The Kansas City offense has chugged along over the past few years, ditching the high-flying air assault of Patrick Mahomes’ early years for a hyper-conservative, pass-first approach to strategically moving the football inch by inch until the team has yet another Super Bowl appearance.
The Chiefs rank fourth in EPA per play and third in success rate over the past three seasons of check down-centric offensive football. Only three teams have a better drop back EPA over that span. The check down thing works. For fantasy purposes, it can leave something to be desired. The question hanging over the KC offense entering training camp: Will Mahomes finally, at long last, cut it loose in 2025?
**2024 Stats (Rank)**
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**Points per game:** 22.6 (15th)
**Total yards per game:** 327.6 (16th)
**Plays per game:** 64 (7th)
**Dropbacks per game:** 37.8 (6th)
**Dropback EPA per play:** 0.142 (10th)
**Rush attempts per game:** 26.5 (16th)
**Rush EPA per play:** -0.058 (13th)
It has become an annual tradition since Patrick Mahomes decided to stop throwing deep against two high safety looks: The Chiefs enter training camp with players and coaches chatting excitedly with beat writers about how this will be the year we see the return of Air Mahomes, the rocket-armed gunslinger who terrorized secondaries with deadly accurate deep shots from 2018 to 2020.
And every year Mahomes reverts to Alex Smith mode, checking down time and again against shell coverages designed to discourage him from even thinking about throwing beyond the sticks, and certainly not downfield. Watch as Mahomes fake pumps once, twice, three times, almost lets it fly to a receiver streaking downfield … before dumping it off to Travis Kelce, who hobbles for seven yards. This has been the Kansas City offense for the better part of four years, and it’s worked beautifully. The Mahomes’ check-down offense has made these Chiefs one of the best NFL teams of all time.
So the question becomes: Why change? Why force the issue and throw deep against defenses that long ago decided they would no longer be burned by Mahomes, but make him beat them with the offensive equivalent of ten thousand paper cuts. And Mahomes has done just that, dinking and dunking like no one has ever dinked and dunked before, using his otherworldly on-field awareness to convert seemingly every single critical third and fourth down. He’s willfully transformed into supercharged Alex Smith and all it’s done is lead the Chiefs to five Super Bowl appearances and three titles. Boring football has won the day. So it goes.
**Passing Game**
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**QB:** Patrick Mahomes, Gardner Minshew
**WR:** Rashee Rice, JuJu Smith-Schuster
**WR:** Hollywood Brown, Jaylen Royals
**WR:** Xavier Worthy, Skyy Moore
**TE:** Travis Kelce, Noah Gray
Will this be the year the Chiefs try to gain yards in chunks, rather than four at a time?
Right on cue, we’re getting reports that Chiefs head coach Andy Reid “made a point of it all spring” for the Chiefs to “get back to pushing the ball deep down the field.”
“Look for more emphasis on explosion this fall,” The Athletic’s Zak Keefer wrote in June.
The idea, I suppose, is that Mahomes finally has a trio of receivers that could threaten defenses downfield, a group he recently called the deepest wideout group of his NFL career. A healthy Xavier Worthy, Rashee Rice, and Hollywood Brown, the thinking goes, is just the recipe to return Mahomes to his pre-check down days, when he was the most exciting player in football.
Mahomes’ 6.5 air yards per attempt over the past two seasons is the lowest mark in the entire league — lower than Daniel Jones and Gardner Minshew and Mac Jones. He’s been moderately accurate over that two-year stretch, ranking 13th among 35 qualifying QBs in completion rate over expected.
The stats tell the story of a passer who refuses to challenge two-deep safety coverages. Mahomes in 2024 had a 5.3 average depth of target against such secondary looks, the fifth lowest mark in the league. His adjusted yards per attempt against two high looks in 2024 was in line with Mason Rudolph and the aforementioned Minshew. To reassert himself as an aggressive deep ball thrower, Mahomes’ game — and the KC offense as a whole — would have to undergo a dramatic change in 2025. Mahomes, who was 21st in fantasy points per drop back last year, might be a starter in 12-team formats this season if he manages to run hot on touchdowns. He’s due for a touchdown bounce back after back-to-back campaigns with a 4.5 percent TD rate, well below his career mark of 6 percent.
Probably you can tell I’m not betting on Mahomes to rediscover his 2018 mode in 2025. We’ll likely see more of the same, which is fine for fantasy if you get the right guys. Those guys will probably be Rice and Kelce. Rice, before wrecking his knee in Week 4 last season, might have been on his way to becoming the most important player in fantasy considering his summer redraft ADP. Rice took in 35 percent of KC’s targets and 32 percent of the team’s air yards before injuring his knee. Rice led the league in receptions and was second in receiving yards through three weeks. His domination of underneath and intermediate looks from Mahomes made Kelce all but unplayable in 12-team fantasy formats.
Rice is reportedly ready for training camp and should be good to go for Week 1. Even if that’s on the optimistic side of things, Rice should have every opportunity to be a top-15 fantasy wideout in a Kansas City offense that remains pass heavy (the Chiefs finished second in pass rate over expected in both 2023 and 2024). The sort of usage he saw through three weeks in 2024 could fuel an overall WR1 kind of season.
Kelce in 2024 was a before and after story: He was all but useless for fantasy before Rice’s season-ending injury. He was fine after ward, buoyed by volume, as usual. Kelce’s yards per route run — a solid measure of a pass catcher’s efficiency — was the lowest of his NFL career in 2024. Kelce’s yards after the catch per reception (3.9) was by far the lowest of his career. He finished dead last in ESPN’s open score, which measures a player’s ability to separate from defenders. Kelce’s YAC per reception is particularly startling, and perhaps revealing of a fading 35-year-old tight end who mulled retirement in the spring. Among the most effective after-the-catch producers over the past decade, Kelce’s YAC/reception was well short of his pre-2024 career average of 5.9 and miles south of his career-best mark of 7.7. [As I wrote back in February](https://www.nbcsports.com/fantasy/football/news/travis-kelce-considering-retirement-can-he-still-be-an-impact-player-for-the-chiefs-in-2025), to call Kelce’s 2024 after-the-catch production a dip would be quite the understatement.
Reid said in June he expects Kelce’s 2025 snap count will be “similar” to what it was in 2024, adding that Chiefs coaches will “monitor Kelce’s playing time as training camp and the season progress and change the plan if necessary.” With some touchdown luck, Kelce could be a top-10 fantasy tight end this season. His elite days are long gone though.
Sometime around Week 13, the Chiefs figured out how to use Xavier Worthy. His aDOT and air yards per target plummeted in the regular season’s final month. His targets per route, meanwhile, skyrocketed from 15 percent in the season’s first three months to 23.5 percent over the final month. The former made Worthy a high-variance WR4 option. The latter made him a reliable WR2 with upside. Nearly 30 percent of Worthy’s targets from Week 13-18 were screen passes, the fourth highest rate in the NFL over the stretch. More of that sort of usage should make Worthy a worthwhile WR2/3 option in 12-team leagues, though Rice’s return to the KC lineup should shave off some volume-based upside for the speedy Worthy.
Brown was weirdly targeted on 44 percent of his pass routes over his two regular season games. That fell off in the postseason, as Brown saw a target on 16 percent of his routes. Probably it’s Brown, not Worthy, who profiles as Mahomes primary downfield threat in 2025. He’ll have some gaudy stat lines on two or three catches. He’ll also have some duds. So it goes with high-variance air yards eaters.
Folks who play in deeper formats should keep one eye — not two — on rookie WR Jaylen Royals out of Utah State, an analytics hero who in 2024 ranked 16th among all college wideouts in yards per route run and saw a hefty target per route run of 29 percent. Royals, who missed time last year with a foot injury, averaged 6.4 receptions and 95.4 receiving yards per game at Utah State over his final two collegiate campaigns. Royals, quite amazingly, accounted for almost 40 percent of the team’s receiving yardage in his seven 2024 appearances. He’s fast too, a trait the Chiefs seem to value. Royals’ 40 time (4.42) was in the 89th percentile and his speed score was 87th percentile at the NFL Combine. Royals, I think, could excel in the KC offense if given the chance.
### **Running Game**
**RB:** Isiah Pacheco, Kareem Hunt, Elijah Mitchell, Brashard Smith
**OL (L-R):** Jaylon Moore, Mike Caliendo, Creed Humphrey, Trey Smith, Jawaan Taylor
We’ve entered yet another summer of fantasy drafters hoping and wishing and praying that someone halfway interesting takes over the Kansas City backfield. This year, fantasy managers have cast their lonely eyes on rookie RB Brashard Smith, the 228th pick in the 2025 draft out of SMU.
Smith enters training camp looking to carve out some kind of role ahead of Week 1. It’s quite the task, considering Isiah Pacheco is reportedly recovered from his 2024 leg injury and old, reliable Kareem Hunt — a favorite of Andy Reid — returned to the team on a one-year deal. Eli Mitchell is also there, so that’s nice.
After spending three years as a wide receiver at Miami — where he totaled 69 receptions for 770 yards — Smith converted to running back in 2024 and went for 1,217 rushing yards, the 17th most in the country. His rushing peripherals weren’t exactly sparkling. Smith ranked 38th among 56 qualifying running backs in rush yards after contact per attempt, and only 13 percent of his rushes went for ten or more yards. He was something of a workhorse in his final collegiate season, seeing 209 carries, the 19th most in major college football.
It was Smith’s pass catching that stood out in his only year as a running back. Perhaps that shouldn’t come as a surprise considering his previous employment as a wideout. Smith was top-20 in yards after the catch per reception among running backs and Pro Football Focus graded him as the nation’s second-best pass-catching back. ESPN’s Adam Teicher said in late June that the Chiefs “have plans” for Smith. Like a lot of rookie backs, those plans could include special teams. It could also mean Smith inherits the Samaje Perine role, whatever that might mean to you.
It’s Smith, not the forever-injured Mitchell or the boring and low-ceiling Hunt, who appears to be the upside swing for Zero RB drafters seeking late-round running back gems.
Pacheco, whether we like it or not, is going to start the season as the unquestioned No. 1 back in the Chiefs offense. The former Zero RB hero saw his numbers drop off in 2024 thanks largely to a broken leg he sustained in Week 2. Pacheco followed a long line of running backs who rushed their way back from serious injuries only to return to the field as a shadow of his former self. It was painful to watch the high stepping Pacheco gimp around the field for the season’s final month. His yards per carry fell from 4.5 in 2023 to 3.6 in 2024. Pacheco’s rush yards after contact, for whatever it’s worth, remained stable last season.
Pacheco last year had almost no involvement in the Chiefs’ passing attack. That’s a big blow for a back in a pass-first system like Reid’s. Pacheco saw all of 20 targets over ten games in 2024; he was targeted on a lowly 15 percent of his pass routes. If he doesn’t return to 2023 usage — when he saw 3.5 targets per game — Pacheco profiles as a potential between-the-20s back who sees his playing time slashed in pass-heavy game scripts.
The Chiefs enter 2025 needing more juice in their backfield. Last year, only the Cowboys and Rams had a lower rate of explosive rushes. The Chiefs were dead last in missed tackles forced per rushing attempt. They were third worst in rush yards after contact. If Pacheco can’t bring that juice one year removed from his shattered leg, Smith might get the chance.
### 2025 Kansas City Chiefs Win Total
**DraftKings over/under**: 11.5
**Pick**: Over
The Chiefs have eclipsed 11.5 wins in seven of their past eight seasons. Even in down years, Reid and Mahomes have willed the team to a dozen victories and deep postseason runs. They are inevitable at this point. Another year of solid-if-not-elite defense, Mahomes’ godlike EPA powers, and a healthy Rashee Rice should get the team into the 12-14 win range. Watch out if they discover some backfield explosiveness.