(Low) Key Chiefs to the '25 season, Part 2; Kingsley Suamataia LG film review
Reviewing the small sample size we have of the 2nd-year OL playing the position he's looking to start in 2025.
In this series, we’re looking at multiple players across the roster who will be (low) key to the Chiefs improving from last year, or at least maintaining their status as serious Super Bowl contender. 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.
In the Introduction/Prequel, I laid out the criteria and talked about the seven Chiefs who I think fit the bill. In Part 1, I wrote about safety Jaden Hicks. Today, we’re looking at Kingsley Suamataia’s snaps at LG.
It’s hard to think of a player who has gone from hyped to doghouse to forgotten-but-still-really-relevant as quickly as what has happened to Chiefs’ offensive lineman Kingsley Suamataia over the last calendar year. As we’ve discussed before, he went from LT heir apparent to “bust” in the span of 2 regular season games, and thereafter (literally during the season) became a long-term plan at guard… and THEN, following Joe Thuney being traded, became the immediate plan at guard.
I’ve got whiplash, but that’s life in the NFL. Anyways, Suamataia is one of the more important Chiefs of the 2025 season in terms of his potential to impact the floor of the offense. Here’s how I put it in the introduction to this series:
Suamataia (and every other guard he’s competing with for that spot) has a much larger impact on both the floor and the ceiling of the offense than is being talked about, particularly when it comes to consistency. If he’s a problem at guard similar to how Mike Caliendo was last year (or how Suamataia himself was at LT), then even if things go the way the Chiefs’ hope at tackle they’re still going to have issues with consistency in pass protection.
Yes, again, you can hide a guard more than a tackle, but that has its limits schematically and smart teams with good pass rushers will exploit weak links. The deep ball game will be affected, Mahomes’ confidence in the protection will be affected… it doesn’t mean the offense can’t be very good, it just could make it a little bit tougher on everyone else for that to happen. If, on the flip side, Suamataia is even average at LG, the line could end up vastly improved overall from what we saw down the stretch last year despite the dropoff at that position given the (from what we can see) upgrade to left tackle regardless of whether it’s Moore or Simmons out there.
In short, where Suamataia falls in the spectrum from terrible, to bad, to subpar, to average, to above average, to good, to very good, to elite, has the potential to tremendously impact the offense in terms of its floor and its consistency.
And so… what can we expect from him? Well, we’re fortunate enough that we got a one-game (well, partial game) sample size from Suamataia at LG in Week 18. And while that game was an utter disaster, it does contain useful information in that Suamataia was matched up against an excellent defensive line (Zach Allen in particular is a monster, and he had multiple snaps lined up against Suamataia) that was playing with a big lead. Any offensive lineman will tell you that playing from behind (where the run game becomes irrelevant) is basically cranking up the difficulty level to “legendary,” so we got to see him against good competition in a bad spot.
It’s an incredibly small sample size, but it does at least give us a peak into Suamataia trying out guard. it was apparent very quickly at tackle that he was having troubles, so over the course of even 31 snap those same troubles would at least be spottable (not a word, apparently). If, on the other hand, he was able to hold his own… well, it’s an interesting conversation to be had.
That game was an interesting one because Denver’s defense utterly dominated the Chiefs’ 2nd string, from the OL to the receivers. And so that led to multiple snaps where even when Suamataia did his job, it ended with a pressure on Wentz.
I’m starting with this snap because it’s a good one to highlight how little we can tell about an individual offensive lineman based on the fact that pressure occurred on a play. Here, Suamataia is largely on an island against Allen and holds his own, resetting that right arm while keeping contact with his left and keeping his feet moving to prevent being driven backwards. He then moves laterally well with Allen, THEN avoids getting tossed when Allen tries to use that momentum against him. Finally, Allen is able to shake free by moving back the other direction, but only after Suamataia drives him to the side.
All in all, it’s about a full 5 seconds before Allen starts to generate pressure on Wentz (in a pocket that has fallen apart due to failures elsewhere and due to Wentz not having anywhere to go with the ball). That’s a win of a snap for Suamataia, as no offensive lineman is expected to hold up in pure pass pro for even that long. It just goes unnoticed because of the context surrounding him.
All right, let’s talk Suamataia’s film. As always, I charted every snap for wins, losses, and neutral plays, as well as for pressures/hits/sacks that were on him (the pressure above, though it was eventually technically Allen, wasn’t on him so it doesn’t get charted that way). Let’s go through the numbers, talk about the VERY little meaning we can take from them, then talk about what he looked like on the day.