The Chiefs are once again Super Bowl champions, and as it played out this year, the Raiders were the last team to beat them before Kansas City won six games in a row to win the championship.
It was the 20-14 Christmas day loss to the Raiders that Chiefs’ head coach Andy Reid referenced as the turning point in their season, and Raiders’ head coach Antonio Pierce shared last week about the approach he used to slow down Patrick Mahomes in the game.
As it turns out, it was just as much a mindset as it was a gameplan.
“We’ve got the Jordan Rules and what I’m calling now as long as I’m here, the Patrick Mahomes Rules,” Pierce said on Maxx Crosby’s The Rush Podcast. “You remember when Jordan was going through it with the Pistons, all those guys in the 80’s before he became Michael ‘Air Jordan’, the Pistons used to whip his a–. Any time he came to the hole: elbows, feeling him, love taps. We touched him. We’re in his head, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually. So, I showed those guys Jordan getting his a– whooped.”
For what it’s worth, the Pistons head coach that came up with ‘The Jordan Rules’ was the legendary Chuck Daly. He explained the strategy behind his Jordan game plan many years ago, and it sounds a lot like the way Pierce described defending Mahomes…
“If Michael was at the point, we forced him left and doubled him,” Daly told Sports Illustrated many years ago. “If he was on the left wing, we went immediately to a double team from the top. If he was on the right wing, we went to a slow double team. He could hurt you equally from either wing — hell, he could hurt you from the hot-dog stand — but we just wanted to vary the look. And if he was on the box, we doubled with a big guy.”
“The other rule was, any time he went by you, you had to nail him. If he was coming off a screen, nail him. We didn’t want to be dirty, I know some people thought we were, but we had to make contact and be very physical.”
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