Is the Chiefs' roster better than 2024, Part 1: Offense
Examining changes to Kansas City's offensive roster this year... Was a step forward taken?
In the NFL, a roster is never really “set,” especially for a Super Bowl contender. Tweaks will be made in training camp, as veterans come available via release or players who didn’t want to sweat all July get serious about signing with a team. You’ll also see legitimate (or even not-so-legitimate) contenders make midseason trades/signings in an effort to shore up a major weakness (such as Kansas City trading for DeAndre Hopkins last year). Things are always fluid.
That said, by the time we hit mid-to-late May, you generally have an idea as to what a roster is going to look like for the most part (again, absent a few moves before or during the season). And now that we’ve reviewed the film of every single draft pick (you can find links to them all here, in the Jeffrey Bassa film review, and I promise I’ll get to a couple of the undrafted guys!), we have the time to have a real discussion as to how the Chiefs roster stacks up compared to last season. Every year players come and go, but the goal, of course, is to always be stronger the next season.
How does this current roster stack up to the one that went to (and unfortunately lost this time) yet another Super Bowl last year? Let’s talk about it, starting with the QB room and working our way throughout both sides of the ball. In each position group, I’ll list out the contributors from last season (looking at guys who actually played somewhat) and the anticipated contributors this season, then decide whether the Chiefs are better, worse, or similar. We’ll start with the offense today, and then get to the defense in Part 2. It’s worth noting that while we can just go by snap count as to who contributors were last year, figuring out who will be contributors in 2025 requires a LITTLE guesswork, especially with rookies.
This is always a fun exercise, and a good way to try and gauge how well the front office was able to maintain and increase talent on the roster. I did the same thing last year (here’s a link to the offensive side of the ball), and to be honest I think I learned something about counting chickens before they’re hatched. But I’ll circle back to that later. Let’s talk about the Chiefs’ offensive roster, and whether it’s better on paper than it was last year.
(ONE more note… I’ll be listing 2024’s contributors in order of snap count BESIDES offensive line… that should in theory allow us to account for how guys missed time, etc, and actually contributed in 2024, thus giving us a more accurate look at whether there’s an upgrade there)
Quarterbacks
2024- Patrick Mahomes, Carson Wentz
2025- Patrick Mahomes, Gardner Minshew II
The more things change, the more they stay the same. The Chiefs have the best quarterback in the world. And the fact that he had a “down” 2024 (with a lot of factors at play, to be sure, but definitely down for him) in which he was probably the 3rd or 4th best QB in the league week in and week out doesn’t change who he’s been since becoming the starter in KC. Because frankly, even in a down year for him Mahomes was still doing things weekly that most other QBs can barely dream of.
For most quarterbacks, a throw with this sort of placement under that sort of duress would’ve been highlight-reel material for weeks. With Mahomes? It’s another day at the office, even in a year where (and we’ll get to his yearly film review in June) things didn’t go his way as often as they did in previous seasons. I, for one, will never take seeing incredible things every week for granted.
Where things did change (and, in a way, stay sort of the same) for the Chiefs was at backup quarterback, where they swapped out Carson Wentz on a one year deal for Gardner Minshew on a one year deal. One thing that’s interesting about that is that, for the first time in his career, Mahomes’ backup will be a guy who has less experience in the league than he does (Minshew was drafted in 2019, 2 years after Mahomes).
This continues the trend I noted last season when the Chiefs went with Wentz as the backup after years of choosing QBs who had been in the league for significantly longer than Mahomes (Wentz was drafted in 2016, a single year before Mahomes). What this continues to signal, to me, is that the Chiefs are no longer really worried about having a “veteran QB” in the room with Mahomes.
And that makes sense. Mahomes is entering (brace yourself) his NINTH year in the league. He doesn’t need a veteran in the room with him necessarily because he’s a battle-hardened vet himself who has seen everything the league has to offer. And so the Chiefs are better off trying to find talented guys as backups who are more likely to keep the ship afloat for a few games if Mahomes misses time. Minshew fits the bill for that, and frankly he has a larger sample size of recent “we can live with this” film than Wentz did, though his ceiling isn’t as high.