defense is taking a long look at its defensive line and getting ready to focus on stopping the run.

“When you’re talking about the New England offense against the Kansas City defense, the last two teams to beat the Chiefs — the Seahawks and Chargers — got real good push from their offensive lines,” Hatman said. “I mean, they were ripping off eight, nine and 10-yard runs against them. There were a lot of missed tackles and the second level and the safety position. And the Patriots have just as talented if not better offensive line. That should give them a good opportunity to run the ball. The goal should be to make those pass rushers like Chris Jones into run defenders.

“Also, in that Chargers game, I was surprised as to how effective (Antonio) Gates was when he went against Kansas City’s third-level defenders. He’d get up on those defenders and he’d come away with some catches. Makes you wonder about (Rob) Gronkowski this week, even with Gronkowski slowed a bit.”

Second? When it comes to pass defense, the Chiefs have to figure out whether they want to try and go man — which is their preferred approach — or zone.

“That defense has held up at times, but I wonder how much man vs. zone the Chiefs will end up playing,” Hatman said. “Russell Wilson did a lot of this against them — at the start, Kansas City was doing well in man coverage, but almost every time they popped into zone, Russell starting eating them alive. Tom (Brady) is incredibly capable of doing something like that.

“I want to see how much man Kansas City ends up playing. Can they play man, and make Tom beat them with great throws into those small windows? Or do they try she bracket coverage and take some of the premiere guys away, but give Brady larger windows for those second-level receivers?

The Patriots used a steady and consistent running game the first time around to grind away at the Chiefs, coming away with a 36-24 edge when it came to time of possession. Part of that feeds into the theory the best way to beat Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City offense is to do whatever you can to keep him off the field as long as possible. But Hatman says that’s not necessarily the case.

“If you run the ball, the problem us Kansas City doesn’t need a 12-play, nine-minute drive to score points. The Chiefs aren’t slow and methodical,” he said. “In that first Patriots’ game, they scored 40 points and only had the ball 24 minutes.

“It’s easy, but you just need to get off the field. No (bleep), Sherlock! So you basically don’t necessarily run for the sake of killing time. You run because Kansas City has issues with effective run games. I certainly think New England’s offense can be just as effective against the Chiefs. But in this case, it’s just best practice as opposed to advanced game theory.”