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On Monday, reports surfaced of the Kansas City Chiefs’ plan to fill the vacant offensive coordinator position with a coach who has held that title in Kansas City before: Eric Bieniemy. After one year as the running backs coach with the Chicago Bears, he will return to the Chiefs for the 2026 season. Bieniemy will reprise the role he held from 2018 to 2022, when he won two Super Bowls as the right-hand man to head coach Andy Reid.
Between his departure from the Chiefs and working under Bears’ head coach Ben Johnson, Bieniemy coordinated the offenses of the Washington Commanders and the UCLA Bruins, where he was also the associate head coach. His return to an NFL sideline in 2025 put him in charge of Chicago’s backfield, the original position he held for the first five years of Reid’s tenure in Kansas City.
The Chiefs’ offense needs a fresh approach, and Bieniemy can blend the knowledge he has gained in his last few stops with the strict attention to detail that helped the Chiefs become champions in 2019 and 2022.
The Chiefs’ reliance on running plays out of shotgun formations in 2025 limited what they were able to do offensively, and these restrictions led to poor offensive play throughout the season.
According to NFL Next Gen Stats, the Chiefs ranked 30th in the NFL in plays run from under center (196) during the 2025 season, but the Bears ranked fourth with 519 plays.
Ben Johnson has been one of the more innovative minds in the NFL since his days as an offensive coordinator for the Detroit Lions. His ability to blend a power running game with an innovative passing attack centered around play-action has been instrumental to the emergence of the Lions and now the Bears.
The Bears averaged 98.6 yards per game with under-center rush looks — the third-highest rate in the NFL — while the Chiefs averaged only 38.1 yards per game (27th ranked). When passing from these looks, the Bears ranked fifth in the NFL with 168.2 yards per game; that is what the Chiefs should look to adopt in 2026.
Bieniemy should help Reid bridge the gap between Kansas City’s current offense and the modern ideas that the Chiefs lacked in 2025..
Bieniemy will return as the offensive coordinator, but he will likely play a key role in the development of the running backs on the Chiefs’ current roster, as well as any additions made through free agency or the draft.
It’s worth noting that Kansas City has yet to fill the position of running backs coach after news of Todd Pinkston being relieved of his duties. The team also fired assistant running backs coach Mark DeLeone, according to a report on Tuesday evening.
The Chiefs should have a strong selection of top candidates for the job, but Bieniemy will naturally be involved in the development of the position he is most familiar.
In 2025,...
