Linebacker Swapping and Spags' Adjustments

Diving into the numbers to explain why the Chiefs are rotating their MIKE linebackers early in games

The Kansas City Chiefs defense has been fantastic this season, and there’s little more that this team — or its fanbase — could ask out of them. Despite a lack of turnovers (ranked 28th in the league), this defense is top three in almost every single relevant defensive category. Steve Spagnuolo’s group has done what they’ve needed to on a week by week basis without having to rely on high-variance turnovers or offensive errors. Quite simply, they’re just plain good at playing defense.

However, the one element that sticks out week after week is the linebacker rotation to start the game when Nick Bolton has been healthy. We’ve seen offenses come out of the gates and try to exploit the Chiefs’ linebackers through heavy personnel passing, late motions that get good receivers into matchups with Bolton, Willie Gay Jr, and Leo Chenal. As of late, those early game drives have led to points — something that has come under further focus as the Chiefs’ offense has struggled to move the ball.

It’s after some of these early drives that Spagnuolo and linebackers coach Brendan Daly will swap out Bolton for another MIKE linebacker — usually Drue Tranquill, but it has also been Jack Cochrane — to seemingly try to rectify what the offense is doing to beat the Chiefs’ defense for a singular drive before putting Bolton back in the game. That has led to a lot of discussion that has (unfortunately) turned into a Bolton vs. Tranquill debate amongst some subsects of Chiefs’ fans. Today’s article will not be visiting that discussion. Instead, I’ll be diving into that MIKE linebacker swap, what’s happening on the field, and the numbers that show what that singular drive does to elevate the defense for the rest of the game.