Kansas City Chiefs' head coach Andy Reid and star quarterback Patrick Mahomes are already surefire Hall of Famers. They are Chiefs legends at the very top of the list of people responsible for bringing three Super Bowl wins to Kansas City in recent years. They probably deserve statues outside of Arrowhead Stadium someday when they retire, but right now, they aren’t living up to the high bar they have set for themselves, and they simply don’t have any good excuses for it.
To be clear, Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes haven’t been bad this season, and they weren’t flat-out bad on Sunday when the Chiefs lost 22-19 to the division-leading Denver Broncos. However, they weren’t good either, and the Chiefs are built to win because they have the better coach and the better quarterback. When Reid and Mahomes don’t deliver on that, the Chiefs face an uphill battle, and that battle isn’t panning out well for Kansas City this season.
This drop-off in elite offensive production didn’t just happen overnight. Their numbers had been down the past couple of seasons, but that seemed justified. The Chiefs had major issues on the offensive line and at wide receiver that Reid was having to compensate for in the game plan and Mahomes was having to overcome on the field. The thought was that an offensive mastermind and elite quarterback were getting average offensive production because of a poor supporting cast, but that just isn’t a fair description of what is happening right now.
The Chiefs’ path to the playoffs is fading fast, and their Hall of Fame duo must rise to the moment—or watch the season slip away.
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The Chiefs’ offensive line has been much better this season. While they aren’t perfect, almost no team has a perfect line, and Reid and Mahomes have produced more with worse lines earlier in their careers. The same can be said for the pass-catching options. Early on in the Reid/Mahomes era, the Chiefs had elite play from Tyreek Hill and prime Travis Kelce, but the depth behind them was always poor. Now they have a solid number one receiver in Rashee Rice, an aging but still productive Travis Kelce, and a much deeper cast of pass catchers behind them in Xavier Worthy, Hollywood Brown, Tyquan Thornton, and Juju Smith-Schuster.
There simply isn’t an argument to be made that Reid and Mahomes don’t have the pieces around them to have a successful offense like they have in the past. Again, the offense hasn’t been bad, but in all five of their losses this season, the Chiefs offense has had chances where they could have won the game, and they just couldn’t deliver. If Reid and Mahomes are just going to be “pretty good,” the rest of this team isn’t built to win Super Bowls (or apparently even make the playoffs).
Again, this isn’t to say that the Chiefs don’t have other issues. There were [plenty of other “losers” in the Broncos game](https://arrowheadaddict.com/winners-and-losers-from-chiefs-miserable-week-11-collapse-in-denver-01ka7h6qfz61). The special teams deserve a discussion all of their own about how bad they have been lately. The defense had multiple chances to get off the field late in the Denver game, including a 3rd-and-15 on the final drive, and they couldn’t get the job done. The pass rush has been a problem all season. Want to know how you can prevent that from happening on the final drive? Your offensive mastermind coach and MVP quarterback don’t go three-and-out right before that and avoid being in that situation altogether because they are the ones driving down and kicking a game-winning field goal as time expires.
This defense is good enough to win a Super Bowl with the offense that Andy Reid and Patrick Mahomes should be delivering with a solid offensive supporting cast. Yes, you could argue that they could have upgraded the running back position at the trade deadline, but Reid/Mahomes have been elite without a top running back, and Kareem Hunt and Isiah Pacheco have done enough that, if Reid and Mahomes were delivering at peak levels, they wouldn’t be 5-5 right now.
Obviously, nobody should be calling for Andy Reid to be fired or Patrick Mahomes to be benched, but they also shouldn’t be making excuses for them. Andy Reid is a surefire Hall of Famer and might deserve to be on the Mount Rushmore of all-time NFL coaches. Patrick Mahomes is arguably the greatest player in Chiefs history and has delivered KC fans more exciting moments and memories than anyone thought possible before he arrived. That doesn’t mean the 2025 season has been good enough, because it simply hasn’t been. They’ve shown glimpses of excellence at times, but the consistency is a problem. Reid hasn’t seemed to have the answer at times, and then sometimes he calls up a great play and Mahomes just hasn’t been able to deliver the ball.
The Chiefs may now need to go 6-1 in their final seven games just to get into the playoffs. The division is likely over now. To make matters worse, the Chiefs have head-to-head losses to the three teams that currently hold the AFC Wild Card spots (Buffalo Bills, Los Angeles Chargers, and Jacksonville Jaguars). So they don’t just need to [catch them in the AFC playoff standings](https://arrowheadaddict.com/updated-afc-playoff-picture-after-chiefs-blow-a-chance-to-beat-the-broncos-01ka7m7w0yp2); they have to pass them. That uphill battle starts this coming Sunday when KC has to face the 8-2 Indianapolis Colts. Can the Chiefs win that game? Sure they can, but probably only if their Hall of Fame offensive mastermind coach and elite MVP-caliber quarterback actually deliver on their reputations.