Did the Titans really steal their touchdown play from the Chiefs?

Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images

Derrick Henry scored out of the wildcat — but it wasn’t a play stolen from the Kansas City playbook.

Derrick Henry scored the AFC title game’s first touchdown on a wildcat keeper from three yards out. It was an innovative play that split quarterback Ryan Tannehill to wideout and had Henry take the snap, fake a jet sweep handoff, and then dart through a wide hole in the opposite direction and into the end zone.

Seconds later, quarterback-turned-announcer Tony Romo figured out where he’d seen that play before — and accused Titans head coach Mike Vrabel of some light plagiarism.

“Tennessee, I think, stole this play from Kansas City,” Romo told the broadcast audience during replays of the touchdown. “Kansas City ran this play, I believe in Week 10, with Travis Kelce running the ball [the Chiefs actually ran that play in Week 14 vs the Patriots, as Romo’s broadcast partner Jim Nantz would later point out] ... Teams steal plays if they’re really good. It means Andy Reid had a good one and they stole it from him.”

In a rare misstep, Romo was wrong on two different counts. Not only was the Kelce touchdown he thinking of from a different game, but it was also a different play.

No, Mike Vrabel didn’t steal the Chiefs’ wildcat play in the red zone

Let’s take a look back at the Kelce touchdown that helped put away the Patriots and clear Kansas City’s path to the No. 2 seed in the AFC side of this year’s playoffs.

The plays had a similar origin: a non-quarterback taking a snap before faking a handoff to his right, then weaving his left and into the end zone against a supercharged opponent. However, the two formations here are very different. Kansas City jammed three players into a shotgun formation that looked like a hastily drawn sign of the cross. Two split wideouts left just five blockers up front for Kelce, who found just enough daylight through a spread-wide Patriots defense to find the end zone.

Tennessee, on the other hand, kept seven men in tight at the line of scrimmage, staying true to the power-run roots that turned Henry from “pretty good running back” to “destroyer of worlds” this postseason. While the Chiefs threw several different options into the mix to keep the Patriots disoriented — the fake handoff to the right, a deep option pitch-back, and two low-effort WR routes (who were never getting the ball, but still had to be accounted for) — Tennessee went down a less complex road.

The Titans only really had two non-Henry options here: the jet sweep to a motioning A.J. Brown (who’d already burned Kansas City for a long completion on his team’s opening drive) and Tannehill, who probably wasn’t getting the ball after splitting out wide. Even so, the Chiefs followed the burly Brown, built like a bruising tailback at 6’1 and 225 pounds, just long enough to expose an open running lane for Henry.

The play worked in Kansas City, but it wasn’t an elaborate ruse or a case of Vrabel turning Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy’s own innovations against him.

The Titans’ 2019-20 success was built (at least a little) on trick plays

This was a different play from a Titans team that had used Henry out of the wildcat multiple times throughout the year. That includes his picture-perfect jump pass touchdown to Corey Davis in Tennessee’s Divisional Round win over the Ravens.

The club’s decision to run out of the wildcat deep in the red zone wasn’t plagiarism from the Titans. It was just what they’re good at. Vrabel spent his pro career as a linebacker and still caught 10 touchdown passes as a player. Offensive linemen caught three touchdown passes for his team this season — including Dennis Kelly’s 321-pound score one drive after Henry found the end zone.

While it may have invoked memories of that Kelce touchdown run in the regular season, a look at the tape suggests the two plays were pretty different — even if they had similar outcomes. The Titans didn’t steal anything. They’ve been into weird stuff all season.