Chiefs-Texans snap counts: Kareem Hunt is getting most of the work

How did Kansas City use its players in Saturday’s game against Houston?

On Saturday, the Kansas City Chiefs recorded a 23-14 Divisional win over the Houston Texans, allowing them to advance to this Sunday’s AFC Championship on GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium.

Let’s look at how the Chiefs used their players in this game.

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Starters (offensive): WR DeAndre Hopkins, LT Joe Thuney, LG Mike Caliendo, C Creed Humphrey, RG Trey Smith, RT Jawaan Taylor, WR Xavier Worthy, TE Travis Kelce, WR JuJu Smith-Schuster, QB Patrick Mahomes and RB Isiah Pacheco.

Starters (defensive): DE Michael Danna, DT Tershawn Wharton, DT Chris Jones, DE George Karlaftis, LB Nick Bolton, LB Drue Tranquill, LB Leo Chenal, CB Trent McDuffie, S Nazeeh Johnson, S Justin Reid and S Bryan Cook.

Did not play: QB Carson Wentz.

Inactive: DB Deon Bush, CB Keith Taylor, LB Joshua Uche, OL C.J. Hanson, OL Wanya Morris, OT Ethan Driskell and DE Malik Herring.

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The big takeaway

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Running back Isiah Pacheco has been the starter for five games since returning from injury — and has been used in less than 50% of the snaps in all five of them. In the last three of these starts, running back Kareem Hunt has had more snaps than the starter. It’s clear that the team has come to depend on Hunt in key situations — and these have outnumbered Pacheco’s opportunities.

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Offensive takeaways

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There was only one offensive position group where we saw anything particularly noteworthy about the Divisional round game: wide receiver.

Starter Xavier Worthy (82%) and Hollywood Brown (65%) led all the wideouts. But the other starters — JuJu Smith-Schuster (43%) and DeAndre Hopkins (31%) — were on the field for fewer than half of the snaps.

While there have been a handful of other games this season where this has happened with Smith-Schuster, it’s only the second time we’ve seen it with Hopkins. In fact, his snap percentage has been steadily declining in recent games. Saturday’s game was a season-low.

Justin Watson (8%) also fell to his lowest percentage this year. In the most important part of the season, it appears the Chiefs now consider Worthy and Brown to be their key wide receivers.

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Defensive takeaways

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On defense, only the secondary gave us anything to talk about. Jaylen Watson (58%) got plenty of playing time as he returned from injury. Based on Andy Reid’s Monday remarks, we can expect Watson to play across from Trent McDuffie for virtually all of the season’s remaining defensive snaps.

Cornerback Nazeeh Johnson (51%) still got plenty of playing time, while rookie corner Christian Roland-Wallace (5%) got surprisingly little; as recently as the Week 17 game against the Steelers, his use was above 60%. Cornerback Joshua Williams went back to being used only on special teams, while safety Jaden Hicks (74%) has clearly solidified a significant defensive role.

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Data

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Offense

Defense

Special Teams

All Snaps

Editor’s Note: Arrowhead Pride obtains snap count data from the NFL’s game stats and information system, which allows us to break out snap counts by run or pass on offensive and defensive plays. Because GSIS data ignores plays that were nullified by penalties, total offensive and defensive snap counts will vary from other sources, which get their data from NFL Gamebooks