The Chiefs' offense ranks third in EPA per play and fourth in success rate. Rashee Rice is back. Xavier Worthy is in the middle of his second year. After strong moments at earlier points this season, this was supposed to be the point where they really took off.
It doesn’t quite feel like we’re in that ascension moment, does it?
As it stands today, Kansas City would be on the outside looking in at the NFL playoffs for the first time since 2014, four seasons before Patrick Mahomes would begin a year as the starting quarterback. After dropping both games on either side of its bye week, its season is in trouble. The New York Times playoff simulator currently gives the team a 56% chance to make it but a mere 9% chance to win the AFC West. If they lose this week to the 9-2 Colts, that drops to 39%.
They really can’t afford anything more than one more loss the rest of the way, as they face an AFC team in all but one week the rest of the way (Colts, Texans, Chargers, Titans, Broncos, Raiders) and a loss to two of those teams takes them south of 20%.
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There are myriad reasons why things have started to crumble for the offense the last two games, when it scored a combined 40 points against the Bills and Broncos.
The lack of an explosive run game has been crippling for this team the last two years. The Chiefs have the lowest stuff rate (runs for zero or negative yards) at 11% this season, but are tied with the Titans for the lowest explosive rushing rate (runs of 12-plus yards) at 5%. Over the last two seasons, they rank dead-last. It’s a byproduct of a lack of talent at the running back position and a lack of commitment philosophically to the run game from the coaching staff.
As more teams are doing a better job than ever to marry their run and pass games in keeping defenses guessing, in addition to getting back under center and running downhill, the Chiefs have been content to live in their RPO-heavy world of days gone by. Kansas City ranks sixth in success rate on under-center running back runs this season but their 72 attempts rank 29th. Their 3.8 yards per carry on shotgun running back runs ranks 28th, and they average -0.11 EPA per carry, a bottom-10 mark.
There is a reason that you’re never all that excited about any Chiefs running back in fantasy football. Standing pat on the room they had last season, outside of adding a scheme-touched, former receiver, project player in seventh-rounder Brashad Smith, was baffling in the offseason. And it somehow looks worse after passing on the price of a mere third-rounder to acquire Breece Hall at the NFL trade deadline.
I’d argue, however, that the bigger issue for Kansas City is the passing game; it follows a similar path of misevaluation and stubbornness.
The Chiefs wide receivers were a subject of fantasy football fascination this offseason, primarily because, on paper, it appeared that, once Rashee Rice was back on the field, they’d have the best-looking corps around Mahomes since the Tyreek Hill trade. However, that discourse failed to acknowledge that the Chiefs have pursued a specific type of wide receiver in the Andy Reid era. It’s an archetype of a receiver that requires role-catering via designed touches and by moving around the formation to create mismatches. That’s not necessarily a knock on the players individually, but when your room is collectively made of guys like this, it’s a problem. This is particularly true when you have to line up and play against man coverage. The stats bear that out this season, as Mahomes is one of the league’s least effective passers against man coverage.
I mentioned above that this is a dead-horse issue for me. And trust me, it’s not one I’m just beating in hindsight either. I’ve discussed for years the Chiefs' complete disregard of chasing a receiver who can win one-on-one matchups against man coverage and why it’s a limiting factor in the offense. We don’t need to act like they haven’t tried to get help for this room; they have. They've just chased duplicative players at the position, at best, and the outright wrong types, at worst.
Right after they lost the Super Bowl to the Philadelphia Eagles earlier this year, when all the discourse justifiably surrounded what they needed to do along the offensive line to improve the protection, I insisted that they should not ignore adding a “real receiver” to the mix who didn’t require the role catering of players in their current room.
Obviously, they disagreed. And here we are.
Their top three receivers in routes run since Week 7 are Rice, Xavier Worthy and Marquise Brown. Their 2024 success rates vs. man coverage in Reception Perception were as follows: Rice at 64.5%, Worthy at 60.2% and Brown at 50%. Theoretically, Rice, who is an elite zone-beater in Reception Perception, is their best option. However, his 64.5% success rate falls at the 33rd percentile among all players I’ve charted since 2014.
Even further down their depth chart, top reserve JuJu Smith-Schuster hasn’t cracked 60% since his rookie season and the rookie they added, Jalen Royals, was a near carbon copy of Rice as a raw prospect at the lower levels with a sub-50th percentile success rate vs. man coverage.
On the season, Tyquan Thornton holds a slight lead over Brown in yards per route run vs. man coverage at 1.84. And even he’s boosted by big plays, as he ranks a team-high 65th out of 124 wide receivers with 100-plus routes run in first downs per route run against man coverage.
Why have the Chiefs double- and triple-downed on this archetype of receiver? That’s a trickier question to answer than identifying the problems. Andy Reid has forgotten more football than I’ll ever know. I don’t assume to be smarter than one of the best head coaches of all time. However, my guess is that this is a symptom of overconfidence in the scheme. It’s an earned hubris; Reid’s offense has consistently gotten this team to the mountaintop. The logic likely goes that this offense can scheme around and highlight the other areas of strength present in the games of Worthy and Rice, specifically. Yet, at some point, this becomes a game of players, not pieces on a chessboard. So, when you get into certain situational moments, you need the players to line up and win at a high level.
Based on what we know about the wideouts, there should be more suspicion than there often is in media discourse that they have the tools in the kit to come out on top when those times arrive.
It’s not to say this is all on the receivers and poor Mahomes is blameless. The numbers on his deep passing have been problematic for years and there are plenty of reps on film where he leaves vertical plays on the field.
Those are real and a part of the conversation. Yet, the problem is that, when you don’t have that receiver who can consistently win on a route-by-route basis against man coverage and then you miss one of those deep shots, it becomes even more traumatic than it should. You can leave one of those plays with disappointment, and say, “We’ll get them next time,” even as deflating as they can feel. However, when you have the personnel hole this team does, next time doesn’t come along nearly often enough, and it makes those misses reek of deflation.
Nate Tice noted that their ability to attack downfield and along the boundary consistently has evaporated compared to Mahomes’ early career. Did he forget how to make these throws or did the personnel change? You tell me.
Line that graph up with Rice’s route charts in Reception Perception. Rice is a high-end zone beater who wins on horizontal routes like digs, crossers and slants. He doesn’t run, nor is he all that capable of running at a high level, the static premier routes that beat man like go routes, curls, etc. The same can be said for Worthy, and it's the primary reason he’s been a disappointment in fantasy this season.
Rice is an elite fantasy receiver who should continue to pile up production. I love him in his current role and he should continue to be one of the highest utilized receivers in the sport, playing in this big slot, YAC monster underneath position against zone coverage. However, as good as he is at all that, his game not being able to stretch beyond those areas contributes to how tight the passing game feels, and his return off suspension, unless he evolved as a player, was never going to solve these problems.
Even Mahomes himself willingly admitted the struggles against man coverage are a massive problem for the offense. Not only that, he pointed to it being a cascading effect that creates more issues, which he did not say, but are also compounded by some of the problems noted via the run game.
It’s no shock that this is a big talking point now, considering the Chiefs' Week 11 opponent. The Broncos play man coverage on 44% of their third and fourth-down plays this season, per Fantasy Points Data. That’s the eighth most among NFL defenses, and their 0.25 points per dropback allowed is the third-best. Now, it’s on the scouting report and you can bet teams will lean into it more often against Kansas City.
That will include their massive Week 12 game against the Colts. Indianapolis plays man coverage on 50% of its third and fourth-down plays this season, per Fantasy Points Data. That’s the fourth most among NFL defenses, and its 0.34 points per dropback allowed is sixth-best. You can bet a big reason they acquired Sauce Gardner at the NFL trade deadline was to maximize and weaponize those man-coverage plays. The team is also set to get back Charvarius Ward at the other starting corner spot, who can also thrive in man coverage.
To step aside from the doom-and-gloom, the Chiefs offense can still be a great unit despite this glaring flaw. The league is a predominantly zone-heavy operation on defense and this unit is deadly against it. Mahomes ranks fifth in adjusted yards per attempt, second in success rate and first in EPA per dropback against zone coverage. So, for the vast majority of their plays, the offense is going to be electric. That might make them more than dangerous enough to make a run in the playoffs if they run the table and get in. Yet, with the coverage split as wide as they are, and the reason for the delta so easy to spot, there will be moments, if not results of games, thwarted by the areas in which they come up short.
For a team that is not moonwalking its way to a division title for the first time in years, that is tougher to live with than usual.