Chiefs vs. Rams was an incredible (college) football game

Now more than ever before, entertaining football is entertaining football.

The Chiefs and Rams played the best game of pretty much any NFL season on Monday. Los Angeles’ 54-51 win was a dramatic exhibition of offenses, packed with amazing moments in primetime.

It was also a lot like a college game.

Sometimes, people say any game with lots of points scored is a “college” game. It goes deeper than that, but sure, that’s a starting point.

For years and years, the college game has had more points. The NFL’s 24.2 points per team game so far in 2018 would be the most ever, but college has long been north of that. The average scoring total for FBS teams per game has been between 26 and 29 every year from 2007 onward and is at 28.9 this year.

The average college play gets more yardage than the average NFL play, but not by much — usually by 0.2 or 0.3 yards. This year, college is at 5.8 to the NFL’s 5.7.

But college teams play with a lot more pace. All but one year since 2005, according to data from SB Nation’s Bill Connelly, the average FBS team has run between 67 and 72 plays per game. NFL teams have run between 62 and 65 each year in that span. That’s what gives so many college games the track-meet feel Chiefs-Rams had.

So the NFL’s been moving in this direction, steadily. The Rams and Chiefs took that into overdrive with a night of high-volume, precision passing.

It’s not like that took the NFL by immediate surprise. The over/under was 63.5 points, the highest in the history of the league.

But it really didn’t surprise college fans, who watched Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes and Rams QB Jared Goff put up huge totals in air raid offenses that used to be considered the domain of college coaches exclusively. (A year after Goff turned pro, his Cal teammates played Oregon in the game with the highest college O/U ever, 89.5, and the game went over.)

Before the Chiefs drafted Mahomes in 2017, the history of air raid QBs in the NFL was bleak, including Goff struggling as a rookie under Jeff Fisher. But over the last few years, the league’s emphasized aerial distribution more than ever before. The last five seasons are the top five seasons in league history in passing attempts per game, as pro teams have embraced more and more concepts like those in pass-heavy college offenses.

On Monday, Mahomes and Goff combined to go 64-of-95 for 891 yards, 10 touchdowns, and three interceptions, two of which came on late, desperate throws by Mahomes. It was one of the most bonkers games in league history.

It looked similar to the night Mahomes and Baker Mayfieldrewrote the NCAA record books in 2016. It looked like one of the games Goff played at Cal under Sonny Dykes, the coach who was first to use Rob Gronkowski in the spread option game when both were at Arizona in the late 2000s.

It’s not just that these teams chucked the rock all around the field a ton. They also ran a lot of plays that, before, you’d pretty much only find on campus.

That includes high school campuses, as most coaches will tell you ideas generally filter upward. Some of these plays were spreading in college in the 2000s and early 2010s before getting big in the NFL four-ish years ago.

They included this play by the Chiefs, basically a shotgun pass version of the triple option: a screen to Tyreek Hill, a swing to Kareem Hunt, or a little dump off to Travis Kelce, with all three options coming in different thirds of the field:

This lovely Rams play looks like a split zone run before it looks like a swing to a tight end before it becomes effectively a shovel to a slot receiver who’d been blocking down:

This speed option by the Chiefs, who didn’t mind Mahomes getting dirty:

This Rams screen to Todd Gurley, which deployed a pre-snap jet motion to clear out exactly the spot where the ball was going:

And this sublime Hunt touchdown, which came after the Chiefs used sweep motions to both Hill and Demarcus Robinson to get the Rams going the wrong way:

Again, none of this is brand new. Just about the whole league was dabbling in these concepts a year ago, with these teams heavily involved in the revolution. The Eagles-Patriots Super Bowl was loaded with college influences. It’s no wonder people are talking about Oklahoma’s Lincoln Riley going to the Browns and, in the other direction, mentioning Chiefs offensive coordinator Eric Bieniemy as a candidate for Colorado’s open job.

At various points, Rams-Chiefs was like a college game out of different conferences.

All night, there was incredible passing that looked like it had no resistance. A Big 12 game, for sure.

There were a bunch of penalties and weird turnovers at a late hour on the East Coast. A Pac-12 game, absolutely.

Just before the end of the game, the Rams’ Johnny Hekker hit a 68-yard punt. That there is a Big Ten game, probably one involving Iowa and/or Michigan State.

The game had players who were actually getting paid. Just like in the SEC. (Haha, that’s a joke. Partially.)

The evidence was already there that the stylistic walls between college and the NFL were breaking down. This game was like a wrecking ball.

Increasingly, football’s just football. That benefits players making the jump from one level to the other, the coaches evaluating them, and definitely all of us watching the games.