After the first time, Tyrann Mathieu knew he wasn’t being summoned for a pat on the back.
Mathieu and defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo arrived in the offseason to fix the weakness holding back the Chiefs. They didn’t share in the team’s heartbreak of letting the Patriots score the walk-off touchdown on the first possession of overtime in last year’s AFC Championship game, but there was joint determination to build a worthy complement for an explosive offense.
“I can remember a couple of instances this year where I came off of a big game and he called me into his office and had this list of things that I could do better,” said Mathieu, the safety who notched four interceptions after signing a free-agent contract. “That’s the kind of thing that you want from a football coach. You want them to challenge you.”
Spagnuolo is headed back to the Super Bowl, 12 years after he masterminded the Giants defense that harassed Tom Brady and ruined the Patriots’ undefeated season in Super Bowl XLII. One year later, he was the hotheaded coaching candidate grabbed by the St. Louis Rams, on the opposite end of the Midwest state where he has re-risen.
That three-year head-coach stint didn’t work, and Spagnuolo ultimately returned to the Giants in 2015.
Three more seasons as defensive coordinator ended with four games as interim head coach and an interview for the full-time position replacing Ben McAdoo. The job instead went to Pat Shurmur — already fired and on to the Broncos — while Spagnuolo is a difference-maker again.
Steve SpagnuoloGetty Images“You can probably see that from the type of plays that Spags calls,” Mathieu said, “he just expects me to make a play. I think any time you’re around people that believe in you, it’s always going to have a positive effect on you.”
Defensive coordinator Bob Sutton was coach Andy Reid’s play-caller for Reid’s first six seasons in Kansas City.
But Sutton was sacrificed after the Chiefs fell “4 inches short” — Reid’s reference to an offside penalty that negated a game-sealing interception of Brady — in the AFC Championship game. Reid called upon the former linebackers coach on his Eagles staff — who was out of coaching in 2018 for the first time since 1980 — to overhaul the NFL’s 31st-ranked defense
“The defense has done a great job for Spags,” Reid said Sunday after a 35-24 win over the Titans. “The players believe in what he’s doing.”
The Chiefs allowed 28 points or more and 420 yards or more in five of the first 10 games — similar but more prolonged growing pains to what the Giants once experienced under Spagnuolo — but settled in after a Week 12 bye. Players actually say the turning point was Week 7 against the Broncos.
The defense improved from No. 27 in yards allowed, No. 19 in points allowed and No. 30 against the run after six weeks to No. 17, No. 7 and No. 26, respectively, by season’s end. Opponents averaged 10 points per game over the final five regular-season games and the defense didn’t cave after poor starts to the two playoff victories.
“It’s a mindset thing,” safety Daniel Sorensen said. “He creates a lot of confidence in us. We have a lot of confidence in him, that he’s going to put us in the right positions.”
There’s no better example of the turnaround than the last: Holding the NFL’s leading rusher Derrick Henry — the first running back in NFL history with back-to-back games of at least 180 yards on the ground — to 16 carries for 69 yards, and limiting the Titans to 109 total yards and seven points in the second half.
“We’re the baddest MFers on the planet,” said pass-rusher Frank Clark, another offseason addition brought in to replace Dee Ford, who committed the devastating offsides penalty and will be on the opposite side with the 49ers in the Super Bowl. “This group has the most heart. We didn’t break at the beginning of the season, the first six games.”
It’s a familiar tune to Giants fan. Will it have a familiar celebratory ending?
