Strength in Numbers: Actionable Stats from the Divisional Round

We’re going to get a lot of stuff wrong, but sifting through usage metrics can help us work through what matters and what doesn’t. That’s the goal of this article: to break down the most actionable takeaways from each week in a concise, numbers-filled format and work through what’s important. From here on out, we will only focus on teams who are still alive in the playoffs. Let’s get right to it:

1. In their first playoff game, the Chiefs expanded Marquise Brown‘s role, as he ran 25 routes on 34 Patrick Mahomes dropbacks. Despite that, he failed to record a reception, particularly surprising after he had 18% and 20% target shares in his first two games of the year despite running a route on 49% and 33% of dropbacks. Still, it’s a good sign for Brown’s AFC Championship outlook that Kansas City is willing to expand his workload, something we haven’t seen yet with DeAndre Hopkins (14 routes on Saturday). Nuk had just one more route than JuJu Smith-Schuster, while Justin Watson‘s workload was chopped all the way down to four snaps. Xavier Worthy remained in a full-time role, which he has been in since the midpoint of the season, running 30 routes and finishing as the only Chiefs WR with a catch. Unsurprisingly, Travis Kelce had eight targets on 25 pass attempts for a 32% share — we’ve consistently seen Kelce’s role increase in the playoffs, and K.C.’s first playoff game was no exception.