How this ‘terrible’ Chiefs practice routine is a hidden key to their undefeated season

On a hot summer morning in St. Joseph — the site of the Chiefs’ training camp and the kind of heat that prompted players to mention it when sharing the forthcoming narrative — an Andy Reid practice script stipulated the ball be placed 80 yards shy of the end zone.

The players knew what awaited. They dreaded what awaited.

Over the next 12 minutes or so, they churned through 15, 18, maybe 20 plays without the escape of a single timeout.

“It was 23 (plays) my rookie year,” running back Clyde Edwards-Helaire recalled ... and then repeated, just to let you know the number is planted in his mind: “Twenty-three.”

They call it the Long Drive Drill, a name that probably didn’t require a crackerjack focus group, and its aftermath is described in the tone of can’t-shake-’em nightmares.

It’s one play after the next in rapid succession, with a practice-field play clock hurrying the pace. The pure exhaustion is the worst of it, some will tell you. The mental grind is even more brutal, others will argue.

Players have tapped out midway through the series. For some, the nausea, we’ll call it, has tapped them out.

“Terrible,” wide receiver Mecole Hardman described it.

“It will touch your soul,” receiver Nikko Remigio said.

“It sucks,” quarterback Patrick Mahomes said. “I mean, it’s the best way to say it.”

Or you don’t have to say anything at all.

Asked this week about the drill, rookie wide receiver Xavier Worthy spent the initial seven seconds of his reply without even speaking. Instead, a head shake.

The Chiefs’ scouting report on Worthy had featured one of his college coaches telling them, “He can run for days.” In his first encounter with the Long Drive Drill, Worthy needed to sub himself out of practice.

“Man,” he eventually replied. “Oh, my, God.”

The staple of an Andy Reid training camp — perhaps the reason players call the Chiefs head coach’s camp the toughest in football — has survived for a generation. There’s a self-explanatory, purposeful effect in the exhaustion, and even those who hate it most will point to its in-season benefit.

But there’s a difference — or at least an enhancement — to that benefit this year.

The Chiefs are using it to their advantage more than ever.

The Chiefs and the long drive

Mahomes and Tampa Bay quarterback Baker Mayfield met at midfield Monday night for a coin toss.

Mayfield called tails.

It landed on heads.

We know how the game would eventually finish — the Chiefs prevailed 30-24 in overtime — but it appeared Mayfield already knew the result while standing in the rain at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

As the coin stuck in the mud, he tilted his head toward the sky and closed his eyes.

The Chiefs took the ball and scored about six minutes later, Kareem Hunt finding the end zone from 2 years out. That touchdown capped a 10-play, 70-yard drive.

A long drive, you might say.

It’s one of many.

The Chiefs are averaging 9.1 plays per touchdown drive this season, using data on Stathead, their most since Mahomes became their starting quarterback in 2018. After the game-winner against the Bucs, 11 of their 22 touchdown drives — exactly 50% — have required at least 10 plays.

In his first six seasons, that number was at 30.9%.

It’s new to 2024, in other words. Hunt’s TD sealed the Chiefs’ third such drive Monday. All three of those long marches came in the second half. KC used back-to-back possessions of 13 and 15 plays to turn the tide of the game in the third quarter.

A familiar plot to the season.

A familiar plot to the preseason.

“Coach Reid prepares us for those moments,” Mahomes said. “It’s proven.”

“Having built that up as time passed, it really prepared me for the drive,” Worthy said. “Like when I’m in the game, I’m not tired.”

It’s long-drive season.

The Chiefs’ offensive formula

Kansas City’s 11 touchdown possessions of 10-plus plays is the most in the NFL, and there’s an interesting statistic beneath that. Eight of those 11 have either given the Chiefs the lead or tied the game.

That’s not a product of playing with the lead. Nor is it all the product of patience when playing from behind.

It’s necessity.

The Chiefs have to put together long drives, because, well, they can’t score quickly.

Kansas City is a top-10 scoring offense this season, which isn’t exactly worthy of a headline for a two-time defending Super Bowl champion (even after the uncharacteristic drop to 15th in scoring offense a year ago).

But it is quite notable when you consider this: The Chiefs are dead last in the NFL in explosive plays. Only 5.8% of their snaps result in an explosive play, per Football Insights. The team that employs Patrick Mahomes has fewer big-play moments than any in football.

Everything is to blame. They have the fewest 10-yard runs in the NFL: 10. (The Ravens, for comparison’s sake, have 47.) Among the teams in the bottom-10 in that rushing statistic, none are among the top-10 in scoring offense.

Except the Chiefs.

Mahomes has completed only six passes traveling at least 20 yards downfield this year. The Chiefs are 31st in the NFL. Only Miami has fewer. Among the teams in the bottom-10 in that downfield-passing statistic, just two are still in the top-10 in scoring offense.

The Bucs. And the Chiefs.

There’s nothing quick and easy — in the passing game or the running game. It’s an astonishing combination for a successful offense. The Chiefs have flipped the conventional numbers on their head.

How?

The long drives. We’re back here again.

The Chiefs have mastered staying on schedule. A once boom-or-bust offense (with a lot of boom) now has neither.

They lead the league in rushing success rate, which is basically a measure of whether the running game keeps an offense on schedule. They have the second fewest offensive penalties in the NFL, just a year after totaling the ninth most. Those two items certainly help factor into the league’s best third-down conversion percentage.

It’s a different concoction than the way the Chiefs moved the ball early in Mahomes’ pro career — when you watched their games wondering when, not if, the explosive play would arrive. And it’s a different concoction than literally anyone else in the league is using.

But while the just-stay-on-schedule method may be unfamiliar to the rest of the NFL, it’s recognizable to those in the building. They can trace it to a training camp drill.

A terrible one.

With a not-so-terrible effect.