NFL Analysis
11/21/23
6 min read
Chiefs' Wide Receivers Will Hold Them Back in Loaded AFC
The Kansas City Chiefs treated their wide receiver room like a science experiment during the offseason, and now it's come back to bite them.
Monday night's loss to the Philadelphia Eagles was the nastiest bite of them all.
After a strong first half led by the running game and defense, the Chiefs needed their passing game coming out of the locker room. The run game slowed, and the Eagles were slowly churning out points.
It would have to be Patrick Mahomes and Travis Kelce vs. the world, a proposition anyone would be scared of as recently as last year.
That's not the case anymore. The moment Monday night's game turned into a pass-heavy affair, every Chiefs receiver turned into a pumpkin. Kansas City's mishmash of failed draft picks, hyper-specific role-playing vets and rookies at the receiver position failed Mahomes one by one all the way until the last play.
The Chiefs made their bed with this receiving group, though. Save for Mecole Hardman, whom the team brought back midseason via trade. The Chiefs went into the season with this receiver room on purpose. It was like everyone in the building bought the idea Mahomes could make it work with anyone.
The loss on Monday night was the universe's way of punishing them for their hubris.
Kelce Can't Do It All
Kelce is the natural starting point for deconstructing where this all went wrong for the Chiefs' pass-catching group.
Kelce, of course, isn't the problem. He is the only obviously good player in this pass-catching group. It's not a stretch to say Kelce is the greatest receiving tight end of all time, and he's still playing at a high level. Every team besides the San Francisco 49ers would trade their starting tight end for Kelce in a heartbeat.
How Kelce's game has aged helps us understand the rest of the Chiefs' problems, though.
In our collective headcanon, Kelce is an uber-athletic route runner who can generate explosive plays down the field and with the ball in his hands. That's who he was during the end of the Alex Smith era and for the first handful of years into the Mahomes dynasty.
Kelce just isn't that guy anymore. He's older, slower and less dynamic. At this stage in his career, Kelce wins more with finesse and nuance on top of his weird mindmeld with Mahomes.
That's not a subjective assessment. The numbers bear out the same idea.
Kelce has an average depth of target of 6.46 yards through nine games, according to TruMedia. That's the third-lowest of his career, only ahead of 2014 and 2015 with Smith at quarterback.
Kelce is also averaging 4.58 yards after the catch per reception. The only season below that in Kelce's career was in 2019, when his average target was nine yards, and he was more of a vertical threat.
In general, Kelce is catching shorter passes and doing less with them than he used to. Kelce set the bar so high for himself that this "lesser" version is still unequivocally Pro Bowl-worthy, but he doesn't quite have the same impact he had in the golden days.
It's okay to admit that and still recognize Kelce as one of the league’s best.
In and of itself, Kelce's "decline" is not back-breaking. He's still an awesome player. The bigger problem is the Chiefs do not have anyone else in the receiver room to take pressure off Kelce. Defenses can double Kelce constantly — as the Eagles did on Monday night — without worrying that someone else will beat them.
Chiefs Don't Have a Reliable No. 2
Ideally, someone would step up alongside Kelce. A few players have taken turns at different points this season, but nobody has stuck. It's a deeply flawed and incomplete receiver group chock full of low-level role players.
The Eagles game perfectly encapsulates what's held each receiver back from being the trusty No. 2 alongside Kelce.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling is supposed to be the team's vertical presence. They're paying him around $10 million a year to do so.
On the game's final drive, it looked like he'd finally broken through for them after having not caught a single pass all game.
Mahomes launched one nearly 60 yards right into Valdes-Scantling's outstretched hands, only for him to bobble and drop the ball right on the goal line. The only play Valdes-Scantling made all game was a drawn DPI call.
Justin Watson is also kind of supposed to be a vertical threat. At 6-foot-2, 215 pounds, he's got a little more beef than Valdes-Scantling. Watson has been an effective knuckleball for Andy Reid since last season, but only in very limited action.
A lot of the novelty goes away when Watson runs a season-high 33 routes and earns a career-high 11 targets, more than doubling his previous high with the Chiefs (five).
Watson had multiple drops, including a throw that hit him in the facemask on a game-ending fourth-and-25. Drops have been a theme for the Chiefs this season; They lead the NFL in drops with 26.
Then there's the three-headed gadget monster of Kadarius Toney, Skyy Moore and Hardman. All three are different versions of functionally useless gadget players who can't survive as real receivers.
Toney is the twitchy guy, Moore is the classic "WR who runs like an RB" type, and Hardman is the skinny, fast guy.
You can see the idea behind all three of them, but without any threat of them doing real wide receiver work, there's no surprise factor about how these guys will get the ball.
Rashee Rice, a second-round rookie, is the only player I'm willing to give a light pass. He is a Day 2 rookie thrust into a tricky situation. He has also been their "best" receiver to this point in the season, for whatever that title is worth.
Rice is still frustrating, though. He is always good for one or two explosive plays with the ball in his hands, often thanks to a quick pass. However, his ability to play outside the numbers and win on traditional routes comes and goes. Some weeks, he has it. Some weeks, he doesn't. Week 11 was the latter.
This Group Isn't Good Enough
In the end, all this receiver group gets you is a touchdown-to-check down approach in which none of the vertical threats are reliable, and none of the short-area targets are treated like real wide receivers.
This group makes for a disjointed and inconsistent offense that's only been kind of glued together by Mahomes’ magic.
That's all good and well vs. mid-table teams. Mahomes is the best quarterback in the league, Kelce is still a force, and Reid can scheme it up with the best of them. Those three alone can mask a lot and get the Chiefs over the finish line vs. average teams.
It's a different story when they face the cream of the crop. This Chiefs offense does not have the same firepower as other contending offenses.
Everything relies on Mahomes going god mode. Mahomes might be the best quarterback of the modern era, but he's still a mortal.
