(610 Sports) – If you've watched much Kansas City Chiefs' football over the past four seasons, there's a really good chance you've seen them score a touchdown on a shovel pass. It has, after all, become a staple in the Andy Reid red zone offense over the past four seasons.
Following their wild-card playoff win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes joined KCSP's 'The Drive,' on Monday and one topic of conversation was the Chiefs' continued ability to score on shovel passes, at will.
"You guys run that play 7-10 times a year and it always works," said show host Carrington Harrison. "How does it work so well?"
"Yeah, well we dress it up nice and then that play, how we ran it, we ran it off of another play that we were very successful with, as well," said Mahomes. We have a lot of different options down there and I think that's just kind of the icing on the cake, the little shovel pass to him."
The "him" Mahomes is referring to, would be Chiefs' running back Jerick McKinnon, who took a shovel pass in for a 4-yard touchdown in the second quarter of Sunday's 42-21 win over Pittsburgh.
According to Next Gen Stats, the shovel pass touchdown to McKinnon was Mahomes' 11th since 2018, most in the NFL.
The shovel pass wasn't the only wrinkle that Andy Reid threw into the red zone play calling on Sunday. In addition to a big-man touchdown pass to offensive lineman Nick Allegretti, we also saw tight end Travis Kelce line up in the shotgun formation and throw a touchdown to Byron Pringle.
"It's a thing where I mean, obviously, we have so many different things we do, in the red-zone especially, that it's hard for defenses to account for all of them."
Hear the rest of our interview with Patrick Mahomes in the player below: