Kansas City Chiefs: Six things to watch vs 49ers in Super Bowl LIV

CHIEFS RUN GAME

During the offseason, the Chiefs offense was dubbed with the nickname “the Legion of Zoom”, but for the bulk of this season, most of that zoom has been through the sky and not so much on the ground.

During the postseason, however, it seems that the run game is beginning to find its footing more and more. Against the Texans the Chiefs rushed for 118 yards and against the Titans they had 112. It’s worth noting that the leading rusher in both games was Patrick Mahomes, with 53 yards for each game.

It’s hard not to love the ability of the Chiefs quarterback to scramble and make something out of nothing. It’s a fairly overlooked commodity of Mahomes that perhaps teams are not accounting for as much, maybe because Mahomes is just not known for running, but as opposing defenses are rapidly discovering, just because he isn’t known for running, doesn’t mean he can’t.

Praises of Mahomes aside, having a team’s quarterback be the leading rusher speaks to a not very prevalent rushing attack, but this won’t be as big of a problem against the Niners as one might think.

Against the 49ers, the Vikings only rushed for 21 yards and the Packers only rushed for 62. San Francisco has proved they can halt a running game in its tracks, so strangely enough this might be the first game all season where not having a real strong running game might not be a big deal.

We obviously want to see Damien Williams with a few big runs or if Mahomes sees an opportunity to bust out a run for a first down or more, but the run game doesn’t have to be the end all be all here. It hasn’t been all season and that’s unlikely to change in the Super Bowl.