Arrowheadlines: We’ve seen the floor for a Patrick Mahomes-led offense

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Ranking Every NFL Offense for 2025 | The Ringer

8. Chiefs

I believe that we have seen the floor for a Patrick Mahomes–led offense. The Chiefs were tough to watch last year. (Yes, I know that they went 15-2 and made it to the Super Bowl.) It was clear that they had an offensive tackle problem and a wide receiver problem. As a result, Mahomes’s average pass went just 6.4 yards downfield—that ranked 34th out of 35 quarterbacks, ahead of only Gardner Minshew. The Chiefs produced an explosive play rate

of just 8.9 percent, which ranked 29th. This was a sad, sad development. Mahomes’s talents used to be on full display every week when he was chucking the ball downfield and making those 1 percent throws. Now, he has been relegated to a checkdown, quick game, run-pass option robot.

This, of course, is not Mahomes’s fault. He is doing what’s asked of him, given the constraints of his supporting cast. The question is: Will 2025 be different? The case for answering yes is that the Chiefs could have an answer at left tackle in first-round pick Josh Simmons, and while wide receiver Rashee Rice will likely be facing a suspension at some point after pleading guilty for his role in a serious car crash in 2024, they should have him for most of the season. It’s also reasonable to expect wide receiver Xavier Worthy to be better in year two.

But those things are not a given. With Simmons, we have to acknowledge that rookie performance is unpredictable, and it’s unwise to declare a draft pick to be a success based on what we see in training camp and the preseason. It’s also worth noting that the Chiefs traded away one of their best offensive linemen, Joe Thuney. I’m not convinced that the net result will be an improved offensive line. Meanwhile, the Chiefs got a productive season from Rice in 2023, but even then, they still had many of the same issues with a lack of explosive plays that we saw last year. The Chiefs have ranked eighth in offensive efficiency in back-to-back years, and I’m not sure that their proposed solutions will result in much of a change in 2025.

Predicting when each NFL team will lose its first game: Steelers outlast almost everyone, Eagles fall early | CBS Sports

Chiefs (vs. Ravens). The Chiefs have a brutal schedule to start the season with three of their first four games against teams that made the playoffs last season (Chargers, Eagles, Ravens). It won’t be surprising if they slip up in one of those games and we’ll say it happens in this one.

NFL picks: Predicting every game, final 2025 record for each AFC team | NFL.com

Ali explains his picks …

High point: Week 17 vs. Broncos.

After enduring a slog of a season and the tightest AFC West race in years, the Chiefs clinch the division on the penultimate weekend with a win over Denver. Exacting revenge on the Eagles in Week 2 is a close second, though.

Low point: Week 15 vs. Chargers.

Although K.C. claims the West for a 10th consecutive season, the franchise suffers its first .500 or worse showing in the division (3-3) since 2014.

Toughest game to call: Week 11 at Broncos.

Predicting NFL teams most likely to decline in 2025 season | ESPN

Kansas City Chiefs

Record in 2024: 15-2
Point differential in 2024: plus-59
2024 record in games decided by seven or fewer points: 10-0
Projected strength of schedule, via ESPN’s FPI: Sixth toughest in NFL

Two years after the Vikings became the first team in league history to go 9-0 in games decided by seven points or fewer, the Chiefs took things a step further. Andy Reid’s team was an unprecedented 10-0 in one-score games last season. And as always, while there are situations in which a late score can make a game look closer than it actually was, the Chiefs really were getting opponents to slip on banana peels and knock themselves out at the most opportune times. Let’s relive just how narrow so many of Kansas City’s victories were:

NFL handpicks YouTube creator with 6m followers for historic broadcast of Chiefs in Brazil | talkSPORT

Donald De La Haye, otherwise known as Deestroying, is lending his talents to the NFL‘s inaugural YouTube broadcast.

Deestroying will bring with him his extremely popular YouTube channel that consists of 6.32 million subscribers, as he is set to be one of the sideline reporters for the game, along with Stacey Dales.

The pairing makes sense as the YouTube sensation has a football background himself. He kicked at Central Florida for two seasons in 2015 and 2016 before running into trouble with the NCAA and his relatively new YouTube channel at the time, in which he began to monetize from it.

Around the NFL

Agent – Trust ‘questionable’ now between Anthony Richardson, Colts | ESPN

With Colts quarterback Anthony Richardson Sr.’s future in flux following Tuesday’s decision to name Daniel Jones the team’s starting quarterback, Richardson’s agent reacted with disappointment in the move and said he’s unsure of his client’s future with the club.

The agent, Deiric Jackson, stopped short of demanding a trade, but he wondered aloud whether coach Shane Steichen’s quarterback decision might have been predetermined when the Colts signed Jones in March to a one-year, $14 million contract.

“We have a lot to discuss,” Jackson told ESPN of his impending conversations with the Colts.

Jackson said he believes Tuesday’s decision and some previous situations involving Richardson have damaged the team’s credibility. Richardson was benched for two games last season, with Steichen saying at the time that Richardson needed to improve his game preparation. The team quickly reinserted the 2023 No. 4 draft pick into the starting lineup after suffering two straight losses with veteran Joe Flacco under center.

In case you missed it on Arrowhead Pride

Chiefs Roster: Can Kansas City avoid a repeat of the 2021 season?

Unfortunately, 2021 proved to be a frustrating year for the Chiefs, who started the season with a historically bad defense. By the middle of the season, the defense had turned things around, but the offense had fallen off a cliff. It took about two months for the offense to find ways around the two-high coverage shells defenses were sending against it.

In the Divisional round matchup against the Buffalo Bills — the famous “13-seconds” game — the defense was horrible, but the offense was fantastic. In the first half of the AFC Championship against the Cincinnati Bengals, the defense was largely pretty good, while the offense was dominant. But after halftime, the offense fell apart against the Drop 8 defense the Bengals played — and the Chiefs missed the Super Bowl.

So in 2022, Kansas City traded wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins, acquiring draft capital that it used to rebuild the defense with young players. That one move changed the team’s identity on both sides of the ball. The Chiefs’ offense became a more surgical and efficient — while the defense became a suffocating coverage unit.

So while it ended up putting Kansas City in a position it could start over, we’d hate for the Chiefs to have another season like 2021.