Chiefs 2025 offense: What needs to be fixed (and what doesn’t) after disappointing year

Patrick Mahomes says the Chiefs need to figure out how to produce more explosive plays in 2026. Jamie Squire / Getty Images

Kansas City Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice got himself open on a slant. And then he got destroyed.

This was Week 15 — a must-win for the Chiefs if they hoped to remain in the playoff race — when Los Angeles Chargers safety Tony Jefferson diagnosed a pass to Rice quickly as the deep safety and came charging hard.

The collision with Rice was so intense that a piece of Jefferson’s helmet flew into the air. Rice dropped the pass, then remained crumpled on the Arrowhead Stadium turf for a few seconds, regaining his bearings during an eventual 16-13 home loss. (Rice would later sit out the next three games while on the injury report with concussion symptoms.)

Perhaps no other play greater illustrates the angst among Chiefs fans this offseason as the team’s offense looks to rebuild after a disappointing 6-11 season.

This sort of play for Rice? Where the team put him by himself on one side, believing he could win his one-on-one matchup against man coverage?

The Chiefs had used it with success in the past.

Only this time — for whatever reason — the Chargers and Jefferson seemed to know it was coming.

It was the exact type of scenario that quarterback Patrick Mahomes seemed to describe last week when talking about what needed to shift with the offense in 2026.

“The one part about having so much success is teams watch a lot of film on you, and so they try to have good game plans of how to combat what you do and what you’ve done well,” Mahomes said. “You saw that this year, teams were very conscious of the plays that we’ve hit for a long time. So we have to find ways to counteract that and go at teams and be able to utilize that and make more explosive plays.”

So what was missing most from the offense in 2025? And what are the quickest fixes for next season?

Let’s take a deeper look.

First off … is it actually broken?

A portion of the fan base was disappointed after it was reported that Eric Bieniemy will replace Matt Nagy as offensive coordinator next season.

Some believe that coach Andy Reid’s offensive scheme would benefit from having a new voice in the room with fresh ideas.

Reid, meanwhile, has remained steadfast in one opinion even after the season: The offense for next year needs tweaks and not wholesale changes.

“You’re still looking at an offense that was one of the top-10 offenses in the league, if you take everything into consideration there. So you’re not that far off,” Reid said in his after-the-season news conference. “You’ve got to get a couple things bouncing your way and make sure you take care of that.”

Some might take that kind of quote as a lack of accountability after a six-win season.

The advanced numbers, though, suggest that Reid has a point — with recency bias overshadowing some of the truth about this season’s offense.

Let’s look, for example, at the offensive numbers through Week 13. That was the game when Kansas City lost both starting tackles (Josh Simmons and Jawaan Taylor) for the season because of injury.

A quick look at the team’s numbers, per TruMedia, shows an offense performing respectably compared with its peers.

Sometimes, a team needing an offensive change is obvious. Take the Chicago Bears, who ranked 27th in offensive EPA and 32nd in yards per play in 2024 before hiring offensive-minded Ben Johnson as head coach.

“Blow things up” was the proper strategy then. Is that really the path for the Chiefs after they spent two-thirds of their 2025 season performing like a top NFL offense?

What happened next is relevant. The Chiefs did a poor job of overcoming their offensive line injuries, then saw their offense completely crater after Mahomes suffered a season-ending knee injury in Week 15.

In the final five weeks — and while playing three games outside of playoff contention — K.C. had one of the worst offenses in the league.

So why did the Chiefs still struggle to a 6-6 start even with strong under-the-hood numbers early? It mostly goes back to the close-game fortunes.

They went 1-9 in one-score games — a nearly unprecedented record. Per TruMedia, only two NFL teams since 2000 have had 10 one-score games in a season and went 1-9 or worse: the 2014 Buccaneers (1-9) and 2025 Chiefs.

That late-game misfortune, combined with low offensive possession numbers compared with the rest of the league, has likely made the perception of the offense worse than it actually was.

But that doesn’t mean a few things can’t — or shouldn’t — be improved for 2026.

Passing game’s slow decline

It can be difficult to remember now, but through seven weeks, Mahomes was the betting favorite to win league MVP.

Even a month after that, while taking additional deep shots and giving his receivers more chances to make plays, Mahomes ranked No. 1 among quarterbacks in offensive EPA, according to the NFL’s Next Gen Stats.

All that, though, didn’t offer much comfort to Mahomes following a year in which the Chiefs unexpectedly missed the playoffs.

“I think offensively, we weren’t consistent enough throughout games,” Mahomes said after the season. “We had stretches in games where we played good. We had stretches in the season where we played really good. But we’ve got to be better, and that starts with me, and then it has to feed throughout the entire offense.”

Mahomes will have plenty of rehab work to focus on as he aims to return for Week 1 from the knee injury. Still, as he and the Chiefs reflect on this season, they’re likely to want to get one potent part of their pass offense back: quick-read decision-making.

When at his best in 2025, Mahomes didn’t hesitate. He had the quickest average time to throw of his career per Next Gen Stats (2.79 seconds), and many of his best performances lined up directly with the games he held onto it the shortest.

It was especially noticeable early. According to Pro Football Focus’ data, Mahomes passed to his first read on 83 percent, 79 percent, 83 percent and 82 percent of his throws in his first four games.

Over the rest of the season — his final 11 weeks — Mahomes surpassed 71 percent on his first-read throw percentage in just three other games.

Part of getting back to fast-fire offense, though, will be what Mahomes referenced earlier. Can the offense add more unpredictability and break tendencies enough to keep defenses guessing? And can the Chiefs find more answers against man coverage, which they struggled to shake this season?

K.C. should get a boost from being healthy on the O-line again. The line was one of the best pass-blocking units when whole in 2025. And though Taylor is likely to be an offseason cut, the team should feel good about the protection potential of a Simmons-Kingsley Suamataia-Creed Humphrey-Trey Smith-Jaylon Moore grouping.

The Chiefs also acknowledge they can be better with play action. SumerSports’ data showed K.C. ranked 19th in EPA per play on play-action passes while using them at the 24th-highest frequency.

Part of that lack of success, though, wasn’t on the pass offense; Reid said, too often, linebackers and defensive backs weren’t coming upfield much when the Chiefs faked run plays.

“We’re not getting enough reaction out of them — however you take that,” Reid said. “That could be because of the run game. It could be because of the action we’re showing. But there wasn’t enough respect there that needs to be given.”

Which brings us to the final piece of the offense: A run game that will be under intense scrutiny next season.

Running game lacks explosiveness

The Chiefs had just one 20-plus-yard rush from a running back all season, becoming only the second NFL team of the 2020s to have its backfield produce explosives at such a low volume.

That lack of big-play potential wasn’t lost on Reid, either.

“Somewhere, you’d like to have a few bigger plays in that area,” he said. “Not 3-4 yards. Every once in a while, you need to hit on a few.”

The Chiefs will certainly add speed to their running backs room this offseason, but they also probably weren’t as bad running-wise in 2025 as it might’ve seemed on the surface.

On designed runs, they were 11th in expected points added and 16th in expected points added per play, according to TruMedia.

Two reasons those numbers were inflated? Kareem Hunt, and a lack of giveaways.

Though the 30-year-old Hunt doesn’t have the speed he once had, he was elite in short-yardage situations, helping the team extend drives. K.C. ranked fifth in designed-rush EPA on third and fourth downs, and because of that, the team could consider bringing him back on a modest salary again next season.

The Chiefs also avoided almost all negative plays in the run game, losing just three fumbles all season, which tied for the sixth-lowest NFL mark since 2000.

K.C. will still lean on Bieniemy to help freshen a rushing operation that didn’t command opponents’ respect last season.

“We’ve got to run the ball more efficient, especially on first and second down, on those run downs, in those run situations,” Reid said. “Just stay positive with that.”

So how far off, statistically, was the 2025 Chiefs offense from the 2024 version that went 15-2 and made the Super Bowl?

Probably not as much as you think.

Their 2025 expected-points-added production, even including three non-Mahomes games at the end, was similar to what the team experienced in 2024.

A team winning close games, in other words (the Chiefs were 12-0 in 2024’s one-score games), can do a whole lot to boost its overall perception.

The Chiefs will have areas to address offensively in the offseason. They’ll likely draft a running back with an early-but-non-first-round pick and could add another in free agency. The team will need another wideout and could specifically target someone who specializes in beating man coverage.

Mahomes says one thing, however, is certain: He’s ready to do whatever it takes to make sure he’s playing in the playoffs again next January.

“Coaches, players, we’re all motivated,” Mahomes said, “to be better this next year.”

Spot the pattern. Connect the terms

Find the hidden link between sports terms