Arrowhead Pride
How did Kansas City use its players in Sunday’s game against Buffalo?
On Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs fell to 9-1 with a 30-21 loss to the Buffalo Bills at Highmark Stadium in Orchard Park, New York.
Let’s see how the Chiefs used their players during the season’s first loss.
Starters (offensive): WR Xavier Worthy, LT Wanya Morris, LG Joe Thuney, C Creed Humphrey, RG Trey Smith, RT Jawaan Taylor, TE Noah Gray, TE Travis Kelce, QB Patrick Mahomes, WR JuJu Smith-Schuster and RB Kareem Hunt.
Starters (defensive): DT Chris Jones, DT Tershawn Wharton, DE Michael Danna, LB Leo Chenal, LB Nick Bolton, LB Drue Tranquill, DB Chamarri Conner, CB Trent McDuffie, S Nazeeh Johnson, S Bryan Cook and S Justin Reid.
Did not play: QB Carson Wentz.
Inactive: RB Clyde Edwards-Helaire, OL C.J. Hanson, T Kingsley Suamataia, DT Marlon Tuipulotu and DE Cameron Thomas.
Every day, you can find multiple articles about how the Chiefs have had to adjust since their top two receivers — Hollywood Brown and Rashee Rice — were injured. But throughout the season, Kansas City has had to make adjustments tight end, too.
The team began the season with superstar Travis Kelce, veteran Noah Gray (who had just signed a three-year contract extension worth $18 million) and promising rookie Jared Wiley on the roster. In response to Rice’s injury, the team re-signed Jody Fortson, allowing the offense to use multiple tight end sets to help make up for the missing wideouts.
Fortson played against the New Orleans Saints, San Francisco 49ers and Las Vegas Raiders, appearing in 15-25% of the team’s offensive snaps — and playing a role on special teams.
Fortson was being used the same way Wiley had been used all season.
Against the Raiders, Fortson and Wiley combined for nearly half of the offensive snaps. But in that game, Fortson was lost for the season with an ACL injury. At practice the following Friday, Wiley was also lost to an ACL.
Just before the season began, the Chiefs had traded with the Dallas Cowboys to acquire tight end Peyton Hendershot — who had been a key special teams player in Dallas. But after just one game, the team waived Hendershot — and immediately re-signed him to the practice squad. So he was available when Fortson and Wiley were injured; he was immediately activated to the roster.
As you can see, he has played a similar role to the players he replaced — but wasn’t used nearly as much on offense — because by the time he was playing, the 6-foot-1, 212-pound veteran wideout DeAndre Hopkins was fully in the mix. This made it easier to get by without substantial contributions from the team’s third (or fourth) tight end.
Through all this time, Kelce was in his normal range of use. Through most of the season, so was Gray.
But as you can see, neither Gray or Kelce have been used in the quite the same...
