Where are the Targets Going?

The latest newsletter from KCSN Sports Data Scientist, Joseph Hefner.

It’s the bye week. It’s also the midpoint of the Chiefs regular season. Nine games played. Eight games left. The Chiefs are the one seed in the AFC, even with a bad loss to the Broncos in week 8. The defense is playing absolutely lights out, and our offense is somehow keeping pace with the top offenses in the league, by most metrics.

Nevertheless, it seldom looks easy for our offense, does it? Oh, there’s a couple drives a game that look good. The first touchdown drive against the Dolphins looked absolutely effortless, didn’t it?  I thought, “Here it is, the REAL Chiefs offense again!” when I saw it. Then we went on to punt on our next three possessions.

We can all see the problems on offense. It’s not just the Chiefs offense, of course. As I wrote last week, offense is down across the league. We just notice it more because its OUR team. And also because our offense has been so far above and beyond other offenses the past few years that the efficiency drop is more noticeable.

With that in mind, I wanted to take a holistic look at what our receivers are doing on offense. It’s pretty clear that our pass catchers are a big part of the problem on offense, even if the overall numbers aren’t bad.

The Fantasy Points Data Suite includes data on what route the targeted player ran for any play with a target. I took that information and created a table of what routes the Chiefs are targeting. This data incorporates both our offensive scheme and Mahomes’ offensive tendencies.