Kansas City, I think, is one of the key question marks heading into the 2025 season. Can that offense get rolling again? It has been painfully ordinary for the last two years.
Patrick Mahomes might be the best quarterback on the planet. He’s certainly been clutch, consistently pulling out tight games in the fourth quarter. But he’s not putting up the kind of numbers he did early in his career. He threw 50 touchdowns in his first season as a starter, and he averaged 41 combined touchdowns in the 2020-22 seasons.
More recently, not so much. Mahomes has thrown only 27 and 26 touchdowns in his last two seasons.
It’s become a different, more defense-oriented team. There’s been less downfield passing, with fewer chunk plays.
In Mahomes’ first five seasons, the team finished 1st, 5th, 6th, 4th and 1st in scoring. During that run, the team averaged almost 4 more points per week than any other team.
But Kansas City has ranked 15th in scoring in each of the last two years, averaging 8 fewer points per game.
Kansas City has averaged 22.2 points in its last two seasons. Remarkably, that’s just below the league average.
| SCORING: 2018-22 versus last 2 years | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Team | '18-22 | '23-24 | Diff |
| Detroit | 22.2 | 30.1 | 8.0 |
| Washington | 18.8 | 23.9 | 5.2 |
| Denver | 19.0 | 23.0 | 4.0 |
| Buffalo | 25.0 | 28.7 | 3.7 |
| Baltimore | 25.9 | 29.4 | 3.5 |
| Miami | 21.5 | 24.7 | 3.2 |
| Jacksonville | 18.4 | 20.5 | 2.1 |
| Cincinnati | 22.7 | 24.6 | 2.0 |
| Philadelphia | 24.5 | 26.4 | 1.9 |
| Houston | 21.1 | 22.0 | .9 |
| San Francisco | 25.3 | 25.9 | .6 |
| NY Jets | 17.8 | 17.8 | .0 |
| Arizona | 21.8 | 21.5 | -.3 |
| Green Bay | 25.4 | 24.8 | -.6 |
| Dallas | 26.4 | 25.3 | -1.1 |
| Chicago | 20.9 | 19.7 | -1.1 |
| Tampa Bay | 26.5 | 25.0 | -1.5 |
| Indianapolis | 24.2 | 22.7 | -1.5 |
| Pittsburgh | 21.8 | 20.1 | -1.6 |
| Atlanta | 22.8 | 20.9 | -1.9 |
| Minnesota | 25.0 | 22.8 | -2.1 |
| LA Rams | 25.1 | 22.7 | -2.4 |
| LA Chargers | 24.6 | 22.0 | -2.6 |
| Cleveland | 22.1 | 19.2 | -2.9 |
| Las Vegas | 22.0 | 18.9 | -3.2 |
| Seattle | 25.5 | 21.7 | -3.8 |
| NY Giants | 19.7 | 15.9 | -3.8 |
| Carolina | 20.9 | 17.0 | -4.0 |
| New Orleans | 26.5 | 21.8 | -4.7 |
| Tennessee | 23.4 | 18.1 | -5.3 |
| Kansas City | 30.1 | 22.2 | -7.8 |
| New England | 24.1 | 15.4 | -8.6 |
I expect there will be some improvement, but I’m leery of moving them all the way up to the top 5. They’ve got some issues to figure out, and they seem to have grown comfortable with their closer-to-the-vest playing style.
They may lose Travis Kelce (and even if he returns, he’s slipped from where he was at in the past). Their standout guard, Trey Smith, needs to be paid; as a former sixth-round pick, he’s been delivering great value, but he might sign with another team.
They’ll get Rashee Rice back in 2025, but he’ll likely be shelved for a portion of the season (in connection with the car-racing incident in Dallas a year ago). They need to find a left tackle, and they’re pretty ordinary at running back, where Isiah Pacheco runs hard but will never be an elite-level guy.
While Mahomes is a talent, I expect I’ll be slotting him behind Joe Burrow, Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson. At least.
—Ian Allan