Quick Slant - MNF: The Chiefs' Voltron
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant
The Commanders had a moment, fleeting as it was, when it appeared they could be the team to beat in the NFC East. The Eagles had lost two straight, including a puzzling dismantling by the Giants on TNF. Despite their nearly unstoppable offense, the Cowboys’ D was nonexistent. And the Giants were... well, the Giants.
For three days in Week 6, the Commanders appeared to be the team to beat. Then came Monday night, a narrow loss to the Bears; then Week 7, a drubbing at the hands of the Cowboys, and another injury to QB Jayden Daniels, the reigning OROY. Now 3-4 and without their star QB again, the Commanders stare headlong into a three-game trudge through the NFL’s best. As quickly as optimism surged in D.C., it was replaced by even greater doubt.
Pragmatically, despite all their recent dysfunction, the Commanders are still in the mix. Even if they drop the next three, nothing is impossible with Daniels at the wheel if they can just get there. And if they manage to steal one win along the way? Then we’d really have something.
Anecdotally—emotionally, even—Washington already feels like they’re down to the felt. This was supposed to be the formula: acquire a cheap QB who can perform at a high level and surround him with talent while he’s on a sweetheart deal. When the Venn diagram converges there, the theory goes, you get two or three chances with the best of both worlds. Consequently, it generates a sense of quiet desperation when one of those seasons within that intersection starts to waste away.
This was supposedly the Chiefs’ secret from 2017 to 2020. But strangely, the dynasty in Kansas City marches onward, and elsewhere—from Trevor Lawrence to Caleb Williams to C.J. Stroud to Tua Tagovailoa—nothing has panned out the same way. Maybe, all along, the formula wasn’t the key; it was Mahomes himself. And it’s continued to work, even as Mahomes hasn’t been quite himself.
There have been two camps. One believed Patrick Mahomes’ best days were behind him—that his early success was fueled by a set of teammates, irreplicable now, as he commands too high a percentage of the cap. Or, perhaps, that the Chiefs had become more defensive-minded and were willing to grind out close games, using Mahomes as a third-down booster. Or he’d simply lost his mojo. The point isn’t the reasoning; the point is that this camp believed the Mahomes of old would never return, and that the new Mahomes was destined to be a game manager for a team that may well be set up to win games, but for whom offensive firepower was a thing of the past.
The other side believed Mahomes was the same man he’d always been, lying in wait as the weapons regenerated around him—that when the forces of WR Rashee Rice, WR Xavier Worthy, WR Marquise Brown, and TE Travis Kelce finally joined forces to form a Chiefs’ Voltron, the old Mahomes would reappear. They argued that setbacks had postponed the inevitable. But they believed the stars would ultimately align.
Well. The Chiefs' Voltron has finally come together, and it really is powerful. Well... we think so, anyway.
Last week, the Voltron erupted to dispel the Raiders into a rare kind of oblivion for the modern, parity-prone NFL. But that was also the Raiders. It raises the question: how much did that exercise truly teach us?
Week 8 was meant to be a better test against Washington, a team that, despite some struggles, was part of 2024’s final four. Yet just as they got their starting WRs back, it was offset by the loss of Daniels.
Based on the 11.5-point spread, it seems the Chiefs’ Voltron will again apply its precision-built juggernaut to crash-test dummies. But this is the parity-prone NFL, and underdogs have a way of smacking an unstoppable machine in where the gears don’t grind.
Commanders
Implied Team Total: 18
Despite being 3-4, the Commanders project for nine wins based on Pythagorean expected wins, putting them about 1.7 wins below expectation.
The Commanders are -0.3%, which is neutral in pass rate over expected (PROE, 14th). They have the fewest plays from a neutral script coming into Week 8 (167). They have run the sixth-most plays while trailing by seven or more points (179), and in those situations, their pass rate has climbed from 55% to 61%. All in, they’ve logged 63 plays per 60 minutes (T-17th), and their QBs have combined for 249 dropbacks (25th).
Coming into the season expecting much from their sophomore signal caller, the Commanders have had to spend a fair amount of time with their backup QB, Marcus Mariota. Daniels has scored 22.13 fantasy points per game (FP/G, 10th), while Mariota has been worth 15.57 (30th).
Mariota is a quality runner as a QB, which shows up in his 31.3 rushing yards per game (8th), and this gives him the rushing platform we crave for fantasy. However, he is not quite as good in this area as Daniels is.
And, as a passer, he lacks more severely.
Still, Mariota has not signaled doom and gloom for the Washington offense in games when he’s been called upon. Despite being statistically inferior to Daniels, the team has scored more effectively in games where Mariota has played.
As a bonus, the Commanders will welcome back WRs Terry McLaurin (quadriceps), who was hurt in Week 3, and Deebo Samuel (bruised heel), who missed Week 7. This should help stabilize some aspect of the offense, even while it relies on a backup QB.
Samuel (25.0%) and McLaurin (19.0%) are the top two targets in the offense. Only they and TE Zach Ertz (15.9%) have a market share greater than 15%.
It’s a short sample comparison, especially considering McLaurin only has two complete games under his belt. However, Samuel has probably surprised many by being the top target earner thus far. Samuel is a unique player who plays at a lower average depth of target (aDOT, 6.5) and earns beaucoup YAC (176, 11th). Thus far, his aDOT is near to his career average (6.7), but his YAC/rec (5.2) is well below (9.1) and easily the lowest output of his career.
It's plausible that Samuel is just getting older. He’s 29, and he has always played a very physical brand of football. More likely, however, is that the Commanders are choosing to use him differently. Samuel has been used on fewer vertical and backfield routes; he’s been used more often on shallow/underneath routes, according to Fantasy Points data.
In particular, the reduction in backfield routes has likely affected his YAC. Typically, backfield routes create more YAC, and Samuel is averaging 8.7 YAC/rec on catches behind the line of scrimmage.
In a way, this should vindicate Samuel to those who have viewed him as a gimmick. By winning on a more traditional route tree, he has shown he can do the “normal” WR thing. To a degree, it’s like wondering whether Picasso’s style was compensation for a lack of talent until you see early works like Science and Charity or Portrait of the Artist’s Mother, which make it clear he could have been any kind of painter he wanted.
Kansas City’s defense allows the third-fewest points per game (17.7), but its underlying metrics reveal it as potentially overrated, ranking 10th in defensive EPA per play and 14th in defensive success rate. Their strength, however, is in stopping passing efficiency, where they rank seventh in defensive EPA on dropbacks.
The Chiefs run a fairly even mix of zone and man defense compared to league norms (which equates to about a quarter to a third in man). They run shell coverage 58.5% (4th). Their most common alignments are Cover 3 (25.8%) and Cover 2 (21.8%) zone. They don’t run any other alignments at 15% or higher, but they do run the most Cover 0, which is an all-out blitz. The Chiefs blitz 30.6% of the time in general (6th).
Fantasy Points’ coverage matchup tool determines which players have the best matchups based on the types and rates of coverage their opponents use. Based on this, Ertz draws the most favorable assignment against Kansas City, and he is expected to see a bump of about 22.1%. Samuel’s matchup is somewhat neutral (+1.3%) based on types and rates of coverage, and McLaurin doesn’t meet the minimum qualifications to receive a score.
PFF’s matchup tool is player-focused. According to their model, Mariota and all Commanders’ WRs draw poor matchups, while Ertz’s matchup grades out as fair.
Ertz has been pretty underwhelming as a fantasy asset in 2025. He is not a target earner—this, despite having an extended run without McLaurin (or Austin Ekeler, who has been out since Week 2 with a season-ending torn Achilles). He is barely efficient, and he wouldn’t be at all if it weren’t for his four TDs (T-3rd).
All told, Ertz is a pretty scary TE to continue to run with at this point, and it may be that he’s just finally reached the end of the road; Ertz turns 35 in November. Based on a simple TDs/Yds model, he’s a candidate to regress negatively, having scored more than two TDs over expected.
Washington is expected to fare relatively badly in pass protection against the Chiefs. According to Fantasy Points’ OL/DL matchup tool, they have the second-worst matchup of the week.
Mariota handles pressure fairly well, curating a 72.1 QB Rating under duress (24th). He has actually maintained a minimal amount of reduction in QB Rating under pressure vs. from a clean pocket throughout his career.
Rookie RB Jacory Croskey-Merritt is coming off a disappointing week against a highly flawed Dallas defense, but the Commanders’ running game has otherwise been relatively reliable.
Croskey-Merritt is seventh in rushing yards over expected (RYOE) per attempt (+1.12) and 10th in fantasy points over expected (FPOE) per game (2.4). With good efficiency, it was expected that his role would expand, and it has. In the past two weeks, he has had a 60% snap share and 51% of team rushing attempts. Unfortunately, he is a relative non-factor in the passing game, so the Commanders will need to buck the ramifications of their highly negative point spread and the negative game script it would imply for him to maintain a meaningful workload.
If the team does get behind, look for RB Jeremy McNichols to factor. He has operated as the team’s passing-down back since Ekeler went down in Week 2. His involvement has also only increased, culminating in a 13% market share over the past two weeks. Of course, with McLaurin and Samuel healthy, the circumstances around McNichols’ share have changed, but as stout as the Chiefs’ defense has been against RBs, they are susceptible to being beaten by a pass-catching RB.
