The Xs and Os: How the Chiefs won the Super Bowl with a couple of ‘Corn Dogs’
With 12:08 left in Super Bowl LVII, the Kansas City Chiefs were trying to overcome a 27-20 deficit to the Philadelphia Eagles. They had the ball on the Philadelphia five-yard line with third-and-3, and the call was to have receiver Kadarius Toney use return motion to fool an Eagles defense that was going to jump on any pre-snap motion that had the receiver crossing the formation.
The play was called “Corn Dog,” and it was the first of two times the Chiefs zapped the Eagles on a similar concept for touchdowns. Here, Andy Reid explains it all to NBC Sports’ Peter King.
In this week’s episode of “The Xs and Os with Greg Cosell and Doug Farrar,” Greg (of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup) and Doug (of Touchdown Wire) chose to discuss pre-snap motion as one of the concepts that has taken over the modern NFL, and which better plays to discuss than the two that turned out to be the difference for the Chiefs?
“I loved the touchdown to Kadarius Toney — that was the first one,” Greg said. “Because Toney was split to the right — he was No. 1 to the right. And he started to go in motion as if he would go across the formation. And what made this play fun to watch was that the Eagles clearly had a plan for it. Darius Slay was lined up over Toney, and on this particular play, it was oow red zone, meaning that it was inside the 10-yard line. On this play, C.J. Gardner-Johnson was the post safety, What they wanted to do as soon as Toney went in motion… they anticipated it being across the formation, because the Chiefs do that a lot in the low red zone, is Slay and Gardner-Johnson were going to switch responsibilities. And you can see Slay communicate with Gardner-Johnson — what he’s saying is, ‘Hey, he’s going across the formation now. You run with him from your post safety position, and I’ll replace you as the post safety.'”
“They [the Eagles] had practiced this. This wasn’t done on a whim. So what happened was, Slay assumed that Toney was going across the formation, he took his eyes off Toney and assumed that he was just going to the deep safety position. Toney immediately went in return motion, meaning that he went right back to where he started, and Slay, because he took his eyes off of him, did not see him. So Patrick Mahomes had an easy pitch-and-catch, and Toney walked into the end zone.”
The Eagles went three-and-out on their next drive. Now, with the Chiefs up 28-27, it was time to expand the lead with a similar concept to the other side of the field. The Chiefs did so on this four-yard touchdown pass to Skyy Moore with 9:16 left in the game. This time, the return motion went to the left. Different reaction, same basic result.
“That one was just a case where Avonte Maddox, the slot cornerback… he just assumed that Skyy Moore would run across the formation, and he started to run across the formation, and took his eyes off Moore totally. Moore, of course, went in return motion, back where he came from. That was on the left side, and again, another easy touchdown.
“But the first [touchdown] to Toney was the really interesting one to me, because the Eagles clearly had a plan that they practiced, and the Chiefs countered it really nicely.”
