What are the most important (non-obvious) factors for the Chiefs' 2024 season?
I look beyond the obvious (health, luck, Mahomes) and discuss the most important factors for Andy Reid and company trying to make history.
The Chiefs are about to try and make history.
I’ll talk more about that later this week (Wednesday or Thursday), but what Andy Reid, Patrick Mahomes and company are about to try and accomplish has never been done. It’s an incredible thing to witness a shot at that sort of thing in real time, and it deserves its own article.
However, with the season about to kick off (I cannot BELIEVE how fast this summer has gone), today I want to look at Kansas City’s chances to pull off what they’ve set out to do rather than the magnitude of it all. Today, I want to talk about the biggest factors for the Chiefs winning it all in 2024/25.
Now, to be clear, there are some things that are factors for EVERY team in the league. Things like “the NFL is really hard,” and “you need a ton of luck,” and “injuries play a crucial role” are not unique to Kansas City and aren’t really worth talking about in-depth. If you haven’t realized by now how hard it is to win a Super Bowl in the NFL, or how much luck (both injury and non-injury) plays a role in a game that consists of small sample sizes, I don’t know what to tell you other than it is indeed REALLY hard and luck plays a sizeable role.
It’s also quite obvious that the play of stars is going to have an outsized role in the end result of a season. The Chiefs’ trinity of Mahomes, Travis Kelce, and Chris Jones are always going to be their three most important players and them performing well is basically a necessity of Kansas City wants to do what no one else has ever done. So for as important as that trio is and as much fun as they are to watch…
… You don’t really need me to write an article about how crucial their success is to the Chiefs’ success. The same goes with Andy Reid and Steve Spagnuolo.
In other words, there are multiple aspects to the Chiefs’ dynasty that speak for themselves in terms of their importance to this upcoming season. What I want to talk about today are the things within the current team/roster beyond those “absolute top of the roster” issues. Things like depth at certain positions, experience at others, new arrivals and more that I think will play a key role in whether or not Kansas City is able to do the (previously) unthinkable and go back-to-back-to-back. You can think of these factors as floor/ceiling issues that can help Kansas City reach even greater heights… or hold them back as they seek greatness.
Let’s talk about the (non-obvious) issues that I think will make or break this year for the Chiefs.