Arrowhead Pride
In 2025, Kansas City hopes to continue dominating on the interior of the offensive line.
Over the weekend, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler continued releasing his 2025 rankings for NFL players based on a poll of NFL executives, coaches and scouts. While the Kansas City Chiefs didn’t land anyone on Sunday’s list of the top 10 offensive tackles, Saturday’s list of interior offensive linemen included three Kansas City players.
1. Creed Humphrey, Kansas City Chiefs
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: 10
Age: 26
Last year’s ranking: 7Last year, Humphrey made the case as the best overall center since Jason Kelce. Now, he’s the top interior linemen thanks to consistency in the voting. He’s the only one to appear on every ballot and was a top-three recipient on the majority of them.
Humphrey’s 96.2 pass block win rate last season ranks sixth among all interior offensive linemen. He’s the lead communicator for a championship-level offense. And his intangibles are well-known around the league.
“He’s great in pass protection, great feet and instincts,” an NFL coordinator said. “Not a mauler in the running game but can get it done enough. Deals with chaos well and can navigate a lot of moving parts for that offense.”
While Humphrey’s 73.2 run block win rate is solid if unspectacular, he did curb the snapping issue that plagued him in 2023. His play in the Super Bowl suffered in part because Joe Thuney sliding to left tackle forced him to help more in protection.
“If you can isolate him one-on-one, you can kick his ass a little bit,” the coordinator said. But that’s not true most of the time. Humphrey did not allow a quick pressure (under 2.5 seconds) across 653 pass-blocking snaps during the regular season.
4. Trey Smith, Kansas City Chiefs
Highest ranking: 1
Lowest ranking: Unranked
Age: 26
Last year’s ranking: 9That Kansas City franchise tagged Smith at $23.4 million says a lot about the quality of the player. The Chiefs are often salary cap-strapped and aren’t afraid to let marquee free agents walk... but Smith is too unique to escape the Chiefs’ facility.
“Power, brute strength, physicality — he’s a people-mover and a people-stopper,” an AFC executive said.
Smith was a first-round talent in 2021 but fell to the sixth round as some teams were not comfortable with his medical profile, due to a heart condition detected while at Tennessee. He has overcome that to become a premier player.
Smith’s 75.1 run block win rate ranks third among this group, and he received several first-place votes because of it. As one NFL coordinator said, “He’s got elite hands, and he is great at finishing his blocks.”
To be sure, Smith had a rough Super Bowl loss against Philadelphia. But the entire Chiefs line struggled that night, and that game...
