Expect plenty of Super Bowl trickery and scheming from Chiefs vs. Bucs

The shovel passes. The motions. The misdirections.

When the Kansas City Chiefs creep near the goal line, there’s no shortage of schemes and strategies they’ll use to score touchdowns. It’s something coach Andy Reid said he and his staff wanted to continue to do, even if he was raised in an era of simple power runs and I-formations.

“We try to have fun with it the best we can,” Reid said ahead of Sunday’s Super Bowl against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “We try to stay creative and have fun with it.”

The trickery saw its biggest audience in last year’s Super Bowl against the San Francisco 49ers, when four players in the backfield spun 360 degrees before running back Damien Williams took a direct snap and ran four yards to set up a touchdown two plays later.

It continued this season, most recently in the AFC Championship against the Buffalo Bills when the entire offense shifted right after the snap, but quarterback Patrick Mahomes tossed a short underhand pass to tight end Travis Kelce as he hid behind a pile of offensive lineman.

“Those plays give you a little more excitement,” Kelce said. “Getting excited for every single play in the red zone, especially for a game like this, you have to have that mentality. You want to get excited and put up as many touchdowns as you can.”

Buccaneers defensive lineman Vita Vea said those types of plays added another layer for his unit to expect.

“They have a lot of wrinkles on their side of the ball,” Vea said. “They have a lot of stuff that they do and we need to be prepared for.”