Arrowhead Pride
Welcome back to the Arrowhead Pride Mailbag! Each week, watch for your opportunity to submit your Kansas City Chiefs questions in The Feed, which is found on AP’s home page.
After a painful loss to the Jacksonville Jaguars on “Monday Night Football” — and with the 4-1 Detroit Lions coming to GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Week 6 — let’s see what is on our readers’ minds.
Is it time to start trading the aging core of the team — and a few young players — for draft picks? Travis Kelce could put butts in the seats in Cleveland. Jawaan Taylor might be more suited for the New England Patriots’ offense. Chris Jones might like a change of scenery; he looked lost in Jacksonville. Leo Chenal and Trent McDuffie could bring in a haul close to the trade deadline.
Barring catastrophic injury, I don’t think there’s a scenario that would make the Kansas City a seller before the NFL’s November 4 trade deadline.
Yes… the Chiefs have been frustrating to watch. But have you seen some of the other AFC squads? Even if some of its recurring problems don’t improve, Kansas City is still likely to finish among the top seven teams in the conference. It should at least secure a Wild Card berth.
Time will tell whether Kelce and Jones eventually end their tenures in Kansas City on their own terms, but neither is going to be traded in-season. With $35 million guaranteed in 2026, Jones’ contract might be the most untradeable in the sport — outside of quarterbacks.
I would be surprised if any team had interest in trading for Taylor. Besides his high remaining salary for 2025, injury concerns haven’t gone away. Even after reportedly receiving an experimental treatment in Panama this past offseason, Taylor has appeared on every injury report this season while receiving treatment for his knee. At this point, we should probably expect that to continue for the rest of his playing career.
I predict the Chiefs and McDuffie will agree to an extension next spring, but I wouldn’t put the odds of a trade at zero. If it ever happened, it would be far more likely before next April’s draft than in the next few weeks. In that hypothetical, both sides would benefit from a broader range of interested teams during the offseason rather than being limited to select playoff contenders.
Chenal is an interesting case, because it’s unclear how aggressively the Chiefs plan to pursue re-signing him — or what his market might look like in free agency. If the worst-case scenario unfolded, Kansas City would have to consider trading him before the deadline. But as it stands, he’s too valuable to the team’s playoff hopes to consider trading him.
What is the Chiefs’ defensive third down conversion rate? How many times does the team get off the field? How many times has Kansas City allowed other teams to convert on...
