After Friday's final preseason game with the Chicago Bears, rookie Josh Simmons says he's ready to take it up a notch. By Blair Kerkhoff
The first Patrick Mahomes drop-back didn’t count, not technically anyway, but it gained the Chiefs 29 yards.
It’s preseason, even a game you might have noticed the Chiefs lost 29-27 if you bothered to stick around for the end of it, so the point isn’t to dissect the importance of gaining 29 yards on a penalty.
It’s to pull at a thread that the Chicago Bears’ starting defense must have felt impossible to untangle.
The Chiefs showed a lot of what the passing offense could be this season, all of the ways they could beat you, and they did it from the opening throw.
Kansas City Chiefs head coach Andy Reid watches his team from the sideline during a preseason game vs. the Chicago Bears at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Kansas City. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
Forget the result of an exhibition. Heck, forget the other side, too — that the starters put up 17 points in only three drives, and that if Kareem Hunt hadn’t dropped a pass in the end zone, it would have been the maximum 21.
It’s that thread: The Chiefs put it all together — one thing playing off the next — and they didn’t even break out the real playbook to do it.
Let me the count the ways:
• That first play gained 29 yards because Rashee Rice had one-on-one coverage on the outside, and in a routine he’s starting to develop this preseason, Mahomes felt perfectly comfortable making a back-shoulder throw into tight coverage. Chicago cornerback Nahshon Wright both grabbed Rice’s facemask and interfered.
“We have to be able to win on the outside,” Mahomes said.
And then they did again. Mahomes found Rice again on a back-shoulder throw for a touchdown. By the time he released the ball, Rice had literally no separation, but a slight lean from the cornerback provided all the indication he needed.
It’s an indication of what the offense has long missed — familiarity.
Mahomes is operating with his receivers back, a summer that began with a foundation rather than introductory handshakes.
• The Chiefs won deep. Really. On a play-action pass, Mahomes found Tyquan Thornton for a 58-yard gain streaking down the left hash.
It’s the kind of thing you used to see in this offense, but Mahomes completed only 12 downfield shots in 2024, 30th most in the NFL. Will Levis had more. Aidan O’Connell had more in nine games. Joe Flacco had more in seven games, and he turned 40 last year.
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Tyquan Thornton (2) lines up before a play in the first quarter of the preseason game vs. the Chicago Bears at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Kansas City. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
Back to that Thornton catch: The Chiefs’ other five plays on the drive totaled 23 yards, and they still got points. This is obvious, sure, but it’s why explosive plays matter. And a lack of them is how the Chiefs have finished 15th in scoring each of the past two seasons. Maintaining long drives is a really hard thing.
• I’ve actually gotten a bit ahead of myself. The deep pass is significant. Tyquan Thornton on the receiving end of it matters.
But the real story of that play? Mahomes had all kinds of time and all kinds of space in the pocket to make the throw.
The offensive line was terrific Friday — a standard that made you wonder if this could show up when the games count. Josh Simmons completed an impressive preseason. But it’s Kingsley Suamataia’s night that provided that glimpse of the possible. After back-to-back uneven preseason outings, he was masterful in pass protection.
Not much in this column matters if the offensive line is as bad as it was a year ago.
• The Chiefs do have an avenue to operate the passing game without deep drop-backs.
For now.
In the easiest pitch-and-catch they made Friday, Mahomes took a shotgun pass, turned right and fired as quickly as possible. Rice caught the pass behind the line of scrimmage, and flipped a bubble screen into nine yards. It gained a first down and provided the Chiefs a bit of breathing room on a drive that started with their backs against their own goal line.
Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice (4) runs after a catch in the first quarter of the preseason game vs. the Chicago Bears at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium on Friday, Aug. 22, 2025, in Kansas City. Dominick Williams dowilliams@kcstar.com
It’s what makes Rice different. In three weeks before his injury a year ago, he’d totaled 185 yards after the catch. That was 44 more than anyone else in the NFL.
After his injury, that play just plain evaporated from the Chiefs’ playbook.
Think it might have come in handy against an Eagles team that dropped its secondary deep into the defensive backfield?
Which is the larger point. On a primetime night last February, the Eagles exposed the Chiefs’ passing game as limited by its injuries and limited by its ineffective offensive line.
On Friday, a far less important night in an August exhibition, the Chiefs showed the possibility — emphasis on exhibition, and therefore even more emphasis on possibility.
A preseason tilt is not a foreshadow. It’s more of a what-if.
But for the Chiefs, that picture included winning on the outside, throwing effectively into tight windows, throwing deep, providing the quarterback with ample time to throw deep and returning a play to the sheet that could draw defenses closer to the line of scrimmage or punish their refusal to do so.
It comes with the asterisk of the preseason.
And it comes with a far greater asterisk: Rice makes a lot of this go, and he’s staring at a to-be-determined suspension that has no indication of being a short absence.
Which is a reminder of the importance of doing it all well. A feature can be taken away in an instant — so many of them were a year ago. It can unravel the thread.
It’s best to be able to pull another string.