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Kansas City Chiefs 2025 NFL Season Preview and Picks: Time to Reinvent the Offense Again
> AFCAndy ReidNFL
> AFCAndy ReidNFL
Love them or hate them, the Kansas City Chiefs continue to be a main character in the narrative of each NFL season. The main story for the 2024 season was their pursuit of a historic Super Bowl three-peat, which they came closer to pulling off than any team ever has despite a mountain of injuries and a strange conspiracy theory about officiating.
In the end, the Chiefs were blown out in Super Bowl 59 by the Eagles, and there is a blueprint to beating Patrick Mahomes. Not many teams are built to do it, but there is a growing problem for the Chiefs that they must address this season.
The dynasty is not dead, but after a second blow-out loss in a Super Bowl, the stock is down for the Chiefs. Top-rated sportsbooks are giving them the fourth-best odds (+800 at FanDuel) to win Super Bowl LX, trailing the Eagles, Ravens, and Bills while they are ahead of the Lions. The Chiefs will play all four of those teams by Week 9 too, so the schedule is ridiculously front-loaded.
As always, there is plenty of history at stake for the Chiefs in 2025. They can tie the Bills (1990-93) as the only teams to advance to four straight Super Bowls. They can also become the first team to play in 6-of-7 Super Bowls, which means they would tie the 2011-18 Patriots by playing in eight straight Conference Championship Games.
But the first goal is to win the AFC West for the 10th year in a row. This also could be the final NFL season for legendary tight end Travis Kelce, who turns 36 in October.
The weight of the pressure to three-peat has been lifted from this team, but expectations are still sky high. But for this team to go on another historic Super Bowl run, they need to reinvent themselves once again.
In the first of 32 NFL team previews this summer, let’s look back at where things went wrong for the Chiefs, where they need to improve, what’s changed, and the best Chiefs bets for 2025.
Table of Contents
Previously on CHIEFS: One Win Away and Yet So Far Away
In many ways, the 2024 Chiefs with their three-peat attempt really echoed the repeat attempt by the 2020 Chiefs:
- Both teams notched big September wins over Baltimore, and both ended up beating the Bills in the AFC Championship Game.
- Both teams won a ridiculous number of close games as Mahomes led eight game-winning drives in 2024 (tied NFL record), including another narrow win over the Bills.
- In both seasons, Kansas City’s starters lost one game all year going into the Super Bowl as both teams rested starters in the regular-season finale and gave up exactly 38 points in a meaningless loss.
- Both teams were ultimately blown out in the Super Bowl after shuffling multiple offensive linemen out of position and playing poor defense.
No team trying to three-peat ever made it back to the Super Bowl before the 2024 Chiefs, but the way that game got out of hand so quickly in the second quarter, the three-peat still felt far away from this team.
But the Chiefs will hope for better health in 2025 as injuries really destroyed any shot they had at having a team that was elite on both sides as we teased at in our 2024 preview. Rashee Rice tearing his ACL on a freak accident tackle by Mahomes in September was a big blow to the offense, which also started four different left tackles, including moving guard Joe Thuney to that key position.
Clearly, that backfired in the Super Bowl. But the Chiefs have learned lessons from their losses before, and they’ll need to do that again.
How the Chiefs Must Reinvent Themselves for 2025
One thing you may not have always been able to say about teams coached by Andy Reid is that they learn from their mistakes. Bust out your favorite joke about his clock management skills, or how he forgets to run the ball.
But in the Mahomes era, the Chiefs have generally done a good job of reinventing themselves after a big playoff loss:
- After the Chiefs lost a 37-31 overtime game to the Patriots in the 2018 AFC Championship Game, they knew they couldn’t keep playing these 43-40, 54-51, and 37-31 type of games with contenders. They fired defensive coordinator Bob Sutton and replaced him with Steve Spagnuolo, which is maybe the biggest move for this dynasty after trading up to draft Mahomes.
- After the Chiefs were befuddled in the playoffs by Tampa Bay’s Cover 2 looks and 3-man rushes by the Bengals in the 2021 AFC Championship Game, the Chiefs made the bold decision to trade Tyreek Hill, their best wide receiver, to Miami and go with more of a small-ball passing attack as Mahomes started taking what the defense gave him more than ever.
The Chiefs were actually more successful in the playoffs without Hill than they were with him, but there are diminishing returns on this approach as the lack of explosive plays meant Mahomes had to be better than ever on third down and engineering long drives in 2024.
Everything caught up to them in the Super Bowl as the Eagles dominated the game in the trenches on both sides of the ball. The Eagles didn’t have to blitz to get impactful pressure on Mahomes, and the Chiefs couldn’t generate anything against Super Bowl MVP Jalen Hurts without blitzing. About the only thing the Chiefs did well was stop Saquon Barkley on the ground, and yet they still trailed 34-0 before losing 40-22.
Erasing the Mahomes Blueprint
You can speculate if the pressure of the three-peat got to the Chiefs last year despite the dramatic wins all the way up until the Super Bowl. But there’s some pretty good evidence that’s come out since that this team was feeling the pressure, and things were tight and just not very fun.
On Monday, Mahomes sat down with Kay Adams and when asked about the key to success in 2025, he immediately jumped to “I think it’s us having fun again” for his answer.
In the fallout of the Super Bowl loss in February, one of the more shocking admissions came from Chiefs passing game coordinator Joe Bleymaier that there was a terror to not screw things up coaching Mahomes in 2024, something you really don’t want to hear a coach say about their approach to the game.
Yes, bring back the fun Chiefs who would win shootouts and score a lot more points. They showed in 2022 that their offense can still function at the highest level without Tyreek Hill, but things have been a grind the last two years.
As we looked at in February, the blueprint to beating Patrick Mahomes is to get effective pressure on him without blitzing, and make him hold the ball longer than he wants to so that the timing of the offense is disrupted.
While that is an effective strategy to beat any quarterback, the numbers don’t lie on this one as it shows Mahomes is uniquely a different quarterback when the ball isn’t coming out quickly:
- Mahomes is 45-2 (.957) when his average time to throw is under 2.8 seconds.
- Mahomes is 19-16 (.543) when his average time to throw is above 3.0 seconds.
Shockingly, you can explain almost 50% of the variance on the scoreboard for Kansas City games just based on how long Mahomes is holding the ball, which is simply not the case for his peers. It really shouldn’t be the case for any team, but it is for the Chiefs:
The vision of him running around trying to make anything happen might make you think of Super Bowl 55 when the Chiefs lost 31-9 to the Buccaneers in a game where Mahomes was pressured 29 times. That’s a good way to keep your average time to throw (TTT) above 3.0 seconds, which has since become a staple in defeating him and the Chiefs.
This problem has only been exasperated in the last few seasons as it’s become commonplace for Mahomes to have a TTT above 3.0 seconds when the Chiefs lose a game.
However, the solution is not to see that 45-2 record under 2.8 seconds and think the Chiefs should be throwing more quick screens and short passes. If anything, that’s something they probably need to dial back in 2025.
Last season, Mahomes threw 177 passes at or behind the line of scrimmage, which led the NFL. That also accounted for 30.5% of his attempts, which is up from 23.1% in his 2022 MVP season when the Chiefs were easily the best team in the NFL on such passes. They were still relatively decent on these plays in 2024, but Mahomes averaged 5.1 yards per attempt on them as they only broke three such plays for 20-plus yards.
That’s down a full yard from 2022’s average, and it pales in comparison to some of the big gains other quarterbacks with higher YPA averages enjoyed like Lamar Jackson (6.4) and Baker Mayfield (6.8).
The Chiefs used to be an elite offense at producing yards after the catch (YAC). But over the last two seasons, they’ve ranked just 22nd and 29th in YAC Over Expected (YACOE) per Completion from NFL’s Next Gen Stats. That’s the YAC you get in excess of expectations for things like breaking or avoiding tackles.
Basically, if you throw a pass 6 yards behind the line of scrimmage on a 3rd-and-20 screen, there’s going to be a lot of expected YAC on that play that will still usually get tackled short of the first down. But if a player were to make a nice cut or move and pick up extra yards, his YACOE would be much higher.
The Chiefs just aren’t doing much of anything special with the ball in their hands anymore, and that’s really not that surprising when you consider the unique makeup of the skill players they’ve had the last few years.
Travis Kelce: Pass the Torch
Travis Kelce is a legend and up there with any tight end in NFL history. But Father Time is undefeated, and last year, you could see Kelce literally slowing down as he averaged a career-low 8.5 yards per catch and caught his fewest touchdowns (3) since his rookie year in 2013. His 6.2 yards per target replaced 2023 (8.1) as his new career low as well.
It wasn’t necessarily in the cards for Kelce to remain the Chiefs’ leading receiver in 2024, but a preseason injury for Hollywood Brown and a torn ACL for Rashee Rice in Week 4 changed the plan. Kelce finished 2024 with 97 catches, the most in NFL history for any player in his age-35 season or later.
In the entire Super Bowl era, there are just two offenses who were led in receiving by a tight end in his age 34 or older season:
- 2023 Chiefs – Travis Kelce, 34 years old, 984 yards
- 2024 Chiefs – Travis Kelce, 35 years old, 823 yards
One of the only other tight ends still producing yardage like that at this age was Tony Gonzalez in Atlanta, but he at least was backed up by excellent wide receivers like Roddy White and Julio Jones, so he only needed to be the No. 3 option.
This makes the Chiefs’ reliance on an old tight end unique in modern NFL history, but it’s even more unique when you consider the No. 2 receiver in each season was a rookie wideout: Rashee Rice (2023) and Xavier Worthy (2024). Neither was a top 25 pick either, so you never know what you’re going to get with players drafted in the late first round and second round like they were. They weren’t projected to be early stars like Ja’Marr Chase or Malik Nabers.
A big reason why the Chiefs were still the best statistical passing offense in 2022 is because Kelce was still in his prime and moving well. But with him in a slower state since 2023 and flanked by rookies trying to learn on the fly, it’s a tough combo to maximize. Then you factor in journeymen like Kadarius Toney, Marquez Valdes-Scantling, and JuJu Smith-Schuster, or the in-season trade for an over-the-hill DeAndre Hopkins, and these offenses are not putting any weapons in their prime around Mahomes.
The good news is Rice and Worthy are no longer rookies in 2025. In fact, you could already see Rice’s second-year improvement as he looked to be in an excellent rhythm with Mahomes before he was injured last year. The other good news is it doesn’t sound like Rice or Worthy will face any league discipline this season for their off-field incidents, so they should be good to go in Week 1.
This needs to be the season where Kelce takes a step back in Kansas City. Even if it’s his final season, you really don’t want a 36-year-old tight end as your team’s leading receiver. In fact, he should probably be the No. 3 at best in 2025 as Rice and Worthy need to take over. The team also has Hollywood Brown, who barely got to play last year with his own injury, so this could be the best receiving corps the Chiefs have had in several years.
But they need to let Mahomes rip the ball down the field more as he did in 2018-21. That doesn’t mean they have to give up on taking what the defense gives them and utilizing the backs in the passing game. But all those passes behind the line of scrimmage and the 3-yard routes to Kelce, they need to work in more throws in the intermediate range and occasionally deep to get those defenses backing up again. It would help open up more things underneath too.
When Mahomes threw this 50-yard touchdown pass to Worthy in the final minutes of the Super Bowl loss, it felt like a release of frustration for how the game and maybe even the season went.
But it was also just the fourth time all year Mahomes threw a deep pass (20+ yards) down the middle of the field to Worthy, who was drafted for his record-breaking speed. Yet, the Chiefs did not utilize him very well as he and Mahomes had trouble connecting on the deep sideline passes with his footwork on the boundary line being an issue at midseason.
Maybe you can blame that on the Rice and Brown injuries moving everyone out of place, but the Chiefs need to get a plan of action going to utilize Rice, Brown, and Worthy to the best of their abilities while still having the security blanket in Kelce.
If I was Kansas City, I’d be aiming for a passing offense that has a distribution of passing yardage like this:
- Rice – 1,250 yards
- Worthy – 1,000 yards
- Kelce – 700 yards
- Brown – 600 yards
The Chiefs also used a fourth-round pick on 6’0” wideout Jalen Royals, who could help replace the lost production from players like Mecole Hardman (Packers) and Justin Watson (Texans). Some also think seventh-round running back Brashard Smith (SMU) could be a late-round gem for the Chiefs on screen passes.
The Chiefs set an NFL record last year with eight straight games without a turnover. But that can come at the expense of aggressive play and big plays. It’s not like that streak helped them in the Super Bowl.
The new approach without Hill led them to one game shy of a three-peat, but it’s time for something fresh again. Let’s see a fun passing game in Kansas City where every inch of the field is within play.
Kansas City Chiefs Offseason Review
The Chiefs return the core of their coaching staff and much of the roster from last year. But they used the draft to make a huge investment in the position that’s given them some real problems as of late.
Fixing the Offensive Line
One thing is for certain. If the Chiefs return to a Super Bowl soon, it will be six Super Bowls with six different starters at left tackle, which isn’t a good thing. You’d like some stability at that position, and the Chiefs hope they have found it again in the draft.
The Chiefs used the No. 32 pick on Josh Simmons from Ohio State. Many thought he’d go higher if not for an injury last season, so he is someone who doesn’t necessarily have to start in Week 1 for the team this year. They also signed veteran Jaylon Moore (49ers) in free agency, because if the Chiefs should know better than any team, you really need a good second option at left tackle. It could even be Moore in Week 1 if Simmons isn’t ready to start.
The Chiefs traded Joe Thuney to Chicago, so the veteran is gone at left guard. The Chiefs are hoping they can slide Kingsley Suamataia into his spot after things didn’t go well for him at tackle last year. That transition usually works out, but the Chiefs need to give him some time after a quick pull in 2024.
If Simmon is the real deal, then the Chiefs may have their franchise left tackle for Mahomes’ thirties. His lack of trust in the revolving door at tackle these last two years has played a big factor in the offense taking a step back, so there’s a lot riding on Simmons (and Moore) to work out here.
The Defensive Changes
After using their top pick on the line, the Chiefs used their other Day 2 picks on defensive reinforcements, including defensive tackle Omarr Norman-Lott, edge Ashton Gillotte, and corner Nohl Williams. They’ll hope for some future starters from that lot.
Kansas City lost safety Justin Reid in free agency, but 2024 fourth-round pick Jaden Hicks should step into that role after 3 interceptions as a rookie. Getting turnovers for this defense was very difficult last year as they only had one game with multiple takeaways through Week 14 before Jameis Winston came bearing gifts before Christmas with 6 turnovers in Cleveland.
But the Chiefs had no takeaways in the playoff wins over Houston and Buffalo and only one early pick of Jalen Hurts in the Super Bowl. While the offense may be expected to have some turnover regression with more mistakes this year, that could be offset if the defense has some positive turnover regression and makes a few more splash plays and fumble recoveries.
Best Bets for the 2025 Chiefs
I really think getting out of that headspace of a three-peat will do wonders for this team this season. They can refocus, reinvent the offense again, and after such a bad loss in February, they could be on a revenge tour after hearing for months about how the officials helped them along the way, which just isn’t supported by any data.
But the schedule is not forgiving one bit with all those Super Bowl contenders in the first half before the Week 10 bye. Also, the annual AFC West hype may actually be warranted this year after the Broncos and Chargers made the playoffs last year. The Raiders should also be better with Pete Carroll completing the most stacked division of coaches in NFL history.
If the 2020 Chiefs were the 2024 Chiefs, does that mean the 2025 Chiefs are going to start 3-4 before rallying for a 12-5 record like the 2021 Chiefs? We’ll see, but I think even with the tough schedule, this team gets to 12 wins and wins the AFC West once again.
The idea of a revenge season for Mahomes with what should be his best-receiving crew in a few years, that makes a third MVP award also a good bet (+600 at FanDuel), though he wouldn’t be my first choice today. But Mahomes going over 27.5 passing touchdowns is without a doubt one of my favorite player prop picks this season.
As for the Super Bowl, I’m sure Kelce has already thought about the Hollywood ending of retiring on the stage and proposing marriage to Taylor Swift. Hell, he probably had the ring on hand in February just in case. There probably is value in the Chiefs only having the third-best Super Bowl odds of any AFC team this year, and we know you can’t trust the Bills and Ravens against them in big games.
But you might be able to trust an NFC powerhouse as the Eagles seem to have the right stuff to deal with Kansas City. It’s a good thing they’ll have so many of those litmus test games early in the year, and after the Buffalo games last year, there does seem to be some credence to the Chiefs saving things for a playoff rematch and not showing their hand.
However, the Eagles are going to be a problem in 2025, and the Chiefs may still not match up that well with them. I think you could pick them to reach the Super Bowl again, but winning it is probably where I’d stop short as it could take a year of seasoning for this new-look offense to get it done, especially if they’ll be relying on a rookie left tackle in the playoffs.
If you’re tired of watching the Chiefs, don’t look now but they’ll be in national games on Thanksgiving (at Dallas) and Christmas (Denver). They’ll also start their season on a Friday night in Brazil against the Chargers, and that’s a scary one to start with after we saw the field conditions last year. You have to hope for better there this time, and that the Chiefs make it back home in one piece because that could always dramatically alter the direction of their season.
Turnover regression? Close game regression? Those things may slip up a normal team, but we’re talking about the Chiefs here. They’ve earned the benefit of the doubt – just not one that fully extends through the Super Bowl as they have some issues with slow starts and pass protection. But until someone keeps this team out of the AFC Championship Game, the path to the Super Bowl still goes through Kansas City.
- NFL Pick: Patrick Mahomes Over 26.5 Passing Touchdowns (-114 at FanDuel)
- NFL Pick: Kansas City Chiefs over 11.5 wins (+100 at FanDuel)
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- NFL Pick: To Make Conference Championship 2025-26 – Kansas City Chiefs (+180 at FanDuel)
- NFL Pick: AFC Championship Winner 2025-26 – Kansas City Chiefs (+400 at FanDuel)
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