Week 5 Monday Night Jaguars-Chiefs: Advanced Review

One huge mistake, plus penalties and special teams miscues down the Chiefs in a game they should have won

The adjusted scores quantify team play quality, with emphasis on stable metrics (success rate) and downplaying higher variance events (turnovers, special team, penalties, fumble luck, etc). Adjusted expected points added (EPA), in conjunction with opportunity-based metrics like total plays and drives, projects adjusted points. Adjusted scores have been tested against actual scores and offer slightly better predictive ability, though their primary benefit is explanatory.

All 2025-2022 and historical Adjusted Scores and other site metrics are available in a downloadable format to paid subscribers via Google Sheet.

Find previous advanced reviews here

** Adjusted Scores table:

• “Pass” - Pass rate over expectation (based on context of each play and historical averages

• “Success” - Success rate on offense, a key metric in adjusted score vs actual

• “H & A” - Home or away team

JAX vs KC (-3.5)

This is likely the biggest and most meaningful swing in actual to adjusted scores I’ve seen in the four years doing these advanced reviews. The fundamentals have the Kansas City Chiefs as ten points better, yet the game finished with the Jacksonville Jaguars on top by three. The Chiefs were outstanding in offensive success rate (62%), but suffered an absolute killer turnover and suffered greatly in penalties and special teams.

We gotta start with the 99-yard pick-6 for the Jaguars, which came on an extremely favorable pre-play context for the Chiefs of 2nd & Goal from the 3 yard-line. The pre-play expected points for the Chiefs were 6.7, which translates into over a 90% likelihood of a touchdown. Instead, the Jaguars interception return for a score in the other direction results in seven points for them, making the EPA swing 12.7 points against the Chiefs and for the Jaguars.

That -12.7 EPA swing is the most negative play for any team this season, only ever so slightly lower than a Week 5, 2024, 100-yard pick-6 thrown by Gardner Minshew and the Las Vegas Raiders on 1st & Goal from the 5 yard-line (-12.66 versus -12.70). That play also resulted in a 42% swing in win probability, with the Chiefs going from 66% likely to win to only 24%.