There is plenty of skepticisim about the 2025 Kansas City Chiefs.
From a national perspective, the inevitability of the team has grown tiresome — so the conversation skews negative. The loudest voices are rewarded and the wildest takes are encouraged.
We’ve all heard the noise. If you’ve spent any amount of time watching the endless coverage counting down to the start of the NFL season, it’s impossible to escape.
Is this the year someone unseats the Chiefs? Are we sure Kansas City will win the AFC West?
In some ways, these are reasonable questions. After all… nothing is guaranteed. The consistency with which the Chiefs have dominated the AFC is almost unprecedented.
But that doesn’t mean the team enters 2025 without significant questions.
In 2024, the Chiefs won 12 one-score games — a point that has been reiterated over and over during the offseason. That’s abnormal — and difficult to replicate.
I think there are two ways to explain it.
- The 2024 Chiefs were a fraudulent 15-win team built on smoke and mirrors. It simply took until the Super Bowl for the team to finally be exposed for what it was.
- The 2024 Chiefs leaned on their championship mettle to come up with big plays in the biggest moments. In the Super Bowl, they just ran out of gas against an extremely talented opponent.
Which one reflects the truth? This season should give us the answer.
Personally, I reject the idea that the Chiefs are broken — or that they will lose the AFC West for the first time in a decade. I also find the conversations surrounding Patrick Mahomes’ place among the league’s top quarterbacks to be silly.
Still, there are some legitimate questions about the team.
1. Will a clean bill of health get the offense back on track?
While there have been changes to offense, the season’s first six weeks will largely feature the same skill players it featured in the 2024 playoffs. The biggest difference is health. In particular, wide receiver Hollywood Brown and running back Isiah Pacheco should look quite different than they did a year ago.
Will that be enough for the team to get its offense back on track? That’s what the front office is betting — and I would take that bet, too. I’m a believer in Pacheco, so this offseason’s conversation about the Chiefs’ lack of investment at running back drove me bonkers. Pacheco is more than capable as a starting running back.
And besides… as my dear late friend Terez Paylor would say, “The contract year is undefeated.”
2. Can Josh Simmons be the offensive line’s cure-all?
In 2024, the offense’s biggest problem was its offensive line. It started in Week 2 — when second-round rookie left tackle Kinglsey Suamataia was benched against the Cincinnati Bengals — and continued all the way through Super Bowl LIX, when Kansas City’s makeshift offensive line was exposed in front of nearly 200 million viewers worldwide.
Will another rookie left tackle — this one taken in the first round — solve the problem? That’s yet another bet the front office is making. But Friday night’s game against the Los Angeles Chargers probably won’t tell us if the wager will pay off. Following Joey Bosa’s departure, Los Angeles doesn’t have a particularly imposing pass rush — so the only real answers we can get will be negative.
We’ll have a much better idea over the next few weeks, as Kansas City faces the Philadelphia Eagles, New York Giants and Baltimore Ravens.
3. Is there enough juice along the defensive line?
In 2024, the Chiefs recorded 39 sacks, which ranked 18th in the league. That was just a year after the team finished second with 57 sacks. Last season — for the first time since 2021 — no Kansas City player collected double-digit sacks.
There’s no doubt that the defense needs a more consistent pass rush off the edge. The last Chiefs edge rusher who accumulated multiple seasons with double-digit sacks was Dee Ford (2016, 2018). George Karlaftis has done it once (2023). Over the last decade, that’s the whole list of Kansas City players to have finished a season with 10 or more sacks. Last season, four different NFL teams had more than one edge rusher with double-digit sacks.
Where could this production come from? Charles Omenihu seems like the most likely candidate. While this will be his third season in Kansas City, it’s the first one where he’s been available in Week 1. 2022’s suspension (and an injury the following year) kept him off the field for at least the first six weeks of the season.
4. What is the plan in the secondary?
A year ago, the secondary was arguably the defense’s biggest issue. Before cornerback Jaylen Watson was hurt in Week 8, Kansas City fielded one of the NFL’s best defenses. But after that, the defense lacked an obvious trump card.
Without Watson, defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo was forced to move Trent McDuffie outside and put safety Chamarri Conner in the slot. To put it mildly, that could have gone better. This season, Kristian Fulton’s arrival seems to be geared toward moving McDuffie back to his natural position inside, while Fulton and Watson play outside. But we’ve seen precious few snaps with that alignment in the preseason. Was that only due to Fulton’s injury, or is there more to the situation than meets the eye?
That answer could dictate the ceiling for 2025’s defense. The Chiefs are counting on internal improvements from safeties Jaden Hicks and Bryan Cook to lock it down on the back end. Production like we saw from 2024’s cornerbacks won’t cut it.
The bottom line
Will all of these questions be answered on Friday night? Of course not.
But the team’s 2025 success will likely depend on the answers we eventually get. If the Chiefs find them, the noise will die down — and the doubters will (again) be forced to accept the reality: this Kansas City run is unlike anything we’ve seen before.
It feels… inevitable, doesn’t it?
