Is the Chiefs roster better than 2023, Part 1: Offense
Looking at each offensive position group to try and gauge where KC's roster stands.
Every NFL team’s roster is going to look different in Week 1 than it currently looks. Let’s get that out of the way immediately.
Finalized roster and training camp cuts always contain some surprises that lead to players signing elsewhere and contributing. Additionally, there are a few (more than a few, really) decent veterans who will wait until injuries in August take their toll to sign with a team (and just so happen to miss the dog days of training camp). Every team will shore up a position or two prior to real football beginning (it’s pre-Thanksgiving so not Real Football, h/t to Nate Taylor, but it actually counts).
That said, we’ve made it through the first, second, third, and fourth waves of free agency as well as the draft (and undrafted rookie free agent signings). That means the roster, as it currently stands, is largely complete for the 2024 season. Which makes for a good time (in between reviewing draftees’ film) to talk about the state of the roster and what it looks like compared to 2023.
The way I’ll do that is by going from position group to position group and laying out whether they’re better, worse, or similar to last season. Obviously there have been some big additions, but the Chiefs have had some losses to the roster as well (with the most obvious one being L’Jarius Sneed, he of the all-time press against Tyreek Hill in the Wild Card round).
I’ll never get tired of that clip, nor remembering how Sneed (and even more so Trent McDuffie) dominated the Super Bowl. But I digress.
As the offseason moves along (we’ve officially entered the “there’s not a ton of new news at the moment” phase of the offseason) I’ll be diving into some film review projects and maybe even do a series on lessons learned from 2022 and 2023 (just to make Brisco mad that I can actually get to those lessons here!). If there’s something you’d like to see me look into in terms of reviewing 2023’s film (I’m particularly interested in McDuffie, Chenal, Bolton, Humphrey, Karlaftis, Taylor, and Smith, but I’d love to hear who you’d like to read about), let me know in the comments below.
But first, how does this current roster stack up to the one that went all the way last season? Let’s talk about it, starting with the QB room and working our way throughout both sides of the ball (and maybe even special teams). In each position group, I’ll list out the contributors from last season (basically looking at guys who actually played even somewhat) and the (anticipated) contributors this season, then decide whether the Chiefs are better, worse, or similar.
If nothing else, perhaps it’ll give us some insight on areas that need to still be addressed and set some realistic expectations for 2024. Let’s get started.
(NOTE: When I started off I intended on this being a single article. The deeper I got, the more appropriate it seemed to split it up into offense and defense so we could take a closer look)