Arrowhead Pride
For the third straight year, I’m considering the 10 biggest questions I have about the Kansas City Chiefs in 2025.
It’s pretty easy to compare the Chiefs’ 2020 and 2024 seasons.
In both years, Kansas City was coming off a Super Bowl victory. Both squads won a lot of regular-season games on the way back to the Super Bowl, where they were both blown out — in large part because their offensive lines played poorly.
So in 2021, the Chiefs brought back most of the team except for the offensive line, where they began the season with five new starters. They hoped the boosted offensive line — alongside the rest of the roster — would be enough to avoid another Super Bowl loss.
In 2025, they haven’t made as many changes to the offensive line, but still used their biggest asset — their first-round pick — on left tackle Josh Simmons, after giving left tackle Jaylon Moore a two-year deal worth $30 million. This was seen as a hedge against failing to acquire Simmons or not having him ready for the season. Kansas City also traded stalwart left guard Joe Thuney so it could retain right guard Trey Smith. But just as in 2021, the team is otherwise keeping most of its roster, hoping that improved tackle play will make the difference.
Unfortunately, 2021 proved to be a frustrating year for the Chiefs, who started the season with a historically bad defense. By the middle of the season, the defense had turned things around, but the offense had fallen off a cliff. It took about two months for the offense to find ways around the two-high coverage shells defenses were sending against it.
In the Divisional round matchup against the Buffalo Bills — the famous “13-seconds” game — the defense was horrible, but the offense was fantastic. In the first half of the AFC Championship against the Cincinnati Bengals, the defense was largely pretty good, while the offense was dominant. But after halftime, the offense fell apart against the Drop 8 defense the Bengals played — and the Chiefs missed the Super Bowl.
So in 2022, Kansas City traded wide receiver Tyreek Hill to the Miami Dolphins, acquiring draft capital that it used to rebuild the defense with young players. That one move changed the team’s identity on both sides of the ball. The Chiefs’ offense became a more surgical and efficient — while the defense became a suffocating coverage unit.
So while it ended up putting Kansas City in a position it could start over, we’d hate for the Chiefs to have another season like 2021.
Was it simply a Super Bowl hangover? It’s hard to say. It’s impossible to know how a Super Bowl loss will affect a team, because it hits every team differently. But I don’t believe Super Bowl hangovers prevent a team from being properly motivated. Injury luck, coaching, roster turnover — and the league’s deliberate parity — all play a role in every team’s...
