Introducing the (Low) Key Chiefs to the 2025 season, the Prequel
Let's talk about guys that we aren't talking about enough.
On Saturday, I wrote about Jaden Hicks, reviewing all 444 of his snaps from last season. It was Part 1 in a series I plan on writing about (low) key Chiefs to the 2025 season, talking about players who could have a potentially outsized impact on the upcoming season despite not being talked about a great deal.
Starting with Hicks was an obvious move, in part because of the departure of Justin Reid but also because the 2nd-year player’s rookie film contained a number of surprised in both quantity of snaps (he played WAY more down the stretch than I’d realized) and quality of snaps (seriously, go read it if you haven’t).
That said, to be perfectly honest I realized something as I discussed what I’d found in the film… I had to spend so much time talking about WHY Hicks was an important piece of this season’s puzzle that it took away from the time discussing his 2024 film, what he did well, and how that would fit into Spags’ defense.
With Substack having a finite amount of space for each email/article, there are only so many words available. Talking about the “why” in Hicks’ case took away from the “what” to the extent. Additionally, whenever one has to cover multiple “main” takeaways in a single article, it can take away from each point to an extent.
Not to peel back too many layers to my “process” (good lord did I roll my eyes at myself typing that phrase out), but I’ve always felt like the best work in football analysis (and perhaps any analysis) is more focused rather than a scattershot approach. And so despite very much enjoying reviewing Hicks’ film (I’m bullish on him after doing so) and writing about his importance to 2025, the end result felt a bit… disjointed to me.
Maybe that glimpse into how I approach this work is interesting to you. Maybe it’s not. Regardless, I’m not big on making the same mistake twice. So I decided to back things up a step before I write about the other (low)key Chiefs (you can tell I enjoy that title to this series, no?) who aren’t being discussed frequently enough in terms of their potential impact on the 2025 season. I need to write about the WHAT, to be sure, but it makes sense to talk about he WHY for each one. And rather than blending the why and the what with each player, I thought I’d put the why all in one place.
So anyways, welcome to “(Low) Key Chiefs to the 2025 season, the Prequel.
Here, I’m going to lay out each player I think fits into the idea of being lowkey important to 2025. Basically, the idea is to consider guys who aren’t being talked about as much as they should be in terms of a “potential impact” point of view. We’re looking for guys who could have a major (or semi-major) impact on the season but aren’t being discussed a whole lot.
That criteria leaves out superstars and high level players (Mahomes, Kelce, Jones, McDuffie, Humphrey, Smith). Further, it takes out generally known quantities and solid-to-good players (Bolton, Watson, Karlaftis, Danna, Taylor, Gray). It also leaves out guys that EVERYONE is talking about as important players for next season: Rice, Worthy, all the tackles, rookies (we always talk about rookies a ton, because who doesn’t like shiny new things?), and others. Basically, ask yourself two questions… 1) Could this guy make a pretty big impact next season depending how he does, and 2) Is he not being talked about much by Chiefs fans. If the answer is yes to both, that’s who we’re looking at.
With all that in mind, here’s the list of guys I believe meet the criteria as (low)key Chiefs for the 2025 season:
Jaden Hicks (I already wrote about him here)
Kingsley Suamataia
Isiah Pacheco
Drue Tranquill
Hollywood Brown
Kristian Fulton
Charles Omenihu
I’m not going to write an in-depth film review on every one of these guys as part of this series (I already did a full-fledged review of Kristian Fulton’s 2024 film here), but it’s worth talking about why each of these guys is (low)key to 2025 in a way that’s not being talked about enough. Throughout the summer I’ll review multiple guys’ film from this list to discuss what they brought to the table in 2024 and what they could potentially bring in 2025. But that’s the “what.” For today, let’s get into why each of these guys is more important to 2025 than is being discussed by most Chiefs fans.
Kingsley Suamataia
It’s always fascinating how quickly players fall out of conversation. Suamataia went from the heir apparent left tackle to rookie who showed flashes but had growing pains to benched to competing for a left guard spot in less than a single calendar year. And once he was deemed as off the table in the Chiefs’ future at tackle (their moves in signing Jaylen Moore and drafting Josh Simmons make that pretty clear), he basically fell out of conversation as people focused on the need for the LT spot to be fixed following 2024’s debacle.
But the thing is… as it currently stands, Suamataia is slated to be the likely starter at LG in 2025, a position that has been occupied by cyborg pass protector Joe Thuney for the last four seasons.
Here’s the dirty little secret about offensive line… Regardless of how good you are elsewhere, you can’t have a glaring issue ANYWHERE if you want to have consistently good pass protection. You can “hide” a left guard much better than a deficient tackle, certainly, but the reality is if you’ve got a significantly weak link anywhere along the line protection won’t be as consistent as you’d like.